Brooklyn organ twisters Batillus will be releasing their debut album Furnace on Seventh Rule April 19th and there’s no doubt that this fearsome slab of noise-doom will be a favorite around my office (the closet I type in). As the band recently headed to SXSW, they created 55 silk-screened tour copies for ultimate ruling and…

Just because some bands grind, contorting and torturing their fingers and ligaments for the sake of a tune that has an average running time of 45 seconds, it doesn’t mean they enjoy doing anything else that fast. Actually Finnish grinders Rotten Sound might try and practice the extreme opposite when it comes to daily life….

Legendary shredder Alex Skolnick may have reunited with his thrash metal brethren in Testament to form some damnation a few years back, but the guitarist’s longtime forward-thinking avant jazz group the Alex Skolnick Trio marches onward nonetheless. The band’s fourth album — the ebullient, beguiling, often-as-not mind-bending Veritas — drops today, and Skolnick was kind…

Every year — well, the last two for this writer — key parts of team Decibel travel from the City of Brotherly Death (i.e., Philadelphia) to Harm City (i.e., Baltimore) for the exalted festival extremely extreme music, Maryland Deathfest. Every year, Maryland Deathfest is an endurance test. How many kick-ass bands can one — or…

President Medvedev meets Deep Purple by tvnportal Well now here’s one we didn’t see coming. Apparently, it’s common knowledge that Russian president Dmitry Medvedev is a huge ‘banger who worships at the altar of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. And since the prepubescent age of 12, his numero uno band has been Deep Purple. Medvedev…

What’s the difference between American Heritage (MySpace link) and American “Fucking” Heritage?Scott Shellhamer: One has more fucking than the other. Adamn Norden: Regular American Heritage will act like it wants to get to know you first. Your primary influences—if we’re using food ingredient methodology to determine most to least—are “masturbatory fantasies of middle-aged bureaucrats”. Can…

Every other Friday, Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. What the squawk? It’s your old pal Waldo and I’m going to challenge myself. Remember Anthrax’s Attack of the Killer B’s? Well, this is my Attack of the Mediocre at Best…

You know that always-entertaining column at the front of the magazine called Cry Now, Cry Later? The one written by that incredibly tall, incredibly handsome genius who also wrote this month’s Pentagram cover story?  Fuuuuck, that dude rules so hard it’s amazing that he can even walk down the street without being mobbed by the…

As an ex-Hoosier, it’s always nice to highlight bands who are thriving in Indiana. The colossal crew Gates of Slumber are one of those bands dedicated to old school metal that is only concerned with riffs the size of whale bones. Below is “Coven of Cain,” the first eruption from forthcoming album The Wretch, slated…

Have we seen the last of Cro Cop in MMA? Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic is a living fighting legend, of that there is no doubt. But 99% of the clips from his fights on the countdown show to UFC 128 were from his days in Pride – not surprising, since he’s been everything but devastating…