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We’re not gonna hurt ourselves patting our own backs, and we’re not even going to TRY to give ourselves a reacharound (the top of the masthead is separated by a couple states anyway); we’re just going to offer our sincerest thanks to all the bands, promoters, venues, managers, crew and fans who made the fourth…

SWARÞ’s origins and members are unknown. The group (could be quartet or a solo outfit), however, have managed to capture the imagination of black metallers everywhere over the course of three stridently evil demos. The first issue of SWARÞ’s demos, called Omines Pestilentiae, were issued last year as a double LP. Now, the CD version is on the black horizon. To celebrate the release of Omines Pestilentiae on CD, Decibel has teamed up with SWARÞ (no, we don’t know WHO they are) to premiere the entire Omines Pestilentiae in its entirety. The abyss is waiting…

Follow the leap into the abyss to stream Omines Pestilentiae:
 

Comprised of members from Aosoth, Antaeus, and Temple of Baal, France’s The Order of Apollyon aren’t the joking type. You won’t find jokes about gurgling menstrual blood-both for supper or day trips to the epicurean gynaecologist—that’s saved for the group’s gore-grind project, cutely named Genital Grinder. Instead, The Order of Apollyon are solely focused on flat-black darkness and the evil that swirls menacingly within.

Click below to view their blasphemous video:

They turned — and decapitated — heads opening the 2014 Decibel Tour, they “defiled” the Flexi Series, and their debut was our ninth favorite record of 2013. Now the teenage thrashers of Noisem have graduated to Decibel‘s cover, and they’ve revved up a worthy successor in Blossoming Decay. We chronicle the Baltimore quintet’s fast ascent…

Metal is falling deeper and deeper into a retro-obsessed morass. As such, folks will forever debate both sides of the ‘should they or shouldn’t they be digging out old treasures/does the old school crowd care about the new school stuff/does the new school crowd care about the old school stuff/should the band in question have broken up years ago’ arguments. Tonight, and this tour as a whole, is a solid indication that everyone on all sides of all arguments is both right and wrong. The Dark Roots of Thrash tour demonstrates that the entire span of a given band’s career means different things to different groups of people and everyone is valid in expressing their love of whatever era of a band they happen to love.

Read the rest of the review (and retro commentary) after the jump.

Green Hell. Septic Death. Green Death? Yes, that’s the moniker for a Des Moines thrash band looking to restore Iowa’s reputation in the extreme metal world after decades of Slipknot. We actually picked up on Green Death in our print edition, with an effusive review that said: “this Des Moines outfit plays a classy brand…

We’re one week removed from the terrible van crash that took the lives of three members of occult metal band Khaotika and USBM outfit Wormreich. Khaotika frontwoman Lariyah Hayes asked us to share the following tribute video for drummer Nick Crisostomo, who died in the accident. Yesterday would have been his 26th birthday. Be careful out…

Back on September 8, 2013 Satyricon staged a special show at the Oslo Opera House in Oslo, Norway, in which the black metal veterans performed alongside the Norwegian National Opera Chorus. The end result was exactly what anyone would expect, the band’s distinct music given more drama and gravitas thanks to the haunting vocals by the 60-member choir. The concert was filmed and recorded, and on May 1 Napalm Records will be releasing Live at the Opera as a special DVD/CD package. It’s a spellbinding performance – check out the performance of “Die By My Hand” after the jump – and we recently caught up with drummer Frost to talk about this release, and what’s next for Satyricon.

Read the interview and check out the video after the jump. 

Decibel sits down with Shining firebrand Niklas Kvarforth for a quick Q&A before premiering Shining’s new album, IX – Everyone, Everything, Everywhere, Ends, in its entirety. Stare into the abyss, please. You’re known to court controversy. Is controversy part of the overall plan?Niklas Kvarforth: I guess I have been accused of courting some kind of…

Whether he’s teaching punk rock history at Tufts, lovingly teasing out the deets of the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, or weaving an equal parts elegant and gritty tale of New Hampshire have-nots attempting to transcend circumstance in his lovely, affecting Swing State, Michael T. Fournier brings the heavy to his work.  The rising novelist/critic took the hardcore…

  We’re all familiar with math rock and math metal, but how much rock and metal has actually been written about math? For all your number crunching fun, we’d like to turn your direction towards To Deny Everything That’s Mundane, a split release set to be imminently dropped like a weighty textbook of epic proportions…

For a band that doesn’t interview (with anyone!), Ukraine’s Drudkh have a lot to say. Well, musically that is. Over the course of the group’s arboreal career, the Ukrainians have inspired and informed with their atmospheric and reflective black. So, it’s with great honor that we are able to work with Drudkh (and their label,…

If you’re a regular Decibel reader, your ears probably perk up upon hearing the name “Deathwish”, thanks to a certain record label of the same name that consistently puts out quality extreme metal and hardcore. I’m going to have to ask you to just put aside those thoughts about Deafheaven and Code Orange for the…

Agnostic Front has provided their New York brand of hardcore beatdown to generations of listeners. Incredibly, they are still at it it today more than three decades after their formation. Their new album The American Dream Died shows that they haven’t lost their edge even if a few members are a little longer in the…

Tragedy jolted the metal world yesterday morning when a 15-passenger van transporting members of Moribund Records artists Wormreich veered offroad on I-85 in Georgia and crashed into a tree, killing three and hospitalizing eight. The USBM artists were on tour with Khaotika and Kult of Azazel when the driver allegedly fell asleep early Monday morning,…

