Nuclear Blast

Decibel caught up with Thy Art Is Murder frontman CJ McMahon to discuss the band’s new album, upcoming tour with Decapitated and why he feels the deathcore label doesn’t fit Thy Art. 

Some bands are formed from friendships. Some bands are formed out of necessity. Some bands form a bond based off past relationships. For England’s Memoriam, featuring current and ex-members of Benediction and Bolt Thrower, the circumstances around their 2015 formation is the result of all three aforementioned scenarios.

Atonement
Making good for 29 years
dB rating: 9/10

The Grinding Wheel
The Blitz Abides
dB rating: 8/10

If there’s one black metal album that changed black metal—in almost every respect—it’s Dimmu Borgir’s Death Cult Armageddon.

There are few bands as intense as Nails. From a resource perspective–the group’s a trio–Nails make an incredible amount of noise and for all their aggressiveness they’re instantly relatable, like few bands in Nails’ proverbial sphere (and outside their sphere).

Sleep and Agoraphobic Nosebleed headline the first-annual two-day celebration of extreme metal and craft beer presented by Unibroue

Pocho Aztlan
Larga vida a Juan Brujo
dB rating: 8/10

Ode to the Flame sounds like a typical Nuclear Blast release. A valiant knight astride a white armored horse. The knight’s hand is aloft, in it he’s holding a great flaming sword, for which he’ll use to the slay the malignant flying beast perched behind him on the top of a snow-capped mountain. But Ode to the Flame isn’t a typical Nuclear Blast release. Not by its cover or band the band, Mantar, that created it.

The concept of faith might be diametrically opposed to Marduk’s pitch-black worldview but the Swedish fundamentalists are worthy of yours. Of all the Second Wave black metal bands who still consider their iconoclastic craft a full-time concern, Marduk are the ones who always deliver. They could be accused of lacking a sense of adventure when…

Currently tearing across the States with fellow thrash vets Anthrax and Death Angel, Testament will be releasing their tenth album in spring. Entitled The Dark Roots of Earth, Testament frontman Chuck Billy has intimated that it’ll go atomic in the pit much in the same fashion as 2008’s The Formation of Damnation did. Hmm… Good…

People want to know the arrangement between Scion and Immolation. I’m sure you can attest to ‘underground’ metalheads being slightly skeptical of a car company’s involvement with a cult death metal act.Ross Dolan: I can see where some people may find it unusual that a company such as Scion would invest money into an underground…