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…

We love AmRep and we’re pretty sure a lot of you do too. If so, there’s a good chance you’ll also dig The Color of Noise, a film about HAZE XXL (Tom Hazelmyer) and Amphetamine Reptile Records.

“It’s a testament to the boundless creativity of modern, progressive metal.” That’s what label Season Of Mist is saying about the sophomore album from tech death Quebecers (wrestling joke intended) Beyond Creation. Now, if you’re in the label business these days part of your job is saying good things about your roster so people will…

For some crazy reason the Canadian province of Alberta is on one hell of a roll when it comes to metal these days. The underground extreme side is thriving, yielding death metalers Revenge, primitive thrashers Blackrat, grind aces Wake, and old-school speed metal upstarts Gatekrashör. The Weir delivers first-rate noise, Chron Goblin excel at stoner…

Last week Philadelphia black metal stalwarts Krieg unleashed a disquieting beast of an album christened Transient. Now comes appropriately dark visual accompaniment in the form of the video for “Ruin Our Lives,” streaming below. Get into it.

A little over a year ago, we debuted a stream of Wrekmeister Harmonies’ You’ve Always Meant so Much to Me, a harrowing piece of modernist drone from mastermind JR Robinson (the Alan Moore-looking dude above). We dug it a lot,  so we are super psyched to let you know that he’s already recorded a follow-up,…

Check out our exclusive stream below of Toronto psych-metallers Das Rad cleverly embedding a subversive catchiness into the fuzzy, atmospheric doom of “Eye of Baal,” a track off the band’s upcoming debut full-length Radiation. And if you like the Hawkwind-meets-shoegaze-meets-Can vibe, there’s another preview track here.

As one of the greats of American black metal Xasthur left its mark on the indelible and the hard-won. Sadly, Xasthur, as of 2010, is no more but the legacy of main black Scott Conner carries on in not-so-new project, Nocturnal Poisoning. Certainly a sound to divide fans right down the middle of Xasthur’s “X”,…

What a bummer. Summer is officially over. It’s Monday. Our readers who aren’t chronic truants are back in school. Pretty much the only upside is that our managing editor’s beloved New York Jets started the season with a win, a nice start to their inevitable 8-8 finish. With that in mind, how about a little…

From a listener perspective, the most important department at any record label is the A&R department. They’re the folks that sift through demos and pitches from pushy managers and attorneys to decide which acts you can buy at your local Walmart (or wherever you pick up your Krieg records). And while the A&R capacity of…