Interviews

Mike Scheidt, the Black Mastermind behind YOB, gives mass and weight to sound waves. And I’m pretty sure that defies one or two of the laws of physics, which means that he’s doing something supernatural. Which makes sense, because I’ve always considered YOB to be a sort of spiritual, transcendental experience. Not that I believe…

One of the cool things about Italian facerippers the Secret is that they take the humanity and worthiness out of hardcore and replace it with a dark, doomy, occultist vibe. Like, their whole deal is really dark, shredding hardcore, but there’s that malevolence there that’s a product of jamming Darkthrone up loud and a total…

Spare a thought for all those hardy underground searchlights who’d been holding their breath waiting for Oakland, CA power-trio Brainoil to follow up the riff ‘n’ tumble of 2003’s superlative self-titled debut. They will have been dead and buried now, asphyxiated, gone purple in the cheek from the eight-year stretch when bassist/vocalist Greg Wilkinson, guitarist/vocalist…

What’s it take to walk the working class death metal mile? Immolation stalwarts Ross Dolan and Robert Vigna school Scion A/V on death metal’s majesty and decay in this exclusive follow-up to the Decibel premiere of the slick video for “A Glorious Epoch” last month. As a bonus, here is high quality footage of Immolation…

Denial Fiend could be considered an all-star death metal crew but that’s kinda disengenious when it’s more a case of seasoned offenders stitched together by previous convictions and a jonesing for horror movies and punk. Since forming in 2006, Denial Fiend have been part of the new old-school death metal revival much in the same…

Until interviewing Bay Area old-school nasties Vastum for dB #82, I thought metal’s attitude to man’s carnal desires extended just to the more is more philosophy of take it when you can get it, and like Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach was probably right when he said that sex addiction is one of the healthier addictions,…

For years and years, we’ve heard bands and musicians who’ve had their work slighted and slammed by the press defensively proclaim that so-and-so journalist should have his/her opinion taken with a grain of salt, or discounted entirely, because they’re not musicians themselves. That metal’s press corps should actually shut their pie-holes because they’re able to…

So after managing to squeeze out only one record since reuniting nine years ago — the massively underrated Broken Valley — Life of Agony is apparently disbanding, sadly, and Keith Caputo has seized upon the opportunity of the band’s farewell tour to brashly announce her most controversial transition since briefly morphing into Whitfield Crane during…

Avowed rock atavists Gentlemans Pistols aren’t the sort of chaps to limit their appreciation of British pop culture to the pressed rat and warthog of ’60s/’70s classic rock. Catching up with vocalist/guitarist James Atkinson and drummer Stuart Dobbins after they’ve had a post-festival night battering the ale seemed as good a time as any to…

A few months back I spoke to Josh Homme about the reissue of Queens of the Stone Age’s eponymous debut album, and, like all alpha-dudes from bands of a certain size, phone time was strictly rationed to 30 minutes and no longer. But he’s nothing if not a rule-breaker and talked way longer. That first…

Back in the early 2000’s, my old band (who had a song called “Twitter” almost a decade before, well… you know) was signed to a Swedish label called Lunasound Recordings. The label was run by a gentleman with obviously impeccable tastes named Stuart Ness and his wife Chelsea Krook (an ex-member of the “apocalyptic folk”…

How important was it to separate your solo project, Thomas Giles, from Between The Buried And Me?Tommy Rogers: I think it was very important to separate the two. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people do solo projects that sound like their main band. I wanted to step outside of what I normally…

Y’know, despite being erudite professionals here at the Deciblog every now and then there’s an interview that spirals out of control and onto matters unrelated to, well, anything that it was supposed to relate to like that phonecall to Steve Asheim about a Deicide tour turns into a fullblown dialogue concerning the merits of cheeseburgers…

In the hours before an Eyehategod show, finding people lucid enough to begin a sentence let alone finish it is a challenge that someone oughta reward with medals cast in gold, silver and bronze. It’s an Olympian feat to just negotiate past the bodies laying strewn across the dressing room, and this is on the…

It’s a well-established fact that we like to drink beer and listen to metal. But second only to that pursuit is being able to talk brewskis with other like-minded beer geeks. So upon hearing that Tombs bassist Carson Daniel James is an equally devout barley-pop imbiber, we called him to talk (and drink) beer. Decibel…

