black metal

Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult is a 600-page book by UK author Dayal Patterson that delves deep into the history and development of black metal as an art form and a culture. It is released on November 13th, but is now available to pre-order from Amazon at a discounted price. Published via Feral House,…

If you spend enough time on the Internet you begin to think that most readers visit sites just to stir the proverbial shit pot. But occasionally the Web will serve up something so delightful and unexpected that it validates the whole premise of connecting the world and equipping the population with tools to allow them…

Dark Gods: Seven Billion Slaves — the first volume of VON‘s Dark Gods trilogy — is still a few weeks away from release, but for those wondering what the soundtrack is going to be like down in the sulphur mines, Decibel has an exclusive stream this morning of the seething, sinister track “Hands of Black…

A lot of people were digging Vex’s 2010 debut album, Thanatopsis but even though there was a buzz in the underground surrounding the Texan’s weird genre-splicing take on death metal Memorious still has the capacity to surprise. Looking at the bare facts is misleading; Horror Pain Gore Death Productions are writing the checks, Vex are…

Since the Decibel faithful are about to enter a restful trance of their own thanks to pounds of turkey, pumpkin pie and stuffing (or tofurkey for all our vegan readers) we thought it was the right time to introduce a new track from Bastard Sapling’s Dragged From Our Restless Trance. Streaming below is “Cold Winds…

Of all the bands to crawl back from the metal abyss here’s something we never expected. VON is releasing a new album at the end of October and dB got an exclusive stream of “Jesus Stain” from Satanic Blood. The band expects to play a limited run of shows. Take a listen below and then…

The concept of faith might be diametrically opposed to Marduk’s pitch-black worldview but the Swedish fundamentalists are worthy of yours. Of all the Second Wave black metal bands who still consider their iconoclastic craft a full-time concern, Marduk are the ones who always deliver. They could be accused of lacking a sense of adventure when…

To paraphrase the almighty David Lee Roth, “Summertime’s here, babe, need something to keep you cool. Better look out now, Decibel‘s got somethin’ for you.” Some frozen fuckin’ Dutch black metal on stick, that’s what we’ve got. Minus the stick. But full-on frostbitten, we swear. This premiere is guaranteed to drop the ambient temperature in…

Twelve albums in on a 22-year-old career and Swedish black metallers Marduk can still be relied upon 100 per cent to stick to the program and deliver a typically iconoclastic tour de force, touching upon all the genre essentials, anti-hymns to send toes curling in the Vatican and throughout Christendom. Serpent Sermon is pound for…

Black metal fans have never been slow in exhibiting extreme behaviors to broadcast their devotion to the genre’s unholy cause.

Today, in honor of the recent release of the sublimely malevolent Serpent Sermon, Decibel presents an in depth interview with Marduk founding guitarist Morgan Håkansson delving into his roots as a musician as well as the past, present, and future of his much-revered black metal war machine. Last month Christ Dick streamed “Souls for Belial.”…

Backstage at the Philadelphia stop of the inaugural Decibel Magazine Tour with Nergal from Behemoth. Plus Watain, The Devil’s Blood, In Solitude, some guy in the pit wearing a sombrero, etcetera… If you enjoy this, please check out previous Decibel video segments with Morbid Angel and Bonded by Blood.

Calling the split “amicable but lamentable to say the least,” Averse Sefira have sadly called it a day. The long-running Austin black metallers are survived by a stellar discography — see Advent Parallax or Tetragrammatical Astygmata for the incontrovertible evidence — as well as a very entertaining, sporadically updated blog that explored the band’s occult…

Watain’s arrival in the US might be bad news to priggish guardians of Christian morality but it’s good news for butchers who have ordinarily found animal’s blood harder to shift than the flesh. Watain require a lot of blood, and it doesn’t have to be fresh. It’s better if it isn’t. We can only presume…

Look, as regular viewers of Project Runway and The Rachel Zoe Project already well and truly understand, there is a fine line between embodying haute couture and becoming, in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, “a pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park.” In Varg Vikernes’ promo shoot for the upcoming (actually quite excellent!) third…

When ENSLAVED‘s Grutle Kjellsson and Cato Bekkevold go fishing they don’t fuck around. It’s really not like going down the pond chasing blue gills or Tommy cats; in Norway, even the trout are built super-hench. You might have caught some footage of them catching alligator gar in Texas a few years ago, but you’ll definitely…

OK, so there is a cynical body of thought that might consider black metal as a live performance artform and argue that the genre is best served by careful cellaring. Like it’s a take-home experience, one to be kept in the studio/bedroom, only ever to be enjoyed on record. Of course when we say “enjoyed”…

Ever wondered what a You Can’t Do That On Television skit full of jokes about black metal would look like? Well, so has alt-country crooner/Mandy Moore arm candy Ryan Adams, apparently: His new internet show “Night Sweats” marries over the top disheveled chic and a dash of self-deprecation with Fenriz jokes, corpsepaint, a synthpop loving…

Jeez, you do tend to reproach yourself when the wheels are set in motion and you’ve gone and booked Sunday evening interview time with a dude who shares his working hours between black metal kingpins Mayhem and the evocatively titled NunFuckRitual. Teloch came with the disclaimer that he has some pretty gritty stories to share….

It was the other week at Candlefest in London that reminded the Deciblog that Dave Hunt, vocalist and master of ceremonies for Birmingham/Orange County(!) duo Anaal Nathrakh, had dutifully filled an optional extra on an email interview. It was right around the time when Hunt was mooting the idea that the Deciblog had imbibed amphetamines—which…

Dragged into Sunlight are one of the most exciting things to happen to the UK underground metal scene since Anaal Nathrakh started experimenting with black metal’s forbidden fruits and spitting the pips through a particle accelerator. Mixing elements of doom, black and death metal with a horrible, uncodified ritualistic live/visual aesthetic, Dragged into Sunlight genuinely…

With the release of last year’s beyond bizarre Working Together for our Privacy Canadian black metal/noise duo Wold appeared to have misplaced their minds. What really should have been some sort of haunting, spectral noise record was in the cold light of day just one sustained fog of static that was the ultimate challenge for…

While it’s unhealthy to try drill into a rich seam of depression and self-loathing, mine it and milk it then wallow in it, sometimes those sort of dark moods are just unavoidable. For nigh-on six years, Gnaw Their Tongues, a solo project of Dutch polymath Mories, has deconstructed black metal, adding avant-industrial elements and haunting…

As an unabashed booster of the original version of Quietly, Undramatically, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical when I heard Woe mastermind Chris Grigg was embarking upon a full remix of the record. The end result, however, definitely won me over, bringing a new level of epic-ness and clarity out of the…

Spare a thought for Primordial frontman Alan ‘Nemtheanga’ Averill who, mid-scream at last week’s Bloodstock Festival, Derby, England was robbed of his powers. In comic book terms, this was like grounding Superman and surgically enhancing him the old lead contact lenses. But more remarkable is that he lost it in the first place, like, even…