Just a quick listen to Cynic would reveal that Paul Masvidal and company probably have pretty eclectic musical tastes. Given that the band dropped its third full-length, Kindly Bent To Free Us, last month, the guitarist/vocalist was kind enough to pass along a medley of recent (and fairly nostalgic) listens. As he explains, “Playlists have…

Towers come from Portland, Oregon, and have this awesome sound that’s a strange brew concocted of low-end bass hum and psych-stoner doom, post-punk and krautrock. There is a lot more in there, too. Putatively, it’s metal all right, but with a center so dark and heavy it can pull in all manner of outré influences…

Savage Messiah frontman Dave Silver knows his thrash ABCs. Formerly of Brit thrashers Headless Cross, Silver’s built a veritable thrash empire around Savage Messiah, for which there are four neck-snapping full-lengths, the newest of which is the upcoming The Fateful Dark. Actually, on new album, The Fateful Dark, Silver and his fellow Messiahs embark on…

What up, beak freakz?  Notice the “z”? Yeah, I’m going nu-metal; a-parrot-ly it’s making a comeback. Nah, juzt kidding. Did you know there were two bandz named Portal? I did, and I’m going to review one of them. Oof. What time is it? Huh? PORTAL — no not that one, the one from Sweden — release…

Prepare yourselves, mortal ones, for a mighty slab of awesome to descend upon your unworthy skull.  First arising from the industrial haze of the mid-90s, France’s Dirge has shape-shifted through the past 16 years and (now) six albums to crush souls with music entirely in concert with their name. In two weeks, Dirge will see…

Last week’s Q&A with Exit-13 vocalist Bill Yurkiewicz got us thinking about Belgian beers. Actually, we’re frequently thinking about Belgian beers, but this is a good time of year for drinking the the big, high-ABV ones—and there are plenty of them out there. It also made us consider the “classics” of the beer world, iconic…

Late-breaking news for the just-around-the-corner 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour. We’ve added another regional opener that should get you lucky SoCal metalheads good and stoked. L.A.’s mighty deathgrind institution Nausea will be added to the Santa Ana show on Tuesday, March 25, at the Observatory. Gotta appreciate how we’re sticking to the theme of bands who take…

California’s Exmortus blew my ears and balls back with their debut full length, In Hatred`s Flame back in 2008. The quartet seemed destined to take their prodigious talents, love of aggressive 80s-inspired metal, interest in neo-classical shred and proclivity for combining all three of those elements to the top of the then-bubbling thrash revival. Then,…

Melt-Banana‘s last record Fetch earned a place in our top 10 of 2013. Since Kevin Stewart-Panko already asked the now duo of vocalist Yasuko “Yako” Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata nearly every question imaginable back in October (most importantly about their Geocities website), we weren’t left with much ground that hadn’t already been covered. Onuki…

Bob Pantella spends part of his year behind the kit for the Hall Of Fame certified band Monster Magnet. When he’s not playing with them and several other bands he leads RiotGod. We’re streaming their new track “Driven Rise” below. The band’s third album Driven●Rise will be released March 18th on Metalville Records/E1 and is…