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Song Premiere: Priapus Admits That “Everything I Want to do is Illegal”

November 24, 2015

You have about 90 seconds to spare, give or take? Because that is all this North Carolina three-piece needs to hyperblast their way into your defenseless heart. 

Sami Tenetz (Thy Serpent; KVLT) interviewed

November 23, 2015

A black metal addendum to our Finnish Metal Issue, starring Sami Tenetz of Thy Serpent.

Encrotchment Week 10, Housecore Edition, with Eddie Gobbo

November 19, 2015

Your Heavy Metal Guide to the NF FN’ L. 

THE NEW ETHIC REVISITED: MEET STAGHORN, BLACKENED POST-ROCK WARRIORS FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS

November 18, 2015

For a bunch of ferns, Staghorn sure knows how to rock the fuck out…

My Favorite Flexi: Torche “Pow Wow” & “80’s Prom Song” (dB015)

November 12, 2015

To commemorate five years of Decibel Flexis we’ve asked Decibel writers to write a review-length tribute to their favorite disc. Today’s installment features two Torche bangers, “Pow Wow” and “80’s Prom Song.”

ENCROTCHMENT WEEK 9 WITH EDDIE GOBBO

November 12, 2015

The metalhead’s weekly guide to the NFL

Get Your Ivories Tickled with the Keyboard Shredding Math-Prog of Spacebag

November 11, 2015

Ex-Rorschach and Asva guys show off their crazy 88.

STREAMING: Grave Pleasures “Futureshock”

November 10, 2015

“My lyrics deal with us being a post-apocalyptic species, aware of our inevitable demise, quite possibly by our own hands.” 

Sacha Dunable & David Timnick (Intronaut) interviewed

November 9, 2015

** Decibel catches Intronaut wizards Sacha Dunable and David Timnick between mind-blowing jam sessions and trips to Jack in the Box. We kid about the Jack in the Box thing. Anyway, the California group are just days away from issuing their new album, The Direction of Last Things, on the Century Media label. And having spent large sums of time with Intronaut’s fifth full-length, we’re of the opinion that it’s yet again a mind-blower. From the innovative brutality of “Fast Worms” to the slick heavy prog of “The Pleasant Surprise”, The Direction of Last Things is an album that’s immediately incredible, but unfolds untold levels of awesome the more you’re with it.

Welcome Home (“The Distorted Island”): Exclusive Premiere of Feature-Length Doc On Heavy Metal Community in Puerto Rico!

November 6, 2015

The bustling, thriving heavy metal scene in Puerto Rico may have thus far escaped the attention of metaldom writ large, but that is all about to change courtesy The Distorted Island, a fascinating, edifying, perception-altering, due-giving feature length documentary that takes viewers on an inspiring tour of a extremely extreme, beautiful microcosm of creation and trve fandom.

And we’re premiering the entire goddamn thing right here, right now:

Encrotchment Week 9 With Eddie Gobbo

November 5, 2015

A Metalhead’s Guide to the NFL

New Cuts From A Mortal Scepter

November 4, 2015

Ah, to be young “Infernal Satanic Sinners” playing your “Execution Symphony” as you cry out for “Violent Revenge” and “Death to the False Ones”!

Publicist UK

November 2, 2015

Forgive Yourself

Done

dB Rating: 8/10

Introducing: Luminous Vault

October 30, 2015

Metal writers have so little time to devote to new music that you think you can win us over by playing up your lack of image, persona, willingness to be antisocial as a way of looking “dangerous” and “mysterious”? Come on.

But then you get one recording in your inbox that compels you to try it out, and lo and behold, it winds up being one of the biggest revelations of the year.

TRANSLATOR OF AURAL DARKNESS: THE DAVID KARON STORY (FEATURING KIRK HAMMETT & SCREAMING GHOULS)

October 30, 2015

The average day at the office for David Karon in the laboratories of KHDK Electronics is, it would seem, not so average.

“Banshees and ghouls and demons,” he tells Decibel. “We pretty much knew from the start of this project we’d be rolling in that realm of evil.”

