https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5no7Ym1JSA June 4th, 1996 was the day Metallica officially called it quits. While the short hair, Woodstock appearance and looming mainstream acceptance were warning signs, sitting at home and hearing “Ain’t My Bitch” for the first time solidified it: Metallica was no longer what they once were. As someone born in 1981, Metallica has sucked…

Becoming has a different feel compared to In the Absence of Light. What do you attribute that to?Ken Sorceron: Just looking back our catalog I would say each release has a different feel actually. I think we are proving to be one of those bands that recreates itself whenever and however we feel like it….

The end of the year is always a time for reflection. Decibel‘s infuriating “Best of 2011” issue is out, and between angry emails sent to the magazine’s editors excoriating them for “fucking it up once again,” thoughts inevitably turn toward recollections of the past. We’re now 20 years removed from “the year that punk broke”—that…

Ten years ago death metal pioneer Chuck Schuldiner lost his battle with cancer. As the fervor surrounding recent Death and Control Denied reissues clearly demonstrates, the man’s legacy has only continued to grow in the intervening years. There are several great remembrances floating around today — I particularly recommend NPR’s “Death is Never Finished” and…

Encoffination do well to sound like they’ve been in the ground long before recording. A two-piece, drummer/duo located on opposite sides of the coast in Atlanta and San Diego respectively, their interpretation of death metal is begrudging of tempo and chokes the throat and nostrils with a real cloying miasmatic aesthetic. Guitarist/vocalist Ghoat insists it’s…

Formed by Cretin/Citizen mastermind Matthew Widener, Liberteer is the grindcore equivalent to the folk-Viking metal movement in Europe. Right. He’s taking back what’s his/ours. Amidst uncompromising blasts of anarcho-crust-punk-pissedasfuck whatever (a Napalm Death-Discharge Molotov cocktail birthed in nastiest defiles of Every City, USA), Liberteer throws down like it’s 1776. By using/integrating military march music and…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This week, we are tackling a band that…

Just when Gojira were about to hunker down astride the globe and chew through metal’s leather hide, spitting out those esoteric yet moshable Meshuggah-esque rhythms, riffs and that crazy squawk guitar-noise their guitars make they just disappeared. It was a bit like the dinosaurs, posing the same question: how can something so gnarly and rad…

One of the great things about going on tour is meeting and seeing bands you’d never previously heard of and experiencing what those bands, usually local openers often still in their infancies, have to offer, then bringing home a pile of demos that have been distributed to the members of the travelling road show and…

Wow. Anyone who’s ever had a Satanic ritual knows that this is exactly what it’s like. A few dudes in a room full of spray paint fumes, with some instruments and a fire going. Depending on how drunk you get and what drugs you’re on, some pretty weird shit can go down. Lamentably, I’ve never…