Hall of Fame

The making of Prong‘s Beg to Differ.

The making of Nuclear Assault’s ‘Game Over.’

We revisited and ranked the songs on Accept’s classic, Hall of Fame-inducted, album Restless and Wild.

Read about the making of Crowbar‘s Odd Fellows Rest in the latest issue of Decibel. 

Emperor‘s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk is a black metal classic, further cemented by its induction into Decibel‘s Hall of Fame. Now you can own the 20th anniversary Hall of Fame edition album on vinyl. 

Today is the Day‘s Temple of the Morning Star is the latest induction to Decibel‘s Hall of Fame series. 

To celebrate our recent induction of Saxon’s NWOBHM classic Wheels of Steel into our Hall of Fame, we ranked each song on the album from least this-rules to most this-rules.

We recently inducted Entombed’s classic second album into our Hall of Fame; let’s take a few minutes to examine it closely one more time, ranking each song from worst to best.

Reunited Swedish death metal gods Entombed get their second Decibel Hall of Fame induction (11 years after their first!) for the classic Clandestine in the December Decibel. 

Throughout their career, the visual artists of Neurosis have been as important to the band as the musicians. Read their commentary in this feature.

Doom of the highest caliber, in the live, in its entirety. Before the release date! 

British black metal blasphemers Cradle of Filth recently joined forces with Cacophonous Records to release the original recording of Dusk…and Her Embrace (called The Original Sin, out July 8th). To celebrate, Decibel revisits the first collaboration between the band and label: 1994’s sanguinary trailblazer The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.

Recently, I stumbled across a graffiti mural that read, “Every winner was once a beginner.” This got the gears turning, thinking about how long it’s been since Mastodon was considered an unknown, underground entity.

By the time 1983 rolled around, those bands participating within the loose construct known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal had become well aware that there was more to their scene and sound than playing time-tested and amped-up blues-based riffs in the back rooms of pubs or moldy rehearsal rooms.

Fates Warning leader, guitarist and chief songwriter Jim Matheos will be living parallel lives in 2016. He’s helming the writing and recording of the band’s 12th album with the current lineup, and will concurrently assemble a lineup from the band’s distant past, including guitarist Frank “X” Aresti plus co-founders John Arch (vocals), Joe DiBiase (bass) and Steve Zimmerman (drums).

In 1982, L.A. synth-poppers Missing Persons scored a minor Billboard hit with “Destination Unknown” (“Has it all been said and done? / I know I’ll leave when it’s my time to go / ’Til then I’ll carry on with what I know”).

The story of the emergent popularity of Sacrifice’s second album, Forward to Termination, is a shining example of how media used to work and things “went viral” in the days before the internet gave power to trending tweets and twats.

King Diamond and crew are currently slaying their way across the U.S. playing Abigail in its entirety, so what better time to break down our 84th entry into the Hall of Fame?

Tell us what hardcore album should be inducted into the HOF next, win an album. Good deal!

Over the length of their relatively short, yet remarkably productive, career, Reverend Bizarre distinguished themselves as a highly literate and darkly humorous band, and one of the doom metal genre’s most ardent conservationists and crusaders.

This particular iteration of Napalm Death was notably short-lived, but the sheer amount the quartet was able to accomplish in a two-year run between the summer of ’87 and summer of ’89 is absolutely mental.

In the latest issue, Autopsy joins our revered two-time Hall Of Fame Club, which includes metal stalwarts like Celtic Frost, Carcass and At The Gates. To commemorate the Severed Survival HOF we’re printing our exclusive “Illustrated History” of Autopsy with Eric Cutler and Chris Reifert from late 2013.  

All kinds of heavy shit happened in 1989. The Soviet Union crumbled; Salman Rushdie pissed off the Grand Iranian Poobah; the Exxon Valdez spilled black gold all over pristine Alaskan coastline; Pope John Paul II evacuated holy bowels in Africa; and Ron Hextall scored a goal in the NHL playoffs.

Slaughter’s Strappado hits closer to home for this particular hack than any of our previous entries. That’s because Slaughter hailed from the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, home to a ridiculously disproportionate number of metalheads in the ’80s.

Most of us were busy keeping our Trapper Keepers shut and our pencils sharpened when the members of Death Angel were woodshedding in drummer Andy Galeon’s garage and recording a legendary demo with none other than Kirk Hammett.

We’re starting a new feature here at the Deciblog. Since we’ve inducted so many classic albums in the course of our decade-plus existence we’re going to do our best to rank songs on these classic albums. First up is Celtic Frost’s classic mini LP Morbid Tales, which was released in 1984 and inducted in 2007. 

dB HoF 123

To Mega Therion

Label: Noise
Release date: October 27, 1985

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To Mega Therion is Greek for “The Great Beast.” It’s a pseudonym for the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation and a nickname for every metal musician’s favorite mystic, Aleister Crowley. And it’s the very fitting title for Celtic Frost’s first real full-length album.

When Celtic Frost finished their breakthrough Morbid Tales EP in 1984, co-founders Tom Gabriel Fischer and Martin Ain immediately considered bigger aspirations. Morbid Tales let them distance themselves from Hellhammer—then very much a sore spot for the pair—and showed that two outcasts from farm villages could deliver on their promise to become a much better band. But what if Celtic Frost could take it a step further and write an album that was not only competitive with the best thrash metal coming from the United States, but also radically reimagined what was possible with heavy music? What if they incorporated classical music and vocals and wrote songs that deserved to be paired with art by famed Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger? What if their music could finally match their vision? It seemed impossible, but Fischer and Ain had already done so much with little more than their dreams.

To Mega Therion is Greek for “The Great Beast.” It’s a pseudonym for the Antichrist in the Book of Revelation and a nickname for every metal musician’s favorite mystic, Aleister Crowley. And it’s the very fitting title for Celtic Frost’s first real full-length album.

Definitely a golden age for hard rock right there, capped off in fitting form in December 1971 by one of the ultimate “cult classics”: Bang’s self-titled debut.

New York City was a creative nexus in the mid-to-late ’80s. Art and fashion swelled up from the underground and converged into an amazingly vibrant and unified expression of culture.