First thing’s first, bands: if you’re going to get back together and don’t want to have photos from your embarassing past dug up, the very least you could do is provide us hacks with at least one (1) recent picture. Otherwise, well…here’s a look at what New York’s prog-thrash conceptualists Toxik used to look like…

Astrohenge was yet another band I stumbled across last year while perusing what was once a plethora of music blogs. As our Q&A with their fellow countrymen Dragged Into Sunlight indicated, Astrohenge is part of a diverse crop of UK bands “doing their own thing.” Although it’s been over a year since the London quartet’s…

For your streaming pleasure today we have the international debut of Paganland. The Ukranian band will release their first album Wind Of Freedom via Svarga Music on Marth 4. The band was formed in 1997 and released a few demos and splits but didn’t get to a proper record until now. Check out the eponymous…

If Decibel was worth its weight in ink, paper, and stress—mostly on the shoulders of our beloved EIC Mr. Mudrian—then we’d have some staffers who were there when Thergothon dropped its only long-player Stream from the Heavens like a Cthulhu tentacle on wee Italy-based indie Avantgarde Music. We do have staffers who were there, bought…

A few months back (I’m too lazy to look up the actual issue), I did a Black Label Debutante Ball on Elektrohasch Schallplatten, a German psych/Stoner label. Since then, they’ve been sending me awesome stuff via priority mail from Europe, and since they’re putting all that money into postage, I figured I’d return the favor…

The most aptly titled release of the year so far is almost certainly Howling’s A Beast Conceived — a hellacious sonic amalgamation of Heartwork, Ride the Lightning, and Tom G. Warrior-style sinister riffage fronted by the restless extreme music paragon Vanessa Nocera and brimming with lyrical homages to cult horror movie classics like The Beast…

Plugging a radio show in this day and age seems kinda quaint when you consider that music can be streamed all over the Internet but, with upcoming guest DJs Bill Taylor from Immolation and Esa Linden of Demigod, Metalenema is a special case. Their show’s remit—death and black metal, both classic and contemporary, with “some…

February 19th, 2013 is no different from February 18th, 1995. Sure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 4,003.33—its highest ever up to that point—and the NHL was in a lock-out shortened season. But black metal? Not much has changed. There have been off-shoot genres, more commercialization, DIY “bands” bunkered in limited edition cassette releases,…

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… If any subcultural phenomenon has ever truly earned the designation “stranger than fiction,” surely it must be the late eighties/early nineties youth crew/krishnacore straight edge scene. Yet, outside of a couple oral…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…