Though he does actually listen to the new Scour and Defeated Sanity albums. We think. 

A precision bomb of extraterrestrial proportions.

On this week’s Demo:listen, we revel in the riffs of Santiago’s Violent Scum.

Horseback‘s new LP Dead Ringers is out next month, but we’ve got a brand new track from it, “Lion Killer” for you right now. 

If we could all stop worrying about World Downfall for a goddamn minute, we’d realize Terrorizer‘s output after it was really pretty awesome.

The Unknown
The assessment favorable
dB rating: 8/10

It’s weird to think of any Slayer album as “transitional,” as they all share the same basic sonic sensibilities (namely, the sound of your skin being flayed from your quaking bones), but if there’s any record that marks a clear turning point in their career, it’s 1988’s South of Heaven.

On July 15 New York City band Psalm Zero will release their second full-length Stranger to Violence on Profound Lore Records. If you’re not familiar already, we’re great admirers of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Charlie Looker’s project, which beautifully blends the martial, industrial tones of Godflesh, the post-punk melancholy of Depeche Mode, and the rainy-day doom ‘n’ gloom of Katatonia.

Most Decibel readers likely know 6623 Press founder D.X. Ferris as one of the most incisive, dogged metal journalists around — the man who literally wrote the (absolutely indispensable) books on both Reign in Blood and Slayer’s “Jeff and Dave” years.  

British black metal blasphemers Cradle of Filth recently joined forces with Cacophonous Records to release the original recording of Dusk…and Her Embrace (called The Original Sin, out July 8th). To celebrate, Decibel revisits the first collaboration between the band and label: 1994’s sanguinary trailblazer The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.