Well, guys, it’s that time again, as I’m home from my whirlwind press tour, and boy are my wings tired. Here’s all the new releases that are fit (or not) to print.

“When you grow up Middle East, war is not another fantasy movie – but a reality,” says Hammercult to Decibel. “A reality driven by greed, economical, and political agendas, powered by a religious leaders to blind the masses. It doesn’t matter in which country you live in – your government wants you to fear, obey, follow blindly and swallow their lies – so that they could collect the Spoils Of War while you remain blind, deaf and dumb. Fight it back! Let’s take back our spoils of war. Our rights! Our freedom! This is the only war worth fighting for!”

Not every magazine can make a special request for an original song from a legendary band. But Decibel did just that, and gothic death/doom institution My Dying Bride graciously lent their considerable talents to our Flexi Series.

Since 1999, Miroslav “Curby” Urbanec has been putting on the Obscene Extreme Festival in Czech. Billed as a “freak friendly extreme music festival,” OE has faithfully and respectfully catered to the grind, crust, punk, hardcore and death metal hordes. We caught up with Curby to ask about trying to book obscenity and extremity for one part of the world from the other.

To celebrate/wallow in the misery of our exclusive, not-on-any-album My Dying Bride flexi track, as well as their new album Feel the Misery, we would like to revisit a Decibrity playlist from their despair-mongering vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe.

Quebec does brutal death metal right, so it’s no surprise that Unbreakable Hatred has already gotten props from members of Cryptopsy, Misery Index and Suffocation. 

Though Jonathan Dennison is best known for churning out righteous riffs and leveling breakdowns with a series of highly influential hardcore bands — The Promise, Another Victim, Path of Resistance, Unholy — the songwriter has taken a sharp turn into the macabre with Cadabra Records, the idiosyncratic label he founded to “exhume the works of influential horror genre icons in a spoken word style.” 

SoCal hardcore new jacks Forced Order are comprised of dudes from Twitching Tongues, Disgrace and Soul Search, but their aesthetic is strictly skull-cracking old-school, emulating the likes of Integrity and Ringworm.

All kinds of heavy shit happened in 1989. The Soviet Union crumbled; Salman Rushdie pissed off the Grand Iranian Poobah; the Exxon Valdez spilled black gold all over pristine Alaskan coastline; Pope John Paul II evacuated holy bowels in Africa; and Ron Hextall scored a goal in the NHL playoffs.

Four demos from four new bands to satisfy your itch for something strange.