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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…

One album that has snuck in under everyone’s radar this fall has been Wild, the second album by French noise trio Pord. A rambunctious hybrid of modern noise, vintage AmRep skronk, and good, old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, it’s a clever, incessantly catchy record that’s sure to appeal to anyone who enjoys Decibel faves Wizard Rifle….

What’s a Musk Ox? Is it some sort of rare delicacy that your backwoods family member serves up at Thanksgiving Dinner? According to the sages at Wikipedia a musk ox is: an Arctic mammal of the family Bovidae, noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted during the seasonal rut by males,…

Back in October–on Halloween in fact–we streamed “The Casting” from V, the latest (and appropriately titled) effort from The Flight of Sleipnir. Even though the record isn’t out until the end of the month, we’re pleased to premiere the Colorado duo’s video for “Beacon in Black Horizon”, the eight minute-plus opus that closes out the…

Ever since TRVE Brewing opened in Denver in 2012, we’ve been fans. It’s hard not to like a drinking establishment dedicated to both craft beer and metal worship and TRVE has been all about both since day one. We’ve featured TRVE and owner Nick Nunns in our “Brewtal Truth” column in the past and we…

André Foisy plays guitar in Locrian and is a certified yoga instructor who teaches in Chicago, including a monthly candlelit yoga event set to dark ambient metal. You can find his yoga teaching schedule and more information about him on his website, Facebook page, and you can find past instructional videos on his YouTube channel….

Hello, and welcome to Week 1 of Decibel’s new NFL column, Encrotchment. A lot happened in Week 1, so let’s get started. Hype! 2: The Seattle Seahawks Well, the 2014 NFL season started with the Hawks going to a stadium filled with 12th men and women, getting rings, rolling Green Bay, and helping Soundgarden load their gear…

Super sick gore-obsessed metallers Ghoul just kicked off a tour with Skeletonwitch and Black Anvil in support of the band’s recent limited edition six-song release Hang Ten and the reissue of We Came For the Dead!!! out tomorrow. Or, as guitarist/vocalist Digestor prefers it… Once again GHOUL is coming to your rotten country to murder…

André Foisy plays guitar in Locrian and is a certified yoga instructor who teaches in Chicago, including a monthly candlelit yoga event set to dark ambient metal. You can find his yoga teaching schedule and more information about him on his website, Facebook page, and you can find past instructional videos on his YouTube channel….

Folk metal, fuck yeah. You know what I like about the video for Eluveitie’s “Call of the Mountain?” Lots of nature. You don’t need crappy CG for your video when you have the beautiful wintry landscapes of Switzerland. I guess there is also a dude with a harp and some woman standing on top of…

Overkill has been on an absolute tear since Ironbound (2010), and the unrelenting down n’ dirty thrash of the band’s latest excellent sneering scream from the gutter White Devil Armory

***Past Decibrity entries include: Child Bite Ruby the Hatchet Melechesh Karma to Burn Primordial Giant Squid (Part 1) (Part 2) Bastard Feast Encoffination Obituary Revocation Winterfylleth (Part 1) (Part 2) Hark Lazer/Wulf Young Widows (Part 1) (Part 2) Mutilation Rites Misery Index Goatwhore North Tombs Sadgiqacea The Atlas Moth Arch Enemy Archspire Cormorant Eyehategod (Part…

The late, great Richard Pryor was many things. With his game face on he was the funniest man on the planet; Jerry Seinfeld said he was the Picasso of comedy. Pryor was a proper maverick who offended a whole bunch of squares who needed offended, and fittingly turned up in the weirdest of places, perhaps…

At the Deciblog, we strive to find things for your listening pleasure. Occasionally, we can take it a step further like today with some excellent footage of the experimental black metal band Imperial Triumphant shot recently in their hometown of New York City (get past the slightly shaky start and things look better). Check out…