Black Sabbath

Ten years after his untimely death, the late era Ronnie James Dio albums are finally getting a bit of respect — and the deluxe reissue treatment. Here’s your roadmap.

Italy-based throwback doom masters conjure up fuzzed-out terrors on new track, “Aeons Has Fallen,” from full-length, Astrological Warfare.

Hearts like wheels and doomy sleaze rock: re-evaluating Black Sabbath‘s 1986 album Seventh Star.

To celebrate the release of Helms Alee‘s new album, Noctiluca, we caught up with drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis and guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen to find out what five heavy albums changed their lives.

Green Dragon are your new favorite stoner metal band. Learn about what makes them tick and riff.

Want to be a part of Black Sabbath history? Details within.

After 14 years, the Ozzman finally cometh to the cover of Decibel! We have a limited number of advance copies of the October issue of Decibel available now. Have at it!

Dark fiction author Chad Lutzke presents a playlist of extremely heavy horror fiction-inspired tracks.

Yazan experiments with heavier music on new song “The Star.”

Happy Valentine’s Day from Decibel. We like you like you, so we made you a playlist of metal love songs — light on the power ballads.

Stream Dirty Grave‘s cover of “Evil (Is Going On)” by blues legend Willie Dixon now.

Stream a remastered version of “Dead Eyes of London” now!

This coming Friday, a new film adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic and massive horror novel ‘IT’ will be released in American cinemas. Will it be good? King does not have the best history with cinema. The beloved miniseries based upon the novel, starring Tim Curry as the shapeshifting clown monster Pennywise, does not hold up,…

Embark on “The 420th Crusade” with Cannabis Corpse before reading bassist/vocalist LandPhil’s ten favorite albums to smoke pot to.

What are the Top 100 metal tours of all time? Find out in Decibel‘s new limited edition special issue of 100% previously-unprinted content. 

Tony Reed of Mos Generator counts down his favorite hard rock/heavy metal albums.

The Black Sabbath classic gets a much noisier cover as part of Uniform‘s newest release. 

If something smelled like “Sweet Beef” in Philly, it was “Drive Thru Metal” concept band Mac Sabbath.

In honor of Black Sabbath‘s final trek around the globe, we are running our 2014 print feature on the story behind the cover art of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which was illustrated four decades ago by a rising Los Angeles artist named Drew Struzan. 

It’s that time of year again! Decibel has been banging our heads overtime to concoct our annual special issue with 100 percent never-before-seen content. Slip on your old studded vest and behold The Top 100 Old-School Metal Albums of All Time!

Just in time for fall:  doom over the world… now available in ones and zeros. 

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.

In this month’s issue, we talked to Black Rainbows’ guitarist/vocalist Gabriele Fiori about the Italian band’s new album, Hawkdope—a gloriously psychedelic romp that pays homage to legends of the riff like Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Hawkwind and Monster Magnet. With that in mind, we asked our man to single out the best song from each of the aforementioned bands…no easy task considering their extensive, decades-spanning catalogs.

Any astute follower of metal in the past five years has likely noticed a huge uptick in the number of bands with a proto-70s sound and occult themes: The Devil’s Blood, Sabbath Assembly, Blood Ceremony and The Oath. A few of these bands have been on Decibel’s cover: In Solitude and Ghost B.C. (twice). While…

In 1985, a kid by the name of Tommy Memzercardo released “The Innocent, The Forsaken, The Guilty”, an off-kilter fantasy/epic metal EP featuring Bill Ward on drums. Back then, the former Black Sabbath drummer couldn’t be credited for legal reasons, while Memzercardo was a mystery all of his own, calling himself The Mezmerist and playing…

“I could go on all day about Pink Floyd record covers,” says Baroness frontman/guitarist John Dyer Baizley. “I could go on all day about Neurosis record covers or Converge—Jacob Bannon is another great album cover artist.” He really could. But we’re mean and we need five to compile an easily digestible list of cover art,…

Calling all drum nerds, fans of Sabbath, Dio, Vanilla Fudge and umm, Rod Stewart (hey, who doesn’t have room in their heart for Rod?) in the Philadelphia and Allentown area; courtesy of the Sellersville Theater we have THREE pairs of tickets for Drum Wars Starring Vinny & Carmine Appice on Thursday June 27th at 8pm….

Guys in metal bands grow old. We know that. It’s natural and can’t be helped. Sometimes they continue to put out good music, sometimes they lose the fire that drove them back in the day. That’s fine. We aren’t here to talk about the music. We are here to take a look at some of…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… In her exquisitely rendered, frequently disquieting, always edifying new book House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films well-respected critic, festival programmer and King Diamond…

Quick test: go check your music shelf or your iTunes. How many metal albums have some kind of mention of the Devil? A third? How did that symbolism get there in the first place? Why is it so powerful, and so enduring? In the second installment of blues into metal, we’re honored to have bluesman…