Exclusive

March 1982. Maggie Thatcher lords over a dangerously unemployed U.K. with a hatchet face, a controversial economic policy and “a voice like a cat sliding down a blackboard.” The Falklands War debacle is just weeks away.

Let’s lighten the mood a little bit around here, shall we? And let’s do it without easing up on the calamitous and chaotic noise.

The UK/Serbian MRTVI describes itself as a “one-man black metal project concerned with exploring the negative dissonance and atonality of the aural and emotional spectrum,” secured the Facebook URL “/sustainedthroughdeath,” and has whittled its about section to a single Tolstoy quote: “I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless” — which is a pretty steep goddamn self-created mountain of malcontent to scale. And yet “Negative Atonal Dissonance” — the long, dark sonic journey streamed exclusively below from the album of the same name out July 30 via Transcending Obscurity — manages to accomplish just that.  

Check out this exclusive premiere of “Bestial Offensor” from Tainted Impurity, the second tape of blackened death warfare from Portugal’s gasmasked terror squad Barbaric Horde.

Immolation vocalist/bassist Ross Dolan discusses the past, present, and future of death metal in an extended interview from the August 2017 genre-exploring cover story.

Three years after unleashing a self-titled debut that turned many a (metal)head — including a spot on Decibel‘s Best Bandcamp Finds of 2014 list — Toronto doom rockers Olde are set to return August 11 with the STB Records release Temple, on which the quintet’s already solid fantastically heavy, catchy-as-hell take on the ol’ crush n’ fuzz continues to evolve and deepen. 

We know you need obscure and far-out death metal, so get ready to lose your shit over Paraguay’s Verthebral. We’ve got the exclusive premiere of their new track “Without Any God” from their upcoming debut album, Regeneration.  

Hypnotic flames crackle and beckon on Ordem Satanica’s Monte de Lua. Check out the Portuguese cult’s debut in full with this exclusive premiere.

Progressive sludge/noise rock with comparisons to Neurosis, Old Man Gloom and Amenra? I’m sold!

Broken Hope founder Jeremy Wagner dishes the dirt on Mutilated and Assimilated, the best horror film of all-time, and the current state of death metal.

We’ve still got a solid month and then some to get through before Temple Of Void’s gargantuan sophomore album Lords of Death is unleashed upon a fully suspecting, but nevertheless unprepared world. Lucky for you, we’ve procured an exclusive premiere of “The Gift.” Trust us: You won’t want to be taken unawares by Lords of Death.

Check out this exclusive premiere of “Prey to Death,” from Land of Weeping Souls, the new album from Sweden’s Paganizer.

On this week’s Demo:listen we celebrate the death and darkness conjured by Athens’ Gravewards. 

By 1998, New Orleans metal heavyweights Crowbar had already released four fantastic sludge albums. But when it came time to start writing their fifth, the band knew they were on to something different

The vast expanse of south central British Columbia in a town almost ironically/appropriately called Lone Butte isn’t the first place one thinks of for a female-centric metal fest. But it is.

French death duo Skelethal finally are poised to unleash their full length, Of the Depths . . . Check out “Scaly Smelly Flesh” for a good, noxious whiff of what lies ahead, and below.

Pollute your day with “Forlorn & Desolate,” an exclusive peak at the debut album, Final Man, from Melbourne’s radioactive harbingers of death, Contaminated.

Montreal’s MUTANK – all caps, all the time, I’ve been warned – is a crossover/thrash whose members not only love crossover thrash, but acronyms and plays on words using their moniker as the jumping off point. As the band begins/continues to make farther and wider strides, we figured it was time for an introduction via a short Q&A and a song premier.

Trevor William Church of doom rockers Beastmaker talks touring, bad omens, and Vincent Price.

Check out this candid interview with Belgium’s cult weirdos, Perverted Ceremony—and stream their debut full length, Sabbat of Behezaël, out now on Nuclear War Now! Productions.

In tribute to the legendary Soundgarden vocalist, here is Chris Cornell‘s full interview from this month’s Ultramega OK Decibel Hall of Fame induction.

In a rave review, Jonathan Horsley describes the sophomore full-length from Artificial Brain, Infrared Horizon, as an album which “envisions an extinct humanity, our place in the universe taken by robots and cyborgs, synthetics who believe they have naturally evolved from mankind, as though the species of Aristotle, Einstein, da Vinci was only ever primordial goo,” adding that vocalist Will Smith’s lyrics “read like Mr. Spock took a word cloud of Skynet’s internet search history and made beat poetry of it.” Combined with the decidedly sci-fi imagery the Long Island quintet employs for both album artwork and tour posters, it seemed apropos to reach out the the band for a list of their literary influences.

Check out this exclusive premiere of “Sacrificio Infanticida” from Keziah Lilith Medea (Chapter X), the brand new album from Chile’s mystikal death cult, Unaussprechlichen Kulten.

Minsk’s unutterable Ljosazabojstwa return with a new EP of unique, intense black/death metal. We were the first to hip you to this Belarusian menace last year, and now we’re here to bring you an exclusive stream of “Piekła” from Sychodžańnie, Ljosazabojstwa’s soon-to-be-released EP.

Arkansas’ rich extreme music history isn’t exactly the richest. These days, Decibel cover stars Pallbearer are leading the charge and the past is sparsely littered with the likes of The Handshake Murders, Rwake (and various associated side projects) and Living Sacrifice. Debate amongst yourselves the merits and inclusion of Evanescence and Mutha’s Day Out.

Rising metalhead horror author John Boden peppered his recent haunting, lyrical coming-of-age novella Jedi Summer With The Magnetic Kid with a slew of knowing nods to eighties heavy metal and hard rock. And he’s cited such distorted-yet-diverse bands as Masters of Reality and the Pixies as influences on his delightfully demented post-apocalyptic children’s book Dominoes. So it seemed apropos to hit the eloquent Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-based world-builder up for a few recommendations on where those looking to blend their loves of reading n’ riffage.

It’s been seven years since Occvlta released their demo, We Command the Wolves, and finally Berlin’s black metal brothers have returned with an album worth the wait and then some. Night Without End will restore your faith in true black metal . . . while simultaneously ensuring your condemnation.

On this week’s Demo:listen we praise the unholy birth of Belgium’s Moenen Of Xezbeth.

Decibel Books is proud to announce the release of Metal Gods: A Tribute to Judas Priest, the third in a trilogy of graphic novels chronicling the history and influence of the godfathers of heavy metal. Pre-order now!

Today Melbourne’s Cemetery Urn show us what happens when “Weakened Mortals Bleed.” Check out this exclusive track premiere from the Australian barbarians’ third album, the eponymously titled Cemetery Urn.