Last year, Italian mostly-instrumental quartet Orbe created one of those albums that I listened to with half an ear and then didn’t get back to for a while.  Sometimes that’s an indicator of an album without a whole lot of immediacy, and sometimes it simply indicates the laziness of the audience.  In the case of…

For the love of speed trials: another dose of Dive Bombs and Dive Bars – heavy metal venue reviews from everywhere across this blasted country. In this installment, Jonah Livingston, Ramming Speed’s blastbeat stopwatch, takes us to Boston, for a review of a venue in his home town. Great Scott Venue Allston, MA I must…

…Gaza fucking rule. The Salt Lake City ragers have a new album, entitled No Absolutes in Human Suffering, in the starting blocks and set to explode all over your faces on July 31st, courtesy Black Market Activities. Having just returned home last week from the opening slot on the Corrosion of Conformity/Torche/Black Cobra tour, the…

We spend a lot of time talking to artists—whether in blog posts or in each month’s issue—and rightfully so. After all, they put their blood, sweat and tears into making the music that brings us together. We haven’t necessarily dedicated a lot of space to the people actually putting out those releases, however, so we…

The Dutch hardcore band Vitamin X has been at it for fifteen years. While that might not seem like a huge stretch compared to, say, Sick Of It All it’s still a nice run in a time of short lived bands and one-man projects started in your neighbor’s basement. Their fifth album About To Crack…

Grave. Twenty-four years young today. What keeps Swedish death metal bands alive—when by all rights they should be, uh, dead—for so long? Is it the bone-cold water? Dunno, but we’ve used the phrase before to cliched ends of sanity. Is it the clean crisp Scandinavian air? Yeah, used that cliche too. Maybe it’s the fetid…

We knew there would be some Decibel dissenters when we bagged on 10 albums that we wouldn’t be celebrating the 30th anniversary of in 2012.

No need to go overboard on the introduction here: Perdition of the Sublime, the upcoming full-length debut from German tech death metallers Sophicide, slays. Front to back, beginning to end, Perdition is a overflowing platter of nasty, bestial epics from which this morning we proudly serve an exclusive appetizer, “Within Darkness.” “‘Within Darkness’ is a…

Italian doom trio Ufomammut have released a video teaser for forthcoming album Opus Alter, out 18 September through Neurot. Opus Alter is the second half of Ufomammut’s ORO series. Its predecessor, Opus Primum, dropped in April, and was a lush dizzying headtrip of psychedelic guitars, space rock ambience all darkened by the unspoken threat of…

Lately, I’ve presented a few Borknagar gems that may make it seem like I’m partial to the Norwegian pagan/progressive/black-inspired metallers. I am, actually. OK, full disclosure: Borknagar’s been ruling my seven seas from the time when the then-unknown supergroup issued its debut album, Borknagar, and lead Borker Øystein G. Brun were penpals of sorts. The…