What with Neurot reissuing Neurosis’ Sovereign EP, we thought it was probably no better time to celebrate how great they are. Currently working on the follow-up to 2007’s Given to the Rising, work that we most definitely won’t see ’til 2012, Scott Kelly’s is one of the bona-fide ayatollahs of giganto-riff. Like, him and Steve…

If you say you don’t know who Derek Riggs is, we can probably forgive you. But if you say you don’t know his work, you are clearly looking for a fight. The creator of arguably the most iconic mascot in all of music, Riggs’s art made him at one point practically the 7th member of…

Were he somehow able to observe the aftermath of his own recent passing from on high amidst the ether, it is easy to imagine Seth Putnam’s glee at the kids clambering atop digital platforms to ostentatiously proclaim righteous ambivalence over his death or the Village Voice’s lengthy tut-tutting. You do not do or say the…

You picked Roy Z as a producer for Kairos. Why Roy?Andreas Kisser: Roy was a great choice for this album. He’s a very experienced produced, working with the best singers in metal. He’s a great guitar player. He’s a great musician, too. He more or less knows how to play his instruments. And he’s active…

Following hot on the heels of the induction of No More Color into the hallowed Hall of Fame, Decibel contributor Etan Rosenbloom probes deeper into the (surprisingly supple) risen corpse of Coroner in this interview with Ron Royce and Marky Edelmann for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. I could try to find…

OK, what is the central idea to Amplicon? I read bits of what sounded to be a neat concept.Runhild Gammelsaeter: In a bout of delusions of grandeur, I decided to make a soundtrack of the cycle of the universe, from its birth by the big bang to its collapse, the big crunch, or whatever the…

Most people are picking up on Lifelover at Konkurs due to the Prophecy re-issue. Is that a good starting point for people interested in Lifelover?Kim Carlsson: Definitely, even though any of our albums would be a good starting-point Konkurs involves many of our trademark elements, so if it’s followed by our current release Sjukdom the…

It’s been almost a year since thinking man’s metalheads Isis hung up the reverb pedals, but they have returned, in vinyl form, to celebrate their legacy. Five live albums are set to be released by the band, the first one coming at you this Tuesday, May 31st (pre-order here). And they have sent us video,…

At what point to you feel a song has been completed? I typically ask this question of bands who write long songs to see if there’s a threshold and if there is when to they feel it’s been reached.James Kelly: For us, it is when it has climaxed in terms of the energy we intend…

Ominous Doctrines of the Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm is your fifth record. How do you feel it compares, artistically speaking, to its predecessors?Dagon: Artistically and technically, it’s the best album Inquisition has done in every sense. The performance is tight, the production is clear and very organic, the riffs are rich and more on the attack…

What’s the difference between American Heritage (MySpace link) and American “Fucking” Heritage?Scott Shellhamer: One has more fucking than the other. Adamn Norden: Regular American Heritage will act like it wants to get to know you first. Your primary influences—if we’re using food ingredient methodology to determine most to least—are “masturbatory fantasies of middle-aged bureaucrats”. Can…

It’s no secret Decibel and Napalm Death aren’t just Facebook friends but bestest pals. We’re the beat to their blast, so to speak. Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s favorite band is, well, Napalm Death. The Brummies (that’d be folk from Birmingham, England) were well chronicled in Mudrian’s Choosing Death book, were cover stars for dB #53,…

Do you see much similarity—musically, thematically—between Belus and new album Fallen?Varg Vikernes: Yes I do. Musically because it’s still Burzum (…) and thematically because to some degree Fallen deals with the same subject, only it’s not in a mythological context, and on a personal level. I know you didn’t see Belus as black metal. But…

Photo by Sera Timms Some crazy fool over at Demolish Fanzine had enough formidable fuzz on his beanbag to turn the tables on Decibel‘s very own J. Bennett and make our guy the subject of an interview. Naturally, Brother Bennett delivered intelligent and inimitable answers that—to borrow a phrase he coined—made milk shoot from our…

So, you haven’t picked up our cover story [db #77] on the inimitable Death. Yeah, I know. Reading’s hard, but somebody’s got to do it. No, you say? OK, then. You’re missing out on the most exhaustive Death story ever told. Not by journalists (well, there’s one interviewed for the story), but by the ex-members…