Benefit shows always have a weird vibe but death metal benefit shows are especially weird. Maybe it’s because the genre is ordinarily used as our portal to antisocial emotional territories, and when there is the attendant poignancy of a good cause it makes everyone feel as if they’ve been given a different script for the…

The last time we featured American heavy metal phenoms Iced Earth on the Deciblog, WordPress wasn’t even cool yet. In fact, evidence of said coverage is lost in some Access database that’s sitting in some office on a tape back-up. So, yeah, we’ve been delinquent in our patriotic (hey, July 4th is two days away)…

Howdy folks… Waldo here, bringing you all the stuff that’s good to hate. Ladies and “djentlemen,” we’re going to tear this one apart. PERIPHERY release the very hateable Periphery II, as if one of these wasn’t bad enough. Apparently this is some form of music called “djent,” whatever that means, and boy howdy does it…

Nothing unites the metal community quite like a healthy hit of righteous rage.  War, complacency, ignorance, religion, technology, the opposite sex, government subsidies – if something pisses you off, someone’s encoding your disgust into guitar riff magic. Any good New Ager Rager knows that nature is very, um, fertile soil for dark musical themes.  As…

Orange County’s Seven Sisters of Sleep aren’t big on going out of their way to get in people’s faces. Then again, I’m speaking from a shaking babies and kissing hands perspective. I’ve never seen them live and judging by the rusty heroin needle guitar tone and sociopathic throat abuse that drives their hammering of metallic…

Last week, we brought you Part 1 of our interview with The Day After The Sabbath‘s proprietor Rich. This week not only includes the rest of our interview, but a mini-playlist of five tracks hand-picked by the man himself. And while you’re at it, be sure to check out the latest TDATS compilation (#71), his…

Decibel published its first ever “Women In Metal,” issue this month, which offers an exhaustive look at the enormous contributions women have made to metal music (and the metal industry). If for some inexplicable reason you don’t subscribe then you can snag a copy from our store . If you are wise, you might have…

We can count the number of times we’ve applied some Deci-clusivity to an unsigned act on the Deciblog. Of course, yammerers and Internet lonely-hearts will cry that we should only spotlight the label-less, the bands fighting for a slice of a slice of a depreciated penny. The problem is this: turn on the demo-powered floodgates…

June 15, Neumos, Seattle, WA. We received the message through the usual channels, but this time the priority was urgent. “We’re coming to Seattle,” said Witte, “and I need to go to Brouwer’s.” As the local beer ambassador to the extremely extreme set, we felt compelled to honor this request, so upon Municipal Waste’s arrival…

Welcome to the first installment of VERSUS, an online segment where we’ll stream exclusive tracks from new records that have piqued our interest, head to head, and let you, dear reader, referee the fight in the comments section. To sweeten the deal, the commenter who makes the most persuasive case for his or her preferred…