Thrash Metal

Serpent Crown‘s new album is a no frills thrash effort. Stream it here before it drops on Friday. 

Lord have Mercyless! Hear the French cult thrashers new album before its October release.   

Cemetery Piss is here with the first taste of their debut full-length, the thrash/black metal combination “Astral Souls.” 

The ‘Witch is Back! And The Apothic Gloom four-track EP features the best material of Skeletonwitch‘s career. Hear it now.

Dungeon Bastards
10-Sided DIEDIEKILLKILL
dB rating: 8/10

It’s weird to think of any Slayer album as “transitional,” as they all share the same basic sonic sensibilities (namely, the sound of your skin being flayed from your quaking bones), but if there’s any record that marks a clear turning point in their career, it’s 1988’s South of Heaven.

Hatchet unleashed its dark thrash smorgasbord Fear Beyond Lunacy on the day before Halloween last year, but these San Fran shredders aren’t done bringing the scary and fucking with your psyche quite yet as our exclusive premiere below of the band’s disquieting video for “Tearing Into Hell” makes abundantly clear. 

Brazilian trio takes thrash beyond their country’s (bloody) roots on “Hostages.”

Creepsylvanian death/thrash miscreants Ghoul join the Decibel Flexi Series.

The Des Moines heavy thrashers educate on how to catch attention with a re-release.

Dissemination
Still crazy good after all these years
dB Rating: 8/10

The ‘Witch is back! Jam the new Skeletonwitch track right now. 

Wildfire
Burninating the countryside
dB Rating: 8/10

“Arise was the seed that exploded on Roots,” Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser thoughtfully notes. Those of you keeping score will note that this is Sepultura’s third dance with our Hall of Fame, a dB first.

We were tempted to post a mid-’80s photo of German thrashers Exumer. But, alas, this would be a misrepresentation of the reality of time. Actually, that’s not entirely true. For the better part of two decades Exumer has parlayed Euro-centric thrash into solid gold. That’s right, from 1985 to 2016, the Germans have transcended time and trends to make what is arguably the best thrash album to hit the public since Exodus’ Force of Habit.

I was 7 years old when the ’Deth dropped their fourth LP in 1990, and my first experience with the thrash masterpiece was not a pleasant one. It was my friend Jason’s birthday party, and along with the obligatory Nerf products and Stüssy shirts, his gift haul included two cassette tapes: Iron Maiden’s No Prayer for the Dying and Megadeth’s Rust in Peace (inducted into the Decibel Hall of Fame in May 2012, buy the issue here).

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.

Green Hell. Septic Death. Green Death? Yes, that’s the moniker for a Des Moines thrash band looking to restore Iowa’s reputation in the extreme metal world after decades of Slipknot. We actually picked up on Green Death in our print edition, with an effusive review that said: “this Des Moines outfit plays a classy brand…

The videos that arrive at Decibel headquarters are often predictably bad. There are the things we loathe (lyric videos), things we find annoying (videos talking about the making of videos) and the low budget (we’ll just record ourselves playing live and hope people give a shit). Boy, did Shredhead’s new animated stop motion video just…

We could introduce “The Ascending Fire” but telling you how it is the closing track on Gravehill’s third full-length, Death Curse. We could chime in and offer our ten cents’ on how the track will give you a real taste for a vulgar doozy of an old-school death metal record that’s unafraid to augment its…

We called the latest from Axeslasher a “straight-up thrash-terpiece” in a blurb on our Halloween must-haves list a few weeks back, but Anthology of Terror, Vol. 1 — available here for a cool $6.66 — is sick enough to warrant a bit more coverage. Thus, the following track-by-track, courtesy guitarist/vocalist Justin Lascelle… Mark of the…

Axeslasher and Decibel present an exclusive stream of a song off the gore-obsessed thrashers’ upcoming album Anthology of Terror, Vol. 1, due later this year on Antithetic Records. Mixed and mastered at the Filth Chamber in Denver with producer Patrick Bruss (CRYPTICUS, TOMBSTONES), “Woodland Tortuary” is a tongue-in-cheek look at late ’80s sadism, inspired by…

When Horror Pain Gore Death’s commander-in-chief sent through IMPALERS‘ debut LP Power Behind the Throne it really looked like the email concerned some band called Impalas. Swear to God. And how cool a band name would that be? Okay, when they’re leaping around the savanna Impalas come across too cutesy for old-school thrash metal, but…

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…

“Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, by nature, is a band that goes a little too far and takes things a little over the top,” guitarist/vocalist Matt Moore tells Decibel. “And we are completely in touch with our core values on Ghostmaker.” The band is currently putting the final touches on the follow-up to 2009’s Living for Death, Destroying…

UK thrashers Evile were plucked from the womband signed to Earache in 2006, offered before the world as not only the saviors of UK thrash, heir apparent to Sabbat, but the more frenzied quarters of society were proffering them to be the next Metallica. Like, yeah, let’s not burden four kids form Huddersfield, a reasonably…