The effort in question is the Ghoul Screamer, a supercharged, lithe, insanely versatile, more sinister take on the classic tube screamer pedal painstakingly developed and perfected over a period of three years with company cofounder/Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett — and set to be unleashed, appropriately, on Halloween.  

ENCROTCHMENT WEEK 7, HALLOWEEN EDITION with EDDIE GOBBO

October 29, 2015

A Metalhead’s SPOOKTACULAR Guide to the NFL.

Here’s What Megadeth Sounds Like on Violin

October 28, 2015

As I told the tipster who led me to Doralice’s Rusted Pieces — a violin/acoustic guitar duet covering five tracks off Megadeth’s Rust in Peace — this kind of shit is a metal website’s bread and butter. 

Horrendous

October 26, 2015

Anareta

Everyone can hear them scream: 

Horrendous bring their otherworldly death metal to a new star system

dB Rating: 10/10

Top 5 Atmospheric Death Metal Songs

October 23, 2015

** Nostalgic types need nourishment. Our days can’t always be filled with blastbeats, dirty riffs, and socio-politico lyrics. We need to feel as if we’re on another planet, in another world, some place not where we are now. To start the quest to spaces unknown, Decibel has compiled five killer atmospheric death metal songs to take you right into the weekend. Now, there’s a fine line between atmospheric death and atmospheric doom/death (or death/doom), but we’re not terribly interested in delineating such a line today. We’re more interesting in the journey itself, the way these songs transport back to times that probably never happened, but they’re as real as today.

ENCROTCHMENT WEEK 7 WITH EDDIE GOBBO

October 22, 2015

A metalhead’s guide to the NFL

Through a Speaker Rumbly: Spells to Ward Off Social Intercourse

October 21, 2015

Relax, reader. Breathe deeply. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Smell the corpses. Now blow out the ritual candles.

SOUNDTRACK TO AN ECLIPSE: EXCLUSIVE SUN WORSHIP STREAM & INTERVIEW

October 21, 2015

This morning we’re streaming Elder Giants, the paradoxically ultra-dark debut full-length from German black metallers Sun Worship — a roiling, nasty, multi-layered beast which, already much-beloved in Europe, at long last receives its North American release next week.

With the Dead Video Premiere: “Crown of Burning Stars”

October 14, 2015

Is there a cooler “supergroup” to emerge this year than With the Dead? We’ll make it easy for you: fuck no.

CHAIN GANG GRAVE OFFERS A CAUSTIC LESSON WITH “WHO TAUGHT YOU”

October 13, 2015

Bury Them and Keep Quiet doesn’t result in a pretty situation. 

VHÖL

October 12, 2015

Deeper Than Sky

Even deeper than pie in the sky

dB Rating: 8/10

STREAMING: Revocation “Summon the Spawn”

October 12, 2015

“‘Summon The Spawn’ was one of the first songs that we ever recorded and it ended up being the opening track on our debut demo of the same name,” says Revocation axe-slayer Dave Davidson. “It’s a fast, thrashy song with some weird twists and turns to throw the listener off guard. This one was a bit of a fan favorite in our local scene back in the day and I still hear people call out for us play it on recent tours that we’ve done.”

STREAMING: Nyx “Beyond”

October 9, 2015

** German black metallers Nyx were formed by Blitz and Vinterbarn. The group’s new album, Home, is an expression of what black metal emotional qualities are rather than its direct spiritual linkage to the Infernal One. With that, Nyx embark on strange and wonderful and perverse journeys on Home. Certainly, Nyx are for fans of Myrkur (not because they’re female either), and first-album Lantlos, with maybe some early Bethlehem and demo-era Empyrium. We interview Blitz and Vinterbarn in preparation for the premiere of Nyx’s “Beyond”!

Stream This: Birds in Row/WAITC Split 10″

October 8, 2015

Sit back and enjoy a gorgeous, noisy hardcore pummelling from two bands.

Neill Jameson Says Goodbye to Nunslaughter’s Jim Konya

October 8, 2015

This week, the metal community lost one of the oldest and most beloved pieces of its backbone, Jim “Sadist” Konya.