death

With all the music that comes across the Decibel desk in a month (hell, in a single week), I find it can help to stick labels on music that I want to be sure to spend time with.  Earlier this year, when Owl’s Into the Absolute EP came down, I tagged it with the descriptor “weird death metal”…

We love Nader Sadek up in the Decibel compound – and by compound I mean the various living rooms, man caves and bathrooms where all this shit gets put together on a monthly basis.  If you’re a subscriber, you are getting/have gotten the new 4-song EP, The Malefic (including current band members Flo Mounier on drums, Rune…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Today, Decibel celebrates the release of a new 7″ recording by English heavy-hitters Binah with a stream of the EP’s first track, “Rupture of Silence.”

Italy’s itinerant papal-pounders Hour of Penance are set to return to the Brutal Death Metal ov Protest scene next week with their 6th punishing album.  Regicide will hit stores next week with the same force of conviction and yoke-lightening purpose as Sedition and Paradogma before it.  Hour of Penance hail from the epicenter of that strange mix…

Finally, it’s here!  I’m referring to the one weekend every year when even the brightest eyed, bushiest tailed Christian joins our cult of death for 48 hours and worships the treachery of friends, agonizing torture and public humiliation, and the brutal suffocation of a (reportedly) innocent life, just before we all pay lip service to…

The last time death metal legends Massacre released an album, France was testing its last atomic bomb. Pretty amazing, to think of it. Fast forward a few years, and Rick Rozz (ex-Death), Terry Butler (ex-Death), Mike Mazzonetto (Pain Principle) and Edwin Webb (ex-Diabolic) emerge from the limestone graves of central Florida to release Back from…

Your intrepid hosts sit down with perpetual good sport/extreme music tastemaker Gordon Conrad (Season of Mist) and divulge the stories behind the best covers in the Decibel Flexi Series. Featuring:Revocation “Pull the Plug” (Death) Anaal Nathrakh “Man at C & A” (The Specials)Evoken “Rotting Misery” (Paradise Lost)Watain “Fuck Off, We Murder” (GG Allin)In Solitude “Mother of…

Admission of personal bias:  I think Max is awesome, because I’ve seen Max do Max’s thing in Max’s band (Exist) and Max’s band is awesome.  I once described Exist’s music as not metal so much as a rad jazz quartet that decided to plug in and rip it up all loud-like.  Those proggy death-flecked jams…

5. Carcass – Carcass has had a few logos over their storied and infamous career, but none of them evinces the manic, electric quality of the group’s music quite like this iteration. Its angular, slightly italicized letters, the long stems of the two “c”s and “r,” and the near interlocking of the double “s” imparts…

The most aptly titled release of the year so far is almost certainly Howling’s A Beast Conceived — a hellacious sonic amalgamation of Heartwork, Ride the Lightning, and Tom G. Warrior-style sinister riffage fronted by the restless extreme music paragon Vanessa Nocera and brimming with lyrical homages to cult horror movie classics like The Beast…

Ten years ago death metal pioneer Chuck Schuldiner lost his battle with cancer. As the fervor surrounding recent Death and Control Denied reissues clearly demonstrates, the man’s legacy has only continued to grow in the intervening years. There are several great remembrances floating around today — I particularly recommend NPR’s “Death is Never Finished” and…

Veteran death metal guitarist James Murphy (Death, Obituary, Cancer, Disincarnate, Testament) has found that the brain tumor he defeated in 2001 has unexpectedly returned. Although the tumor is benign and is currently being treated pharmacologically — chemotherapy remains an option — Murphy needs our help. The medication Murphy has been prescribed has crippling side effects,…

I think a lot of people assumed Denial Fiend was the work of Kam Lee. Now that Blaine Cook is fronting that assumption is no longer. What was the transition like between Kam and Blaine?Terry Butler: Kam likes to lead people on that Denial Fiend was his band. Truth is Denial Fiend is Sam’s baby….

So, you haven’t picked up our cover story [db #77] on the inimitable Death. Yeah, I know. Reading’s hard, but somebody’s got to do it. No, you say? OK, then. You’re missing out on the most exhaustive Death story ever told. Not by journalists (well, there’s one interviewed for the story), but by the ex-members…

#5. The end of the “Morrisound” era. In the late ‘80s Morrisound Studios in Tampa was the place to record, and it provided the first real clear production, in my opinion, of double bass work that was happening in the early days of extreme metal. For the first time you were able to hear things…