Interviews

It’s possible Scott Kelly doesn’t sleep. Between his solo work, projects like Shrinebuilder and the untouchable legacy of Neurosis, you could rest a battleship on his laurels. But the man seems to never tire, with something new always around the bend. And to keep his fans in the loop with tours, releases and whatever else…

What is the Deathhammer? Bob Bagchus: Deathhammer represents the book of death metal. Our view on real death metal. It’s like the rules of what real death metal was supposed to be. Death metal was supposed to be hard, raw, dirty, creepy, dark and brutal to the bone. Music to be scared of. Just listen…

Just rocking up at ANTHRAX‘s recent London show to talk about comic book movies and assorted off-topic horseshit, we didn’t expect to have a video camera following us downstairs, backstage, our every move as we squeezed our wheasing, bloated selves onto a sofa to catch 20 minutes with the band’s commanding officer, Scott Ian. But…

The eponymous antihero of the Troma Entertainment joint Mr. Bricks: A Heavy Metal Murder Musical awakens from a night of hot carnal action to find his comely young sweetheart missing and a bullet lodged in his forehead. His reaction is a bit unorthodox: He breaks into song…and then starts cracking skulls with his kiln-fired namesake,…

** Writer, director and videographer Jeff Speed discusses the finer aspects of Municipal Waste’s “Fatal Feast” video and his affinity for ’80s sci-horror. How did you find the location? It’s pretty unique to film a metal video on the set of an old television series, especially one as cult as Firefly. Jeff Speed: I’ve actually…

Trevor de Brauw is a busy man. Besides his gig as a member of the mighty Pelican, the guitarist is also a publicist, prolific tweeter (@trevordebrauw) and party to several side projects (Chord, Let’s Pet, Bee Control). And, lest we forget to mention, he’s also got the “solo artist” thing going, as evidenced by the…

How would you separate [id] from Eclipse as a musical statement? Cut from the same cloth or something else entirely?Marc Okubo: I feel that Eclipse is our strongest release to date. We have matured with our songwriting and our performing. Periphery’s Misha Mansoor helped write and produce the album and I couldn’t be more excited…

Rot of any description isn’t the sort of thing that comes to mind when you think of Cancun. But even dudes living life by the beach, surrounded by fluorescent coloured drinks, bronzed locals and tourist eye candy aren’t immune from becoming obsessed with death metal and grindcore, dedicating one’s life to the noise and kicking…

Sure, Meshuggah releasing its seventh full-length on Tuesday was an event in and of itself. But what has gotten somewhat lost amidst the furor is that, for the quintet, this year marks a quarter century of polyrhythms, polymeters and, of course, polytours. To celebrate both achievements, we enlisted the help of some of the many…

As above, so below. Through his work with EyeHateGod, Outlaw Order, Arson Anthem, and The Guilt of… Decibel readers have long known Mike IX Williams as one of extreme music’s most distinctive, subversive and iconoclastic voices. Less attention has been paid, however, to Williams’ similarly idiosyncratic and visionary literary output, including his excellent collection of…

When ENSLAVED‘s Grutle Kjellsson and Cato Bekkevold go fishing they don’t fuck around. It’s really not like going down the pond chasing blue gills or Tommy cats; in Norway, even the trout are built super-hench. You might have caught some footage of them catching alligator gar in Texas a few years ago, but you’ll definitely…

It’s only fitting that on the eve of Metal Blade—the home of metal legends like Cannibal Corpse, King Diamond and Gwar—stepping out of its comfort zone to release the new Astra record, we’ll now go consecutive weeks mentioning Mahavishnu Orchestra. You see, to celebrate the upcoming release of the San Diego quintet’s sophomore effort (which…

** Fear Factory’s The Industrialist is out June 5, 2012 on Candlelight Records. We spoke to frontman Burton C. Bell about the record’s storyline. “I am a being… My existence has value… My purpose right now is to relate my witness, without any bitterness or partiality, the motives of my present reality.” We can only…

http://vimeo.com/37255948 Andrew Bonazelli is one of those shitheads who in school would do his homework on Friday so he had his weekend free while you were happy to sweat it out until 1st Period Monday. But that sort of ridiculous work ethic is how the man can be Decibel‘s managing editor, blog guru, social media…

