Precious Metal: The Decibel Hall of Fame Book!

Posted May 18 by Albert

On July 15th Da Capo Press will release the Decibel Hall of Fame anthology titled Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces. We’ve selected our 24 favorite HOF pieces, which we’ve published in Decibel over the past five years and expanded the shit out of them. Plus, we have (read: yours truly has) put together a special BONUS Hall of Fame that will only be available in the book. Hint: it’s not Neurosis. UPDATE: Pre-order here! The official press release is after the jump:

Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces

Edited by Albert Mudrian—Editor-in-Chief of Decibel magazine—Precious Metal takes you inside the recording studios where the most intense heavy metal albums of all time were created, providing background on the savage guitar sounds and bloodcurdling screams that have defined a musical genre.

To compile this book, Mudrian pored through Decibel—renowned for its metal “Hall of Fame” interview series—and expanded its interviews to bring you face-to-face with each and every band member who contributed to twenty-five immortal albums. Revealing the operatic scope of each band’s vision and their uphill battles to lay down tracks that would endure, the pieces offer a fly-on-the-wall look at three decades of rocking out. Highlights include:

• Ozzy Osbourne’s devastating departure from Black Sabbath—and their reinvention with Heaven and Hell, which captured a new generation of metal fans.
• The quick rise and fall of Diamond Head, whose proto-thrash classic Lightning to the Nations (a one-week recording demo) catapulted them into the pantheon.
• Sleep’s 52-minute one-track release, Jerusalem, and the 1.316-second song “You Suffer” that earned Napalm Death a world record.
• A double arrest for Emperor—the guitarist for arson, the drummer for murder—that threatened the completion of In the Nightside Eclipse.
• The grotesque, taboo-shattering lyrics of Cannibal Corpse—and the shocking Tomb of the Mutilated cover art that decimated the limits of zombie pornography.

Delving deep into the bands’ diverse influences—ranging from the usual suspects like Led Zeppelin to Wagnerian opera (Kyuss) and reggae (Napalm Death)—Precious Metal celebrates the legacy of their landmark albums and amplifies the risks taken along the way. 

Albert Mudrian is the Editor-in-Chief of Decibel magazine and the author of the cult classic Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

August 1, 2009       $18.95       Paperback Original       368 Pages       Music       ISBN: 978-0-306-81806-6

The Most Hardcore Metal Musicians, in Their Own Words…

“I guess I was never a real Satanist—it was just a pose.” 
—Nicke Andersson
    Entombed, Left Hand Path

“It felt so good to play live—it felt like you were killing somebody.”
—Josh Homme
    Kyuss, Welcome to Sky Valley
 
“The blood, the guts and the gore—that’s what it’s all about.” 
—Bob Rusay
    Cannibal Corpse, Tomb of the Mutilated

“Everything’s an experiment, you know? That’s the beauty of art.”
—David Vincent
    Morbid Angel, Altars of Madness
 
“Eyehategod was started as a way to piss people off. All the heavy music around here was fast, thrashy stuff, so Eyehategod slowed it down as much as possible…And it worked, man. People fuckin’ hated ’em.”
—Brian Patton
    Eyehategod, Take as Needed for Pain

“[There were songs about] making dog food out of humans…I just thought it was turning things upside down.”        
—Michael Amott
    Carcass, Necroticism

“We rehearsed in the dark, so we could play the songs without looking, which is fucking stupid.”
—Mikael Åkerfeldt
    Opeth, Orchid

“Every stereo I’ve seen has a volume knob, but for some reason, people seem to demand that their records be obscenely loud.”
—Kurt Ballou
    Converge, Jane Doe

“You can be as pretentious as you want if you’re growling lyrics…You could be the death metal Poet Laureate if you wanted to.”
—Nick Holmes
    Paradise Lost, Gothic

“When I eventually got sobered up, which was three years later, I listened to Heaven and Hell, and, to this day, I cannot remember doing some of the songs. I can’t remember what studio it was. I can’t remember playing it at all. I have no memory.”
—Bill Ward
 
 

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