Darkthrone

Copies of Decibel Books’ Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult—Restored, Expanded & Definitive Edition are in stock and shipping NOW!

Preorder the massive 800-page Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult—Restored, Expanded & Definitive Edition and get a free woven patch while supplies last!

This ultimate edition of Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult includes 120,000 words of new content, over 60 new interviews, an 80-page color section, improved layout & a stunning new cover.

It’s time to close out a stellar October with new metal releases from Darkthrone, Despised Icon, Forlesen and more!

In honor of Candlemass’s full-album performance of their landmark Epicus Doomicus Metallicus at Metal & Beer Fest: Philly on June 10, scene royalty reflects on the LP’s impact.

We’ve got a loaded week for you as we catch up on the latest from Darkthrone, At the Gates, Mayhem and more!

Legendary Peaceville founder Hammy diagnosed with hereditary dilated cardiomyopathy. Here’s how you can help.

In which Neill Jameson reconsiders Darkthrone‘s 1999 “comeback” Ravishing Grimness.

As part of it’s “Enlightened” exhibition, Norway’s national library has honored Darkthrone‘s classic album.

Fister offer a bleak take on Darkthrone’s “Too Old, Too Cold.”

Its a scorcher out there: keep your summer raging with new releases from bands like Baroness and Death Angel. Or, beat the heat and hide in the basement with titles from Darkthrone and others!

Win FREE Darkthrone merch!

Jam a new Darkthrone song from their forthcoming LP, Old Star.

Paul “Hammy” Halmshaw released some of the best extreme metal of the past three decades via Peaceville Records. Now he delivers a blow-by-blow account of how it happened in his first book.

We catch up with Mantar‘s Hanno Klänhardt to find out what the five heavy albums that changed his life were.

When people tell you they don’t like metal, they might mean they’re not familiar with it. Here’s a way to think about getting people into music that’s new to them.

After the dust settled and forty records were assigned a place on Decibel’s vaunted list, five remained that probably could have swapped places with anything else on the list without causing any greater/lesser irritation than lists like this already stir up.  Why should they get left out?  Here are the five records that tied for #41 on our Top 40 Albums of 2016.

A journey back to 1992, where cold winds blow.

Far more prevalent now than ever before. Decibel flips through the musty pages of history to highlight the Top 5 Norwegian Death Metal Albums Of All Time.

Under a Better-Than-Average Moon.

Commencing with the ritualistic application of corpse paint, feature-length documentary Blackhearts shares the stories of three black metal bands from drastically different backgrounds visiting the genre’s birthplace in Norway.

In 2014, I resolve to: Descant the insalubrious. Yoko Ono Chimaira. Stop smashing hammer faces. Train my army of attack hamsters. Look into whether or not goat sacrifice requires a permit. Resist your touch of evil. Follow Darkthrone on tour. Convince Albert to do a Hall Of Fame on Nightwish’s Wishmaster. Transcribe Obituary lyrics. Watch…

We’re all listed out after totalling up the scores for the albums of the year and putting together our Top 100 Black Metal Albums of All Time special issue. But author Dayal Patterson, a man in league with unfathomable evil, kindly dipped into his wellspring of arcane ancient darkness to muster the energy to give…

5. Carcass – Carcass has had a few logos over their storied and infamous career, but none of them evinces the manic, electric quality of the group’s music quite like this iteration. Its angular, slightly italicized letters, the long stems of the two “c”s and “r,” and the near interlocking of the double “s” imparts…

5. Thou Art Lord – Thou Art Lord’s first logo was sort of a cross between the Mysticum and Mayhem’s logos. Not sure why they changed it—several times, in fact—to a dumb font or a hand-scrawled atrocity, but the Greek supagroup got it right. Just look at it! It’s Christ’s greatest foe. The symmetry and…

I have a pet hamster. His name is Ozzy. He is adorable but terrified of everything. However, over the course of his cohabitation with me, he’s become acclimated to the sounds of heavy metal, probably due to the fact that I play it for 16 hours a day. I’ve discovered that he actually has quite…

Gorehounds, gut-sifters, and comic book ghouls will no doubt be aware that Bay Area death metal titans Autopsy have been immortalized in in Feast for a Funeral, a band-authorised comic by E-Comix. As you’d expect from Autopsy’s generously gruesome back catalogue, and gather from the promotional video trailer for the comic [below], Feast for a…

We’re just not the types to go flocking to gallery openings and digest culture of a weekend but this is different. From 29th March to 29th April, the beyond-necro Neseblood Records are curating a black metal exhibition at Oslo’s Popsenteret, chronicling the history of black metal. Whether it is the extremity of the aesthetic or…

How does the commentary track thing work? Are you talking over the music in real-time or is the commentary track spliced in after it’s finalized? Fenriz: Lord have mercy! Just listening to Viking’s Do or Die album from ‘87 on vinyl and starting the interview. Well, it works like a commentary track on a movie—I…

When Darkthrone’s monumental epic, A Blaze in the Northern Sky, hit the shelves in 1991, it was an album of hesitant firsts: the first Norwegian black metal album (Mayhem’s Live in Leipzig came out earlier but with faulty distribution); the first major second-wave black metal album, globally (Czech group Master’s Hammer had released Ritual a year prior, but with less impact); the first truly blackened death metal album; and the first to chime DM’s death knell in popularity.