Adrien Begrand

Decibel reports on the premiere on the new Voivod documentary We Are Connected by acclaimed filmmaker Felipe Belalcazar.

Recapping Americana black metal phenoms Wayfarer, sleaze upstarts Sonja and fantasy-driven black metalers Valdrin in Montreal.

Hear young Dylan Gers carve his own sonic path, which is more Nick Drake than Nicko McBrain.

Portland goth-flavored metallers Unto Others—formerly Idle Hands—return with a new name, a new label and new music.

Sepultura‘s latest, Quadra, is Decibel‘s album of the week.

Goodnight Wintermoon – the former Immortal frontman emerges from the cold with album #2.

Untimely Demise nail the death/thrash formula with “Lethal Enforcers.”

Lucifer pay tribute to the heavy rock and proto-metal of decades past on their aptly-titled second album, Lucifer II.

In just 163 pages Nathan Carson’s new novella Starr Creek brings together hesher teens, D&D-obsessed 11 year-olds, bikers, cult members, hillbillies, a crazy demonic goat, a hell of a lot of drugs, and a big monster in a crazed collision of Lovecraftian weirdness and, best of all, macabre fun.

Shadows Swallowed the Flood
One more for the road
dB rating: 8/10

Wretch
A master’s return
dB rating: 8/10

On July 15 New York City band Psalm Zero will release their second full-length Stranger to Violence on Profound Lore Records. If you’re not familiar already, we’re great admirers of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Charlie Looker’s project, which beautifully blends the martial, industrial tones of Godflesh, the post-punk melancholy of Depeche Mode, and the rainy-day doom ‘n’ gloom of Katatonia.

International Blackjazz Society
Blackjazz hands!
dB Rating: 8/10

Metal writers have so little time to devote to new music that you think you can win us over by playing up your lack of image, persona, willingness to be antisocial as a way of looking “dangerous” and “mysterious”? Come on.

But then you get one recording in your inbox that compels you to try it out, and lo and behold, it winds up being one of the biggest revelations of the year.

Earlier this year Brooklyn duo Psalm Zero released Real Rain, the first of a planned trilogy of special cassette releases called The Birthright Trilogy. Five months later avant-garde stalwart Charlie Looker and guitar genius Andrew Hock (if you read Decibel you know who Castevet are) have returned with the second installation, Hunchback, which will be released September 29 on Black Mass Productions.

Lucifer I
New partner, same dance, better result
dB Rating: 9/10

Clouds Collide is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Chris Pandolfo of Allentown Pennsylvania, and has been steadily showing tremendous promise when it comes to the soaring, epic “metalgaze” pioneered by Alcest and made popular by Deafheaven. The great thing about Clouds Collide is that Pandolfo has used those influences in a constructive way rather then simply imitate, a great example being the 2013 debut full-length Until the Wind Stops Blowing…, a heartfelt tribute to his late mother that was equal parts agony, reflected in the searing black metal passages, and wistfulness, heard in moments that dared to approach the majesty of Ride.

Helmed by a fellow who goes by the name of Outre-Tombe, Akitsa is one of many bands to help create the fertile Québécois black metal underground that you see before you today. It just so happens Akitsa has a new full-length album Grands Tyrans coming out – its fifth, to be exact – this coming June 2 on New York’s great avant-garde label Hospital Productions.

There are not many perfect albums in heavy metal history, but Slayer’s Reign in Blood is one of them. Personally, in this writer’s opinion, when it comes to the greatest metal album of all time, it’s a toss-up between Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Paranoid. We’re dealing with an untouchable album here. Well, near untouchable, as Decibel’s Andrew Bonazelli had the brilliant idea for a new way for us to argue about our favorite metal records: why not rank the songs on each Decibel Hall of Fame inductee? Sure, why not?

As I once wrote in an old issue of Decibel, give one positive review of a Fairyland album, and you’re branded for life. 

There are not many perfect albums in heavy metal history, but Slayer’s Reign in Blood is one of them. In this writer’s opinion, when it comes to the greatest metal album of all time, it’s a toss-up between Reign in Blood, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Paranoid. We’re dealing with an untouchable album here. Well, near untouchable, as Decibel’s Andrew Bonazelli had the brilliant/insane idea for a new way for us to argue about our favorite metal records: why not rank the songs on each Decibel Hall of Fame inductee? Sure, why not?

When you attend Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands, you’re going to have to make some difficult choices, because with four separate venues going at the same time, you are not going to see all bands. Especially if you’re like me, and are such a total fanboy when it comes to a handful of acts that you insist on seeing their complete set. 

Back on September 8, 2013 Satyricon staged a special show at the Oslo Opera House in Oslo, Norway, in which the black metal veterans performed alongside the Norwegian National Opera Chorus. The end result was exactly what anyone would expect, the band’s distinct music given more drama and gravitas thanks to the haunting vocals by the 60-member choir. The concert was filmed and recorded, and on May 1 Napalm Records will be releasing Live at the Opera as a special DVD/CD package. It’s a spellbinding performance – check out the performance of “Die By My Hand” after the jump – and we recently caught up with drummer Frost to talk about this release, and what’s next for Satyricon.

Read the interview and check out the video after the jump. 

If you’re a regular Decibel reader, your ears probably perk up upon hearing the name “Deathwish”, thanks to a certain record label of the same name that consistently puts out quality extreme metal and hardcore. I’m going to have to ask you to just put aside those thoughts about Deafheaven and Code Orange for the…

So rarely do we get music videos that successfully provide visuals that equal the grandeur of extreme metal, but it’s slowly starting to happen, and the new video for Liturgy’s “Quetzalcoatl”, from the excellent new album The Ark Work, is a stunner. Created by Japanese “anonymous contemporary art concept” Aujik, the clip takes a simple…

Atlanta foursome Royal Thunder will be releasing Crooked Doors, the much-anticipated – and outstanding – follow-up to 2012’s standout CVI on April 7 via Relapse, but in the meantime the band has steadily been premiering new songs across the metal/hard rock internet, and today it’s our turn. Not only that, but we’ve been given one…

Hailing from Minneapolis, Kult of the Wizard quietly put out a pair of instrumental EPs in 2013 and 2014, but the foursome’s latest EP, The White Wizard, deserves to attract a good deal of attention from the doom crowd, especially those who are especially transfixed by the melodic tones, occult themes, and blues influences of…

Having spent my teen years obsessing over thrash metal in Canada during the 1980s, the question’s come up 35 years later about what would Canada’s own Big Four of thrash be? For me, it’ll always be Sacrifice, Annihilator, Infernal Majesty, and the best of them all, Guelph, Ontario’s own Razor (sorry, Eudoxis). While Sacrifice is…

Who can ever forget that moment in Penelope Spheeris’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, when then-W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes did an interview while drunkenly floating in a swimming pool, presumably guzzling vodka while his embarrassed mother sat nearby? Although that interview was staged, it remains one of the defining portraits…

It’s incredible to think that a band that burst on to the scene with a novel collection of Metallica covers on cello has not only managed to out together a career lasting two decades, but has built itself into an incredibly popular act. Although they’ve been an active touring band, it’s been five years since…