Decibel Magazine

In which we consider the top 10 songs about a quintessential heavy metal topic: chains.

Doom Side of the Moon is a doomed-out interpretation of Pink Floyd’s classic The Dark Side of the Moon. Read an interview with bandleader Kyle Shutt (The Sword) to find out what makes Doom Side tick.

Wolves in the Throne Room is a band rooted in extremity yet bring something fresh to the genre; this month’s Decibel Meter follows suite.

Last April we announced our partnership with f.y.e. for the Decibel Meter, a monthly collection featured both online and in store to make sure you don’t miss any of those essential headbanging, face-melting titles that make your collection extremely extreme. The issue currently on newsstands, which features Suffocation on the cover, declares 2017 THE YEAR…

Need some new music to get you out of that more-of-the-same rut? f.y.e. has got you covered with this month’s Decibel Meter.

Make amends for missing records with the Decibel Meter!

2016: gone. Best albums of 2016: available here.

November was stacked with top-tier releases from genre-defining bands. If you missed any, now is the time to remedy that, and f.y.e. has got them all bundled together in one place for you.

Meshuggah, played at loud volumes, awake better than any cute cellphone alarms. Fact. And profuse headbanging maintains wakefulness better than the strongest coffee. Also fact.

Neurosis, Neurosis, Neurosis, Neurosis. This month’s Decibel Meter has Neurosis records aplenty, in addition to some of the best noise that you need to hear.  

Our picks for this issue pull from a variety of styles and include the old, the new, the reformed, and the reinvigorated. 

It’s time to get that neighbour with the yappy dog to move, finally. Our friends at f.y.e. are offering (on their site and in stores) the latest albums you need for that last big push to get the Smiths to move to the next county over. And never consider move back to your neighbourhood. 

The Unknown
The assessment favorable
dB rating: 8/10

Decibel has been labeled Social Justice Warriors from the right. And attacked by actual SJWs from the left. Should everyone maybe just shut up for a second? 

f.y.e. is happy to assist in your hearing lost, and we’re happy to help. 

We’ve partnered with f.y.e. to make sure you don’t miss any of the essential extremely extreme, as picked by our staff of relentless metal maniacs.

New releases from Judas Priest, Bruce Dickinson and Exhorder!

New releases from Necrot, My Dying Bride and Melvins!

The Direction of Last Things
They’ve been some very Intronauty boys
dB Rating: 9/10

Though we have inducted numerous landmark thrash metal albums in the Decibel Hall of Fame over the years, very few of the earliest examples of the style have made it in there.

Conjuring all things autumnal, vast and sorrowful, Skepticism’s 1995 funeral doom touchstone Stormcrowfleet was the vortex where death metal, black metal and earlier strains of doom metal all came to die in the late summer of 1995.

November 16th, 1981. Utter that date to any KISS fan and you’re going to get punched or hugged. Who knows, you may get nothing because maybe said KISS fan never did his homework. Either way, it doesn’t really matter because this is Justify Your Shitty Taste, and I’m talking Music from “The Elder” by KISS.

In honor of Mother’s Day, Decibel is exclusively premiering the song “Mother” from Lita Ford’s new album Living Like a Runaway

By 1989, John McEntee was growing increasingly disenchanted with his membership in technical thrash band Revenant. With the aid of Revenant drummer Paul Ledney, McEntee set out to pursue his own brand of blackened death metal, christening it Incantation.

From a brief moment in 1986, bassist, songwriter and lyricist Leif Edling, almost by sheer willpower alone, managed to raise the leaden monolith of Candlemass from their murky depths and into an upright position.

It’s both Repulsion’s genre-sparking album and the way enlightened metal fans will look at you should you admit ignorance of the fact—which is very well possible, seeing as Repulsion has always been a band that your favorite bands worshipped, but were somehow otherwise criminally unheard of.

Without Napalm Death’s Scum, you probably wouldn’t be holding this magazine. This album—essentially a split LP between two almost completely different lineups—defined grindcore with its growled vocals, whirring, hardcore-influenced riffs and faster-than-a-locomotive blast beats.

While it’ll never be regarded as the kind of breakthrough record Leviathan became, thanks to universal acclaim (indie rock critics and all) and its inclusion on not one but three video game soundtracks (Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Project Gotham Racing 3, Saints Row), Mastodon’s Remission LP is much more important in the scheme of the band’s history and modern metal itself.

Of all of their bizarrely captivating feats, the fact that Coalesce managed to create arguably their most important album after they had ceased to be a band has to rank near the top of the list.

Death metal had never sounded so guttural and primal before Obituary’s 1989 debut, Slowly We Rot, infected record stores.