I’m going to give my editors the benefit of the doubt here and assume they meant Verify Your Awesome Taste. I mean, come on, everybody knows there’s no such thing as a shitty King Diamond record. Some might be less memorable than others based on your personal criteria and/or schlock tolerance, but I’ll be goddamned if King has ever had a “St. Anger” moment in the span of his career. 

A Umbra Omega
Space øddity
dB Rating: 8/10

“Once this song was written, we had a much more clear idea of where the album was headed.  A more grimy, riffy direction,” says Vattnet Viskar’s Nick Thornbury to Decibel.

**Matt Olivo is the founding guitarist of extreme metal trailblazers Repulsion, whoseHorrified LP ranks as Decibel’s #1 grindcore album of all time. Because we know that every reader ever plays guitar, we brought his print column to the Deciblog. In issue #113, Matt gave his feedback on Bill Kelliher’s Dissonant Aggressors by Lace, which “crush/destroy with impunity.” 

So, like, yeah, I missed some stuff, but release dates shift around and stuff.  The new Noisem, Blossoming Decay, is really good. I didn’t get a shot to tear apart the new Six Feet Under.

June’s Decibel features our third Agoraphobic Nosebleed flexi, “The Honkey Reduction EP, ” a ripping re-recording of four tracks from their first two full-lengths.

Need a fix of heavy/proto metal before our Pentagram rehearsal flexi drops in the July issue?

In Decibel‘s June issue cover story, we offered several examples of well loved and respected authors of extremity who dig the Noisem sound and overall ethic.  Blake Harrison of Pig Destroyer, Matt Harvey of Exhumed and Gruesome, and Bill Steer of Carcass all sounded off on their enjoyment of the, uh, blossoming band.

Carcass drummer Dan Wilding also had a few things to say about the band, and while we weren’t able to fit them into the article, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear about them anyway.  Here now, for your reading pleasure, are Mr. Wilding’s thoughts on Noisem from the time he spent touring alongside them.

When the promo for UK band William English’s debut full-length, Basic Human Error showed up in my inbox, I made a basic human error and judged a book by its cover. 

1980 could have been a disaster for Black Sabbath. They had recently parted ways with Ozzy Osbourne, their batshit crazy yet undeniably entertaining frontman, and drummer Bill Ward’s Hemingway-esque boozing was threatening his very ability to play. Instead of accepting their inevitable slide into obscurity, band masterminds Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler knuckled down and wrote eight songs that expressed a variety of new dynamics, textures, and emotions. Oh, and they recruited a little ol’ singer named Ronnie James motherfucking Dio, whose previous work with Elf and Rainbow had already cemented him as one of rock’s premier wailers.