Bay Area metal

Decibel looks back on Metallica‘s Kill ‘Em All, the album that helped birth thrash metal, launched a legendary career, on its 40th anniversary

Decibel tracked down Sean Rivera of Coffin Hunters to talk about the art of clean singing and how he learned to sing in his car. Check out the band’s The Fire Knight and Wake the Dead on Bandcamp.

Hear prog/trad metal collective Hammers of Misfortune inject some thrash into their brand new full-length, ‘Overtaker.’

Primal Rite just keeps cranking music out. “Sensory Link Through Pain” is part of a 7″ that will be released through Revelation Records. 

Warbringer ponder what happened to the souls of those destroyed by the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Are their souls trapped in their shadows forever? 

Serpent Crown‘s new album is a no frills thrash effort. Stream it here before it drops on Friday. 

Inanimate Existence deliver another taste of their upcoming album, Calling From a Dream. 

Hatchet unleashed its dark thrash smorgasbord Fear Beyond Lunacy on the day before Halloween last year, but these San Fran shredders aren’t done bringing the scary and fucking with your psyche quite yet as our exclusive premiere below of the band’s disquieting video for “Tearing Into Hell” makes abundantly clear. 

One of the best things about heavy metal is the sense of community it fosters: we’re all in this together because no one else fucking cares. So when an unexpected metalhead pops up in daily life, it’s always a cool feeling. Sometimes it’s that weird guy at work who never says a word to anyone but comes in one Friday wearing a Stargazer shirt…and sometimes it’s an MLB All-Star relief pitcher with more than 200 career strikeouts and a beard with its own zip code.

On April 21, 2015, the Bay Area metal scene—and the underground metal scene as a whole—lost a prolific and talented artist named Drew Cook, guitarist for Oakland-based bands Dimesland and Wild Hunt.