Iron Maiden

Tony Reed of Mos Generator counts down his favorite hard rock/heavy metal albums.

Maiden/Priest + Chris Barnes?
Yes. 

It’s that time of year again! Decibel has been banging our heads overtime to concoct our annual special issue with 100 percent never-before-seen content. Slip on your old studded vest and behold The Top 100 Old-School Metal Albums of All Time!

Up the irons! Heavy metal institution Iron Maiden are bestowing their 16th album, The Book of Souls, to the masses today, and Decibel is primed to celebrate with the legends’ fourth cover story in the November issue.

From Alice Cooper’s face paint and Iron Maiden’s elaborate stage sets to Watain’s demon-summoning rituals and Ghost’s hooded robes, heavy metal has always had a close relationship with “performance.” Substance comes first, without a doubt, but performance ain’t far behind. Dimmu Borgir dress up like Satanic carnival barkers. Glen Benton branded an upside-down crucifix into his forehead. Robb Flynn had that Insane Clown Posse hair during The Burning Red days. Simply put, the spectacle of creating extreme music seems to be one of its most potent aspects, and countless bands have used it to their advantage.

JRR Tolkien meets a seriously eclectic heavy metal melting pot on the upcoming Black Tower full-length debut The Secret Fire (Unspeakable Axe/No Idea, June 2), and we’ve got the exclusive premiere of the video for the track “Death March.” Here’s what drummer/vocalist Dave Williams had to say: “‘Death March’ is the opening battle cry from Black Tower’s inaugural…

“A lot has been written and said about me through the years — most of it bad, some of it untrue.” That’s the opening of the 2010 Paul Di’Anno biography The Beast, which reads more like a gritty LA noir novel than a musical memoir. If you were to read the book — a combination…

By the time future preconception-leveling heavy metal siren Kobra Paige hit age fifteen the Calgary, Alberta native had already been studying piano, classical vocal technique, and music theory for eight solid years.

We know, we know, this Trooper beer is old news. You’ve seen a bazillion blog posts on every metal website in the internetiverse about it and maybe, if it’s available where you live, you’ve even tried it. It’s an Iron Maiden beer, so of course you have. But it’s actually more than a typical “big-name…

Norwegian hard rockers Audrey Horne may have a sound that marries Seventies arena rock to a chug/gallop/chug reminiscent of early Priest and Maiden, but the band’s name is all homage to a memorable character from David Lynch’s infamous early nineties crash n’ burn foray into network television. Thus, on the eve of the release of…

Toronto rock journalist Brent Jensen’s No Sleep ‘Til Sudbury is a smart, sweet memoir of the joys and travails of growing up metal in tiny Espanola, Ontario — …A Fine Paper Town, as the welcome sign notes — weaving a portrait of youthful discovery/rebellion into a larger macro story of metal’s mid-eighties coming-of-age moment. It’s…

Ever wondered what a You Can’t Do That On Television skit full of jokes about black metal would look like? Well, so has alt-country crooner/Mandy Moore arm candy Ryan Adams, apparently: His new internet show “Night Sweats” marries over the top disheveled chic and a dash of self-deprecation with Fenriz jokes, corpsepaint, a synthpop loving…

Yeah, the real world sure does suck. The bottom line is forever letting the wolves off the leash and if they don’t end up clawing at your door they’ll sure as hell shit on your lawn. The only way out is money. And in this business, the uncomfortable truth is that, ultimately, in a roundabout…

If you say you don’t know who Derek Riggs is, we can probably forgive you. But if you say you don’t know his work, you are clearly looking for a fight. The creator of arguably the most iconic mascot in all of music, Riggs’s art made him at one point practically the 7th member of…

OK, I’ve never owned a vest. Not sure why. When I was young, I remember older kids around the neighborhood (we’re talking Flint, Michigan here) would sport denim vests proudly over the top of name-a-‘80s-metal-band-or-cola-here t-shirt. It was their uniform. Even in mid-August, they’d walk around in their denim vests (hair picks in the back…

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The…