We’ve pulled excerpts from some of our favorite interview subjects from the past calendar year, from old-school hardcore vets to legendary professional wrestlers. 

The metalhead’s guide to the NFL

The Color of Noise is an exhaustive and absolutely fascinating look at a label which is now synonymous with the genre, aesthetic and attitude. But it goes way beyond anecdotes about Helmet’s demo tape and the Dope, Guns, and Fucking in the Streets comps. 

Best Underground Metal Tapes of the Year, pt. I, featuring Jon Von Frost, Jake R. of Graceless Recordings, Jullian Rhea of Of Corpse & Cryptic Excision and much more!

Chris Dick’s five essential metal-on-metal covers, by At the Gates, Slayer, Sepultura, and more.

“This direction is Lower. It requires madness, by losing sanity key.”

Former Fangoria Editor in Chief/current Shock Till You Drop overlord and auteur Chris Alexander unleashes a completely remastered, expanded, vivified edition of his strange and beguiling way-the-fuck-down-the-rabbit-hole collection Music For Murder. 

Sera Timms of Ides Of Gemini talked to us about her path in an ancient art often derided as fortune telling and why there’s more to it than many expect.

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. 

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

Your Heavy Metal Guide to the NF FN’ L. 

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

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.”

The metalhead’s weekly guide to the NFL

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

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

** 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.

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:

A Metalhead’s Guide to the NFL

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

Forgive Yourself

Done

dB Rating: 8/10

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.

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.  

A Metalhead’s SPOOKTACULAR Guide to the NFL.

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. 

Anareta

Everyone can hear them scream: 

Horrendous bring their otherworldly death metal to a new star system

dB Rating: 10/10

** 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.

A metalhead’s guide to the NFL

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

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.