Decibrity Playlist: Drugs of Faith
December 5, 2013 Zach Smith
We presume they had some turkey and stuffing, but Drugs of Faith also celebrated Thanksgiving week by releasing the four-track EP Architectural Failures. The effort–the trio’s first since 2011’s Corroded full-length–is hopefully just a taste of what’s to come as the Virginians are set to drop their next LP in 2014. In the meantime, vocalist/guitarist…
STREAMING: Grand Magus “Triumph and Power”
December 5, 2013 Chris Dick
Grand Magus grand magister JB Christoffersson said to us recently: “Well, in heavy metal the drums are extremely important, maybe more important than many people realize. There has been a tendency in “modern” metal to focus too much on a fat guitar sound, resulting in really weak sounding or fake sounding drums. In my experience,…
KILLING IS MY BUSINESS: Licensing Specialists Jeff Gray & Sam James Velde
December 5, 2013 Etan Rosenbloom
So, maybe your metal band ain’t destined for a multi-million dollar CGI family film. There are still opportunities to license your music for movies, TV and other audiovisual media. If you’re serious about it, you’ll need to cozy up to music supervisors (they’re paid to find the perfect music for a project) and licensing specialists (who pitch music…
Low Fidelty: F*%ck The Halls
December 4, 2013 Justin Norton
This summer, Neill Jameson wrote an article for us that more or less took over part of the Internet for a day and even got some love from the late Roger Ebert’s website. Neill — also the creator of one of our 100 best black metal records (for Krieg’s The Black House) has an open…
Sucker For Punishment: Wait, the year’s not over yet?
December 4, 2013 Adrien Begrand
If you haven’t noticed yet, the beginning of December has given way to the annual deluge of year-end lists, publication after publication, writer after writer offering their choices of the best albums of 2013. It’s completely overdone, but still something I relish to this day, as that perpetual desire to discover great new music never…
American Sharks Tour Diary: The Final Chapter
December 3, 2013 Shawn Macomber
Austin, Texas purveyors of kinetic riffage and uber-burly grooves American Sharks dropped a sick self-titled debut back in September — check out a stream here — and just finished up a tour with Clutch and The Sword. Bassist/vocalist Mike Hardin checks in with this report… Fri. Nov. 1st Memphis, TN We arrive at Minglewood Hall…
STREAMING: Immortal Bird’s “Akrasia”
December 3, 2013 Jeff Treppel
As an avowed rodent partisan, I must confess to a certain dislike of our fine feathered friends – or, as I like to call them, sky vermin. And one that lives forever? Parrots already live for over a century; that’s quite long enough already (sorry, Waldo). Despite their questionable name, though, Immortal Bird – the…
INTERVIEW: Craven Idol’s S. Vrath on taking the extremely extreme road towards eschaton
December 2, 2013 Jonathan Horsley
A few months ago we had the pleasure of hosting the online premiere of Craven Idol’s awesome debut LP, Towards Eschaton. And it really was a pleasure, ‘cos this slab of apocalyptica is a total 100 per cent doozy. Released through Dark Descent in October, Towards Eschaton is a record that marks the Londoners’ evolution…
Cyber Monday Deal: Get a FREE issue of Decibel!
December 2, 2013 Albert Mudrian
If you’re reading this, you’re a metal fan, which means you rarely leave the house except to terrify neighbors and co-workers. Hence, this special Cyber Monday promotion is for you, fellow misanthropic recluse. Today only, if you sign up for a 12-month or 24-month subscription to Decibel, you’ll receive one extra issue for FREE. That’s right, one extra installment of North…
KILLING IS MY BUSINESS: Pixar Exec Tom MacDougall Talks A/V Licensing
December 2, 2013 Decibel Magazine
by Etan Rosenbloom 500 words an issue is barely enough to spell my name, let alone introduce an entire sector of the music industry in the monthly Killing Is My Business column we introduced in Decibel issue 110. That’s why we’ll be posting occasional interviews and supplementary materials right here on the Deciblog. The idea is to explain…