Oh, man. Brooklyn’s UnWed get shit right, dropping a heartbeat-quickening melodic post-hardcore bomb dead center on the very best of swaggering, churning 90s rock. Hum meets Killing Joke meets Slint featuring members of Hot Water Music, Small Brown Bike, and Gay for Johnny Depp — how the fuck can you beat that? We’ve got the exclusive stream of…

Some shitty news may have flown under the radar last Friday. Swedish heavy metal up-and-comers In Solitude called it a career. The quartet were clearly Decibel favorites. 2011’s The World. The Flesh. The Devil and 2013’s Sister both enjoyed top-five finishes in our annual Top 40 Albums of the Year list, and we were eagerly awaiting…

dB HoF 123

To Mega Therion

Label: Noise
Release date: October 27, 1985

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To Mega Therion is Greek for “The Great Beast.” It’s a pseudonym for the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation and a nickname for every metal musician’s favorite mystic, Aleister Crowley. And it’s the very fitting title for Celtic Frost’s first real full-length album.

When Celtic Frost finished their breakthrough Morbid Tales EP in 1984, co-founders Tom Gabriel Fischer and Martin Ain immediately considered bigger aspirations. Morbid Tales let them distance themselves from Hellhammer—then very much a sore spot for the pair—and showed that two outcasts from farm villages could deliver on their promise to become a much better band. But what if Celtic Frost could take it a step further and write an album that was not only competitive with the best thrash metal coming from the United States, but also radically reimagined what was possible with heavy music? What if they incorporated classical music and vocals and wrote songs that deserved to be paired with art by famed Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger? What if their music could finally match their vision? It seemed impossible, but Fischer and Ain had already done so much with little more than their dreams.

Lancer’s self-titled debut garnered rave reviews when it crushed the competition in 2013. To years later, the Arvika-based quintet have returned with Second Storm. While most bands are jacking old-school heavy metal-isms without much sense of purpose, the Swedes in Lancer have made it point to pull the finer points of traditional German heavy metal–Helloween,…

Like the Grinch, Gremlins or Krampus, they love ruining Christmas. First it was January 2012’s “Make a Joyful Noise.” Then it was January 2013’s “Merry Chrysmeth.” But the third time is truly the harm (even if it’s out of season), as Agoraphobic Nosebleed return to the Decibel Flexi Series with “The Honkey Reduction EP” in…

In 2009, we heard Tribulation’s savage call, inviting them to take part in our New Wave of Old-School Death Metal piece. Turns out the Swedes, who were also paying bills in Enforcer, didn’t have the time to commit right away. Needless to say, long after the story was submitted Adam Zaars, guitarist, felt compelled to…

Monday is MLB Opening Day, and your friends at Decibel are looking forward to capping off our teams’ inevitable afternoon losses with something actually awesome:  Live Nation and Yahoo! are teaming up to broadcast a live stream of At the Gates’ headlining set from the Chicago stop of the 2015 Decibel Tour. Stay up late with the…

So rarely do we get music videos that successfully provide visuals that equal the grandeur of extreme metal, but it’s slowly starting to happen, and the new video for Liturgy’s “Quetzalcoatl”, from the excellent new album The Ark Work, is a stunner. Created by Japanese “anonymous contemporary art concept” Aujik, the clip takes a simple…

Fifteen North American dates, three weeks, one goal: utter decimation. The 2015 Decibel Magazine Tour launches today! Featuring At the Gates, Converge, Pallbearer and Vallenfyre (and assorted special regional openers), our fourth tour is by far the most representative of the magazine’s demented diversity. Multiple shows are sold out or near sold-out, so pick up…

Long before guitarist Ryan Butler joined Landmine Marathon he played with the Phoenix hardcore band Unruh. During their five-year run (from 1995 to 2000) they released multiple demos, two albums and toured widely. In addition to seeding Landmine they birthed a rogue’s gallery of Arizona hardcore bands. Unruh recently celebrated their 20-year anniversary with a…

Who can ever forget that moment in Penelope Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, when then-W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes did an interview while drunkenly floating in a swimming pool, presumably guzzling vodka while his embarrassed mother sat nearby? Although that interview was staged, it remains one of the defining portraits…

Last we heard from Old Man Gloom, vocalist/guitarist Aaron Turner and drummer Santos Montano were telling our very own KSP about their Ape of God shenanigans. Not only has everyone except the small corner of the world called the internet forgiven and forgotten, but the quartet thankfully has managed to keep its sense of humor…

Boy, it’s easy to get lost in music videos these days. In the latest black-and-white video for Lay Siege’s “Hollow Hands” the English sludge/hardcore hybrid certainly does their best headbanging. But the camera keeps panning to a guy who looks like a community college English professor who is very pissed off at the book he’s…

We’re not going to waste a lot of time on the intro here — better you just get on down there, press play, and check this musical/visual nuttiness from Dead in the Manger and David Hall out for yourself. More information on the band’s upcoming LP Cessation can be found here. “This is probably the…

Post-holiday doldrums. The coldest time of the year, especially with climate change. It’s time for your favorite band to get the 30-year-old van out of the garage and challenge ice storms and snowpiles to play for your benefit. West Virginia’s favorite sons Karma To Burn will be one of the brave soliders taking to the…