Hall of Fame

Because Angel Witch’s debut turned out to be not only their best album, but the only one recorded with anything resembling a stable lineup, it seems all the more precious today.

Tales From the Thousand Lakes is a pivotal album. Not just for Amorphis—if it weren’t for loads of ambition, wide-open minds and a bit of dumb luck, this induction would never be—but for death metal post-1994.

The story of Refused’s last—and best—album starts with the first line of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” which drummer David Sandström scrawled across one wall of the band’s recording space as a mantra: “I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

Mea culpa: It’s hard not to mention Entombed when discussing this month’s Hall of Fame inductee, Dismember’s 1991 debut full-length Like an Ever Flowing Stream. It’s also a bit tired and unfair to both.

Steele (who was still working for the NYC Parks Department), guitarist Kenny Hickey, drummer Sal Abruscato and producer/keyboardist Josh Silver descended upon Systems Two in Brooklyn to record the album that would propel them into the bright lights and big titties of international rock stardom.

As convoluted back-stories go, it doesn’t get much more tangled than the one behind Pentagram’s Relentless.

After 60-plus Hall of Fame inductions, one thing that stands out is that precious few of those albums contain and are best known for a single truly classic song.

Contrary to popular belief, the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal—also known by its acronym NWOSDM or synonym “The Gothenburg Sound”—wasn’t a cohesive movement.

Saint Vitus were a living, breathing anachronism in every possible way.

If black metal was defined by a single year, it would have to be 1994.

As the popularity of our Hall of Fame feature grows, so do the chances of us throwing a wild card at you folks.

It’s strange that the one of the cornerstones of doom is actually one of the most lyrically positive albums in the entire secular metal canon.

In early 1982, Accept were in dire need of an identity, onstage and especially on record.

Focus almost never happened. Hurricane Andrew (a Category 5 storm that devastated South Florida in 1992), bassists frequently exiting and three separate visits to Morrisound Studios could’ve cost the world Cynic.

It’s hard to say who was more shocked—punks or metalheads—by hardcore band D.R.I. signing with Metal Blade Records via the label’s new Death Records imprint in 1985.

Upon finding out the next album our vaunted Hall of Fame was going to open its pearly gates to was slated to be Judge’s Bringin’ It Down, an anticipatory buzz broke out amongst the extreme music luminaries hanging around the Decibel table at the most recent Maryland Deathfest.

In 1985, the hardcore punk and metal scenes were like the pre-Civil Rights deep South: segregated. The two just didn’t mix.

Nile didn’t play cribbage with the Lord of all Fevers and Plagues. Entrails were never ripped from an unfortunate virgin’s cunt as far as we know.

When five unassuming, working-class dudes from Nassau County (Long Island, NY) released their debut full-length in 1991, it initially didn’t seem destined to have the atomic bomb of impact that it would eventually ascertain with the passage of time.

There is influence and under the influence. California’s Autopsy were both.

Dateline: Summer 2000. My former band has just finished our 30-minute spot on the rickety stage at New York City’s CBGB as one of eight opening acts for what is supposed to be grindcore experimentalists Discordance Axis’ last show.

By 1989, John McEntee was growing increasingly disenchanted with his membership in technical thrash band Revenant. With the aid of Revenant drummer Paul Ledney, McEntee set out to pursue his own brand of blackened death metal, christening it Incantation.

From a brief moment in 1986, bassist, songwriter and lyricist Leif Edling, almost by sheer willpower alone, managed to raise the leaden monolith of Candlemass from their murky depths and into an upright position.

Many will cry sacrilege, but we’re gonna say it anyway: …And Justice for All is Metallica’s finest hour.

Rolling from Los Angeles into the parched sandbox of the Mojave, anyone familiar with Welcome to Sky Valley will see almost all the relevant landmarks along the 10 East freeway.

News flash: Thrash metal didn’t begin or end with the release of Testament’s The Legacy, but just because the band’s 1987 debut didn’t defiantly construct genre bookends, it is still very much worthy of entry into Decibel’s hallowed hall.

As far as Hall of Fame inductees go, the making of Black Sabbath’s ninth album, their first with former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio, easily ranks as one of the most drama-filled.

It’s both Repulsion’s genre-sparking album and the way enlightened metal fans will look at you should you admit ignorance of the fact—which is very well possible, seeing as Repulsion has always been a band that your favorite bands worshipped, but were somehow otherwise criminally unheard of.

If there’s just one person in the world who’ll never forget the exact date NOLA came out, it’s Eyehategod guitarist/Down drummer Jimmy Bower.

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women,” so said Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan in 1982’s Conan the Barbarian when asked, “What is best in life?”