Helmed by a fellow who goes by the name of Outre-Tombe, Akitsa is one of many bands to help create the fertile Québécois black metal underground that you see before you today. It just so happens Akitsa has a new full-length album Grands Tyrans coming out – its fifth, to be exact – this coming June 2 on New York’s great avant-garde label Hospital Productions.

While maybe not as majestic an image as Wolves in the Throne Room, Pitbulls in the Nursery certainly evokes some specific imagery as well. This French five piece may not be chowing down on babies, but their technical death metal attack is still pretty fierce in its own right. 

…according to Variety. It appears they failed to take our casting advice from TEN YEARS AGO. The issue’s sold out, so for your viewing pleasure, we resurrect “Cast Iron: Decibel thinks these Hollywood stars are ready for their grim and frostbitten close-up.” 

“I fucking hate metal band performance videos,” says Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh (also of Vallenfyre), “so when I got told that we needed to do one I was obviously annoyed but then came the idea to do a performance video of utter misery. The slowest song we have ever recorded.

On its crazy diverse leveler of a debut EP West of Everything Lies Death Pittsburgh-based Taphos Nomos — a band which counts a mystery Decibel writer amongst its pseudonymous ranks — summons forth a mesmerizing trio of blackened death doom epics full of pummels, shreds and unforeseeable left turns.

It’s true: Shellac covers by Thou and Great Falls are precisely as fucking awesome as you’d imagine — if, you know, you actually had to use your imagination and not just click “play” below. 

Full disclosure: Roadrunner Records funded my trip to Stockholm to hear Heritage and interview frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt and team for Decibel. Fuller disclosure: I’ve been a long-time Opeth fan—OK, let’s settle for fanatic, to be frank. 

All Fours
Screamo’s not a dirty word
dB Rating: 8/10

Make what you want about Arch Enemy’s decisions since outing ex-Furbowl, ex-Carnage, ex-Hearse vocalist Johan Liiva, but they’ve never given up. 

Doom icons Pentagram are approaching their 45th year (brief hiatuses and name changes notwithstanding).