Hall of Fame

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.

After Tiamat crawled out of black metal nasties Treblinka in 1989, the main principals—namely Johan Edlund (previously known as Lucifer Hellslaughter)—likely had no idea they’d be writing an album as groundbreaking and mind-altering as Wildhoney five years later.

The setting: the San Francisco Bay Area. The era: the mid-’90s. The sound: the violent and harried subgenre of powerviolence, going over with the natives like a wet fart in a dry church.

Like most early black metal acts, Switzerland’s Samael (pronounced saa-mail) had little to go on. Resources were limited, label interest nonexistent, and diehard fans of the band were relegated to sharing their darkest secrets by letter and parcel.

We can debate at length about what caused the demise of hair metal and the rise of the so-called grunge era in the early 1990s, but one thing is indisputable: The latter’s mainstream takeover was absolute.

Slaughter of the Soul is arguably one of the best death metal records of the modern era. Genuine classics like “Suicide Nation,” “Slaughter of the Soul,” “Blinded by Fear” and “Under a Serpent Sun” call our neck and brain to action.

A six-year gap separates underground gem Animosity from its unlikely successor, Blind. True, the Technocracy EP—with Simon Bob on vocals—acts as a bridge, but few, not even Corrosion of Conformity themselves, could’ve predicted Blind.

The story of how Melvins ended up on Atlantic is one of the weirdest chapters in the band’s history. In the wake of Nevermind’s multi-platinum success, major labels scrambled to catch lightning in a bottle a second time by scooping up angular, but tuneful rock acts.

Though we have inducted numerous landmark thrash metal albums in the Decibel Hall of Fame over the years, very few of the earliest examples of the style have made it in there.

Any time we hear that Lord Worm is back it’s like the return of the coolest substitute teacher at your school; the shop class alternate who lets the kids have at it with the broken bandsaw. Worm is a legendary death metal vocalist, a Hall Of Fame inductee with Cryptopsy and one of the most…

For most Americans, the earliest Scorpions song we remember is “The Zoo,” “No One Like You” or mega-hit “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” But the Hannover-based hard rockers had a storied history well before they were MTV and rock radio darlings.

Next to Queensrÿche and Bad Religion… ah fuck, who are we kidding? This is by far the least extremely extreme inductee in the Decibel Hall of Fame, and probably will be until we honor Jesu’s Kittens Upon Pillows of Limitless Down Luxuriating in Sunbeam EP in 2024.

Conjuring all things autumnal, vast and sorrowful, Skepticism’s 1995 funeral doom touchstone Stormcrowfleet was the vortex where death metal, black metal and earlier strains of doom metal all came to die in the late summer of 1995.

Agnostic Front’s Cause for Alarm is an atypical Hall of Fame induction. Most of the previous 100-plus albums that have graced these pages were created by bands that had a solid core and had been playing together (if not recording together) for years.

For years, Opeth toiled in relative obscurity. Caged to Candlelight Records for three fantastic albums and Peaceville for one stupendous full-length, the Stockholmites’ import-only status could’ve continued had Opeth’s new home, Music for Nations, not been a label proper.

The stagnating late ’80s hardcore scene drifted toward its early ’90s reckoning nursing one hell of a posi-hangover: saris and turtlenecks replaced abandoned Champion sweatshirts; smashed soapboxes were repurposed into horn-rimmed frames; fade-specializing barbershops faced precipitous revenue declines; ex-Youth Crew boys traded Adidas high-tops for Doc Martens sturdy/fashionable enough to endure the journey into a post-hardcore promised land of milk, honey and more ambiguous lyrics/breakdowns.

One of the downsides of the staggering amount of album formats these days is finding all the extra tracks. Fortunately, our friends in Hall Of Fame certified Monster Magnet (Dopes for Infinity) are sharing some of the extra goodies on their new album Last Patrol. Here’s Dave Wyndorf on the bonus track “One Dead Moon,”…

Black Metal’s induction to the Decibel Hall of Fame was inevitable. There’s simply no getting around its influence.

If Bad Religion had never made another record after 1983’s sophomore prog experiment Into the Unknown, it’s doubtful those familiar with the band at the time would have been surprised.

Before High on Fire signed to Relapse, the Californians had plenty of buzz. The group’s debut, The Art of Self Defense, along with the cloyingly faddy label Man’s Ruin, sent waves of heshers yammering about the next big thing.