Melodeath icons At the Gates have just announced dates for their 2016 North American Tour, with support from Decapitated, the Haunted and Harms Way. This is obviously a must-see, and we’re offering an exclusive opportunity to win tickets now!

Instrumental blackened doom duo Canyon of the Skull are primed to drop their long overdue self-titled debut.

Progressive death metal supergroup Contrarian have no shortage of talented players — Nile drummer George Kollias and Mithras shredder Leon Macey among them — and those skills are well-applied in covering the legendary Death’s “Nothing Is Everything.”

** Nostalgic types need nourishment. Our days can’t always be filled with blastbeats, dirty riffs, and socio-politico lyrics. We need to feel as if we’re on another planet, in another world, some place not where we are now. To start the quest to spaces unknown, Decibel has compiled five killer atmospheric death metal songs to take you right into the weekend. Now, there’s a fine line between atmospheric death and atmospheric doom/death (or death/doom), but we’re not terribly interested in delineating such a line today. We’re more interesting in the journey itself, the way these songs transport back to times that probably never happened, but they’re as real as today.

This group is so super, every damn letter should be in caps.

Black metal and death metal wouldn’t be what they are today without legendary Swiss warriors Hellhammer, who would evolve into Celtic Frost. So, what better record to reference on a Decibel shirt than their iconic 1983 demo, Triumph of Death? 

A metalhead’s guide to the NFL

Stoner/sludge supergroup Curse of the North does Seattle proud.

Relax, reader. Breathe deeply. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Smell the corpses. Now blow out the ritual candles.

This morning we’re streaming Elder Giants, the paradoxically ultra-dark debut full-length from German black metallers Sun Worship — a roiling, nasty, multi-layered beast which, already much-beloved in Europe, at long last receives its North American release next week.