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)…

Houston may well be home to one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball history this year, so we threw them a bone in the form of the first gig of the 2013 Decibel Magazine Tour. You know the score: Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death and Immolation bring the death and grind thunder, Cretin, Magrudergrind…

As I continue on with part two of the three-part old-school hardcore Thursday feature with the dudes from Sweden’s AC 4 (check out part one here), this week I make the not-so-daring proclamation that hardcore is synonymous with Minor Threat. That’s about all I have to say, or should have to say. With that, we…

When Call of the Void is not on the road (most recently in support of recently released Dragged Down A Dead End Path), guitarist Patrick Alberts returns to work and, as he describes it, deals with PTSD (“Post Tour Super Depression”). Having never been on tour, I can’t identify other than to say that his…

Jaz Coleman is known for tackling big subjects in interviews: climate change; the degradation of the food supply; technological singularity and the Renaissance. Spending some time with him in person — not in a Conga line of press interviews — is a much different proposition, even if he still hints at his scholarly pursuits. Decibel…

5. Saint Vitus. Crosses galore on the second Vitus logo. Three of them. For the Trinity perhaps. The original SVS logo only had one. Three’s a crowd, we say. But this logo is boss. Looks a bit cheap and overdone at first blush, but the barbed letters? Could be heavy metal cliché. Nope. Crown of…

There’s no introductory preamble necessary for this clip from Maryland Deathfest: The Movie III. You all know that Maryland Deathfest is an obligatory pilgrimage for any self-respecting blastbeat-worshipping Decibangers. And Godflesh are, well Godflesh: The marriage of riff to machine, the sound of urban alienation, of a dead city collapsing in on itself, et cetera….

It’s been shitty and raining in Los Angeles the past few days. Obviously you don’t care, since we have beautiful weather 99% of the time, but these are perfect conditions for Set and Setting. Not because Set and Setting are shitty; they aren’t. If you’re going to listen to heavy post-rock like this, it’s best…

We got semi-retired punk/metal atavist Stevo do Caixão, currently of Tombstones and formerly of the legendary Impetigo, as well as Axeslasher guitarist/vocalist Professor Pizza, and metal scribe Andy O’Connor — sadly, that’s his real name — currently of Pitchfork, Metalsucks, and Noisey, among other publications, to break down the upcoming Maryland Deathfest, debunk old myths…

For a long while, Shining (SWE) and Shining (NOR) were swappable entities to the uneducated metal hoi polloi. Thankfully, they’re hardly interchangeable sonically (and visually), as one’s firmly razor-deep in DBM and the other is applying jazz, rock, and black into something rather undefinable—they call it ‘blackjazz’—but altogether Norwegian. Guess which one we have on…