Doom

It takes a special band to spend twelve-and-a-half minutes slogging through a freaky-heavy doom bum-out called simply “Darkness,” then decide there’s just more to say on the issue and tuck in for another 14 minutes and call the result “Darkness, Part 2.”  It’s like being lost in a menacing forest devoid of all large predators…

About six months ago, a Salt Lake City, UT band called Gravecode Nebula heaved out its first album, Sempiternal Void, despite the fact that the band has been playing together in some form since 2006.  Fellow Salt Lake slowniks and Decibel faves SubRosa have mentioned GN a couple times when discussing local bands they enjoy,…

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…

Melodic death metal, crust, d-beat, black metal, doom, post-metal . . . It doesn’t really matter how you label Nux Vomica because it’s pretty much impossible to adequately describe their wayfaring sound in terms of genre alone. Yeah we went for crust in this headline, but that was more of a convenient adjective, headline shorthand,…

Chicago’s Indian are presently hauling their blackhearted nihilism across the tarmac of the UK and Europe in support of the Decibel-approved From all Purity. It’s a sick record from disturbed men, maybe more noisy, more off-the-chain than anything they’ve cut to record before, and if your record collection exists primarily to harsh your mellow (which,…

Towers come from Portland, Oregon, and have this awesome sound that’s a strange brew concocted of low-end bass hum and psych-stoner doom, post-punk and krautrock. There is a lot more in there, too. Putatively, it’s metal all right, but with a center so dark and heavy it can pull in all manner of outré influences…

Michael Klassen has never met Daniel Jansson. OK, you’re thinking, why should he? But given that Jansson is the singer in his band, it is kind of weird. Well, unconventional certainly. Klassen plays guitar, bass and provides other instrumentation in Culted, working out of Winnipeg, Canada, with Kevin Stevenson (Drums), Matthew Freisson (guitar/bass/other) and Erik…

What’s the connection between craft beer and metal? We hear this question a lot. Well, specifically, we are asked this question a lot since our craft beer book, The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers, was published last November. For people who aren’t necessarily into both things, it’s hard to see the commonalities. On the…

Well folks, it is the holiday season; what with the temperatures falling and nights closing in, and even the walls closing in, too, it’s officially the most miserable time of the year. Respite is in short supply. Hard liquor and pharmaceuticals can only do so much. But, step away from the shotgun, there’s a hefty…

Lycus’ debut was one of the best doom albums to leak long-form misery over 2013. A disconsolate epic, Tempest is an album that was thrown up around the desolate heart of a funeral doom sound so dense that it has its own bleak gravity hauling influences from black and death metal, drone and krautrock into…

We always enjoy finding cool new sound-sculptors out in the cyber world, especially when we can use this blog forum to turn other people on to some under-the-radar artists.  We love it even more when those artists’ musical ventures make progress beyond their own self-run webpages. Earlier this year, we featured Ukrainian drone-doomers Nonsun as…

Great American Beer Festival, Denver, ColoradoOct. 10-12, 2013 It would be an overstatement to say that this was the Year of Metal at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, but the handful of extreme music diehards—from TRVE, Surly, Real Ale and Three Floyds pictured above—among the 600-plus breweries present at the festival, definitely made…

Too many approval-stampers are content to shovel anything slow, synth-shrouded and packed with molasses-dark death growls into a funeral doom-shaped hole in the earth.  One self-important windbag (the one in charge of this Deciblog post) would suggest that “funeral doom” must actually beckon from the grave and whisper oh-so-reasonably that bathing with sharp objects is…

Decibel has made no secret of our love for the idiosyncratic have-to-see-it-to-believe-it one-man doom behemoth Author & Punisher. And these insane videos from the band’s recent performance at the Fillmore basically speak for themselves. So…further comment is probably unnecessary. The new record, Women & Children, is available here. Bonus: The Lynch-ian video for “Terrorbird” after…

Decibel invites you to start your weekend off right with this exclusive slab of epic, filthy-yet-strangely-beguiling sludge noise perfection from Virginia’s own Akris. The song, “Row of Lights,” is off the band’s forthcoming full-length debut on Domestic Genocide Records. For further information visit Akris’ official website and/or friend them on Facebook.