There could have been no better producer for We Are Knuckle Dragger‘s debut album than Steve Albini

On Friday we brought you the minutes from an interview we were lucky enough to conduct with Triptykon frontman, Celtic Frost/HellHammer mainman Tom G. Warrior while he was on tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy. Warrior seemed pretty ecstatic just to have the opportunity to play music, and that’s something that…

Tom G. Warrior was opting out of the press circuit while haring through the UK on last week’s Defenders of the Faith tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy, but the Triptykon mainman granted the Deciblog an audience. Of all the times we’ve been in the company of Warrior since the Celtic…

If you read Shane Mehling’s review in our March issue, you’ll know that we—along with most of the interwebs—hold Pallbearer’s recent debut in rather high regard. While it’s way too early to say whether Sorrow and Extinction will go on to be talked about in the same breath as a Calculating Infinity or Remission, the…

Dr. Vivek Venkatesh’s office at Concordia University in Montreal is almost certainly unique in the world of academia. There probably aren’t many professors out there, for instance, who mix and match All Pigs Must Die prints and Latin salsa posters or keep vinyl collections as close at hand as research materials. And if any Decibel…

In terms of being recognized as a major force in the world of extreme music, Finland can often be overshadowed by its Scandanavian neighbors Norway and Sweden. Although the Land of a Thousand Lakes has its fair share of metal stalwarts both past and present—Sentenced, Children of Bodom and Finntroll, to name a few—it’s fair…

“When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” Nietzsche promised in Beyond Good and Evil, but Mr. Philosophize with a Hammer never did recommend any appropriate mood music for making goo-goo eyes at the infernal regions. Which is why it is such a great thing for we lovers of darkness…

OK, so there is a cynical body of thought that might consider black metal as a live performance artform and argue that the genre is best served by careful cellaring. Like it’s a take-home experience, one to be kept in the studio/bedroom, only ever to be enjoyed on record. Of course when we say “enjoyed”…

To celebrate Tuesday’s release of Utilitarian (the fourteenth (!) Napalm Death full-length), we asked longtime bassist Shane Embury to a pick a non-ND record that related in some way to each of the fourteen full-length ND records (including a covers album) that he’s played on over the last 24+ years. Last week, Shane’s entries took…

Recently Anthropic Records — purveyors of excellence and, in their own apt formulation, “heart-breaking, chest-crushing noise and doomed psychic soundscapes” — unleashed Anthrosphere III, yet another fantastic (and free!) compilation of the latest gnashing and wailing coming out of the Philadelphia metal underground. To mark the occasion we invited Anthropic proprietress Shannon Marie to share…

Before getting round to talking about the imminent reissue of Napalm Death’s now 25-year-old [iconic/seminal/etc.] debut Scum, the Deciblog is engaging Mick Harris in a discussion about his favorite fish—the barbel. You see, Napalm Death’s drummer from the years between ’85 and ’91 has long since put his sticks down, and—in his words—has dropped out…

In the preface to his interview with Napalm Death frontman Barney Greenway in Issue #89, J. Bennett wrote that “[t]here are few bands you can rely upon to deliver the fucking goods on their 14th album. Or to even make it that far in the first place. The number of grind outfits that have accomplished…

Click Here To Watch The Video Who came up with this? Was it a band effort or was there one lone genius amongst you? I don’t remember how it came up, all I know is that it’s been an idea for as long as we’ve been a band. How did you pick the videos? Were…

Each Gehenna album had different sonic attributes. From the eerie black metal of The First Spell through the death metal disposition of Murder and then back to brutal black hybrid on WW. Do you recall wanting each album to be singular, regardless of genre?Dolgar: We always try not to make the same album twice of…

Decibel‘s NYC bureau had a tough decision to make last Thursday. Should we head on up to the west side for a classy evening amongst Lincoln Center elite to catch a special performance by This Will Destroy You? Or leave Manhattan (perish the thought!) for a night of PBRs amongst our metal brethren to get…

For a dude who has built a revered legacy on the back of playing big biker doom riffs and wailing with Saint Vitus, Scott “Wino” Weinrich’s recent output has been super-mellow. There was 2010 acoustic solo record, Adrift, then a Latitudes session recorded in London with German singer/songwriter Conny Ochs, before the pair got together…