Today’s the first day of four of 2013’s This is Hardcore Festival. Last week, we spoke to owner and operator, Joe “Hardcore” Mckay about his background, the fest’s humble early years and most everything else concerning the annual Philly throwdown. Read it here. This week, we tracked down members from a few of the 54…

As many notable websites have pointed out this week (Grantland and HitFix to name two), it’s been ten years since The O.C.–and one of the best first seasons of television ever made–premiered on August 5, 2003. While I would have loved to come up with a post that actually related to Sandy Cohen and company,…

Neill Jameson is best known to readers as Imperial, frontman of the excellent USBM band Krieg. Along with Blake Judd, Wrest and Thurston Moore (!) he was also part of the black metal project Twilight. I got to know Neill during an interview about three years ago and we’ve kept in touch since. As our…

The stars have aligned. The planets in strange conjunction. The winds of time are flowing in reverse. What would the odds be that Swedish death metallers Evocation—long ago resurrected by revenge—are releasing a covers EP, Excised and Anatomised, a mere month before reanimated death metal lords Carcass are set to release the follow-up to Swansong,…

Thrill Jockey are known mostly for their weird post-rock and experimental psych acts like Trans Am, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, and Tortoise. And that stuff is great, and we cover it, but it’s always a slightly uncomfortable match with the magazine. Recently, though, they’ve expanded into full-blown metal madness with Liturgy, the Body, and now…

We’ll make this into concise as possible, so as to allow readers to break on through to the other side that much quicker: A) False Prism and Cavern Apothecary — presented by Sadgiqacea and Hivelords respectively — are two of the best, most intriguing mindfuck metal releases of the year thus far. B) The bands…

Listen, we have seen Red Fang’s promo videos. We’ve witnessed their love of the grog. And at the risk of sounding guilty of cynical lifestyle profiling, surely asking Bryan Giles to compile a tour diary sounded overly optimistic. How reliable a witness could the Red Fang guitarist/vocalist be after being jammed on a van for…

** S. Craig Zahler was part of Decibel’s oral history on the illustrious rise and untimely demise of stateside metal bible, Metal Maniacs. Mr. Zahler interests, however, span more than writing reviews and making publicists fret. He’s a noted author, a script writer, and singer/drummer for doomy epic metal outfit Realmbuilder. The Metal Maniacs oral…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… The metal-loving elite purveyors of literary insanity over at Raw Dog Screaming Press are celebrating their tenth anniversary this weekend at DogCon 2 in Columbus, Ohio. Scheduled amongst many alluring events, readings,…

It’s been three years since we’ve heard a peep from death metal originals Malevolent Creation (with Invidious Dominion, in 2010). Decibel is lucky to get our hands and ears on a new track called “Face Your Fear.” Drummer Gus Rios tells us that it’s the first of many the band is writing. Stream “Face Your…