We’ll make this intro concise as possible, so as to allow readers to break on through to the other side that much quicker: A) False Prism and Cavern Apothecary — presented by Sadgiqacea and Hivelords, respectively — are two of the best, most intriguing mindfuck metal releases of the year thus far. B) The bands…

We’ll make this into concise as possible, so as to allow readers to break on through to the other side that much quicker: A) False Prism and Cavern Apothecary — presented by Sadgiqacea and Hivelords respectively — are two of the best, most intriguing mindfuck metal releases of the year thus far. B) The bands…

Your friends at Decibel have teamed up with A Pale Horse Named Death to entertain you this summer. We’ll be hosting a blog series for the next five weeks detailing production of a video for their new album Lay My Soul To Waste and premiering the “DMSLT” video at the end. In the first installment,…

Shredding in metal dates directly back to Tony Iommi, who is inexplicably still writing riffs and will be a big part of the new Black Sabbath album due next month. So, we figured it was a good time to invite a new generation of doom shredder into the studio this week. Mark Thomas Baker of…

You like free stuff? Of course you like free stuff. Free stuff is pretty punk rock (not that I would know; I look like I should be listening to Coldplay or The National). Moshpit Tragedy have a whole slew of awesome crust, punk, hardcore, and grind, all available for “name your price” on Bandcamp or…

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)…

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…

Pentagram frontman Bobby Liebling has received much deserved attention for his comeback from a harrowing addiction and the revival of his musical career, not to mention late in life fatherhood. A few of his former bandmates might not have dealt with the same demons but they’ve had their share of tough times seeing their musical…

Italian doom trio Ufomammut have released a video teaser for forthcoming album Opus Alter, out 18 September through Neurot. Opus Alter is the second half of Ufomammut’s ORO series. Its predecessor, Opus Primum, dropped in April, and was a lush dizzying headtrip of psychedelic guitars, space rock ambience all darkened by the unspoken threat of…

Decibel published its first ever “Women In Metal,” issue this month, which offers an exhaustive look at the enormous contributions women have made to metal music (and the metal industry). If for some inexplicable reason you don’t subscribe then you can snag a copy from our store . If you are wise, you might have…

Welcome to the first installment of VERSUS, an online segment where we’ll stream exclusive tracks from new records that have piqued our interest, head to head, and let you, dear reader, referee the fight in the comments section. To sweeten the deal, the commenter who makes the most persuasive case for his or her preferred…

Getting compared to Black Sabbath’s legendary debut is a mixed blessing. Of course, it’s going to stoke interest in your band but is there anyone that can measure up to the album that’s quite literally responsible for everything on this blog and magazine? Berlin, Germany’s Kadavar have elicited those comparisons, at least from the folks…

“This is a song for when you begrudge the sun rising, the coming of another day. When you curse the sky and the sun hanging in it. It sets the tone for the album quite aptly, I think” So says Witchsorrow guitarist/vocalist Necroskull, by way of introducing “Aurora Atra”, an eight-minute, epic exercise in straight-up…

Church of Misery has toured Europe seven times, but this summer marks their first ever visit to America. Considering that much of their oeuvre consists of love letters to American serial killers it’s a long overdue trip. COM appeared at the Maryland Deathfest (if you had a chance to see them, tell us about it…

Orange Goblin’s appetite for ale is the stuff of legend. When the Deciblog caught up with them prior to the long-awaited release of Eulogy for the Damned, frontman Ben Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, drummer Christ Turner and guitarist Joe Hoare were piecing together the making of an album that was recorded over nine weekend sessions….