News

June’s Decibel features our third Agoraphobic Nosebleed flexi, “The Honkey Reduction EP, ” a ripping re-recording of four tracks from their first two full-lengths.

Need a fix of heavy/proto metal before our Pentagram rehearsal flexi drops in the July issue?

Four tapes essential for enduring the impending sunny weather.

Master mechanic/goddess of metal Mary Bielich of Derketa (day job: Honda automotive technician) has plenty to say about ripping things up on stage, on tour and under the hood. Take notes.

Helmed by a fellow who goes by the name of Outre-Tombe, Akitsa is one of many bands to help create the fertile Québécois black metal underground that you see before you today. It just so happens Akitsa has a new full-length album Grands Tyrans coming out – its fifth, to be exact – this coming June 2 on New York’s great avant-garde label Hospital Productions.

…according to Variety. It appears they failed to take our casting advice from TEN YEARS AGO. The issue’s sold out, so for your viewing pleasure, we resurrect “Cast Iron: Decibel thinks these Hollywood stars are ready for their grim and frostbitten close-up.” 

“I fucking hate metal band performance videos,” says Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh (also of Vallenfyre), “so when I got told that we needed to do one I was obviously annoyed but then came the idea to do a performance video of utter misery. The slowest song we have ever recorded.

On its crazy diverse leveler of a debut EP West of Everything Lies Death Pittsburgh-based Taphos Nomos — a band which counts a mystery Decibel writer amongst its pseudonymous ranks — summons forth a mesmerizing trio of blackened death doom epics full of pummels, shreds and unforeseeable left turns.

It’s true: Shellac covers by Thou and Great Falls are precisely as fucking awesome as you’d imagine — if, you know, you actually had to use your imagination and not just click “play” below. 

Full disclosure: Roadrunner Records funded my trip to Stockholm to hear Heritage and interview frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt and team for Decibel. Fuller disclosure: I’ve been a long-time Opeth fan—OK, let’s settle for fanatic, to be frank. 

Make what you want about Arch Enemy’s decisions since outing ex-Furbowl, ex-Carnage, ex-Hearse vocalist Johan Liiva, but they’ve never given up. 

Doom icons Pentagram are approaching their 45th year (brief hiatuses and name changes notwithstanding). 

Dark, heavy and full of heart, Missouri’s Sisters Of… set their sights on the May 12 release of their first full-length record, The Serpent, The Angel, The Adversary.  Their blend of bestial rage and contemplative yearning might just tear you open and fill you up.  Come inside and find out.

There are not many perfect albums in heavy metal history, but Slayer’s Reign in Blood is one of them. Personally, in this writer’s opinion, when it comes to the greatest metal album of all time, it’s a toss-up between Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Paranoid. We’re dealing with an untouchable album here. Well, near untouchable, as Decibel’s Andrew Bonazelli had the brilliant idea for a new way for us to argue about our favorite metal records: why not rank the songs on each Decibel Hall of Fame inductee? Sure, why not?

We’ve spilled plenty of ink about the new Tribulation record such that any further gushing about The Children of the Night here probably wouldn’t add anything new to the discourse.  Chris Dick talked to the band for a feature in this month’s issue (more of which you can read about here) and the quartet scored the lead review and best new noise in our preceding tome.  If you’ve perused either piece, however, or had the pleasure to listen to the group’s excellent third full-length, you might be interested in hearing about ten albums that helped form the entity known as Tribulation.

Roughly two years go, I received a Facebook friend request from someone named Jonathan Dick in Birmingham, Alabama. I was late to join social media so the idea of befriending someone I didn’t know stuck me as curious. Jonathan was different: I found his profile picture – a snapshot of an intimate tea party with his daughter — utterly endearing. 

April showers bring May, uh, flaming horses and capsizing Moby-Dicks.

As I once wrote in an old issue of Decibel, give one positive review of a Fairyland album, and you’re branded for life. 

New Noisem.  Now.  What more do you need to know?  NEW NOISEM NOW!

There are not many perfect albums in heavy metal history, but Slayer’s Reign in Blood is one of them. In this writer’s opinion, when it comes to the greatest metal album of all time, it’s a toss-up between Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Paranoid. We’re dealing with an untouchable album here. Well, near untouchable, as Decibel’s Andrew Bonazelli had the brilliant/insane idea for a new way for us to argue about our favorite metal records: why not rank the songs on each Decibel Hall of Fame inductee? Sure, why not?

Good. Goddamn.

Detroit noise punkers The Armed completely fucking kill it on the first single from the upcoming Kurt Ballou-helmed Untitled LP. (June 23, No Rest Until Ruin) Check out the fire festooned video for “Forever Scum” after the jump and then go pick up a bunch of free shit over at Bandcamp. 

In this month’s issue, we talked to Black Rainbows’ guitarist/vocalist Gabriele Fiori about the Italian band’s new album, Hawkdope—a gloriously psychedelic romp that pays homage to legends of the riff like Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Hawkwind and Monster Magnet. With that in mind, we asked our man to single out the best song from each of the aforementioned bands…no easy task considering their extensive, decades-spanning catalogs.

Delaware is known as the First State, the Diamond State, or the Blue Hen State. Not sure what any of those things mean–except for First State–in the grand context of things, but it should now be known as the Death Metal State. And upstart death metallers Scorched are leading the charge.

OK, so, like, there’s some stuff coming out and, like, I’m going to talk about it here. So, like, I guess we should just talk about it.

OK, Seattle, the “Missing Link” tour featuring Clutch, Mastodon and Big Business rolls into town Sunday for a big hairy rock show at the Showbox SoDo. It’s already sold out, but there’s a free event happening down the street at Schooner Exact Brewing Co. before the show that anyone can attend.

Australian doom duo Lucifer’s Fall remind us to hitch our collective misery and universal disappointment to a good beat and some killer licks with their (triply) self-titled debut, out soon on Hammerheart Records.

We’re starting a new feature here at the Deciblog. Since we’ve inducted so many classic albums in the course of our decade-plus existence we’re going to do our best to rank songs on these classic albums. First up is Celtic Frost’s classic mini LP Morbid Tales, which was released in 1984 and inducted in 2007. 

Last we checked wasn’t Brutal Truth/SOD/Nuclear Assault impresario and longtime Decibel friend Danny Lilker retiring? Well, that didn’t take too long. The guy just put out another grindcore record!

When you attend Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands, you’re going to have to make some difficult choices, because with four separate venues going at the same time, you are not going to see all bands. Especially if you’re like me, and are such a total fanboy when it comes to a handful of acts that you insist on seeing their complete set. 

“‘Monotony Fields’, is a song which reflects the album and its atmosphere the most for us. Slow trip into the mind of desperation,” says Shape of Despair in a band-released statement.

Click to read more and stream the premier of “Monotony Fields.”