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Ashmedi is no stranger to this blog, having authored a 17-part “biographical column and chaotic metaphysical thoughts” series that ended in 2011. Now that his band Melechesh has returned with its first album since 2010, we’re happy to welcome his voice back in the form of a playlist. There’s no theme per se, but it’s…

At the beginning of the year we published an interview with author Peter Bebergal about his excellent new book Season Of The Witch: How The Occult Saved Rock and Roll. Among the topics discussed: why metal has picked up (again) on the occult approach and themes so popular in the 70s: “There’s just something about…

If you frequent metal blogs, and for our sake we at Decibel sure hope you do, you might remember the Slayer pizza that attracted some notoriety last year. Hell, the “raining blood from a lacerated pie” line still cracks me up. Anyway, the mastermind behind the most metal pizza ever, Minneapolis-based Chef John Hurkes, has…

“The Children of the Night takes off where The Formulas of Death ended,” says Tribulation guitarist Adam Zaars. “And if the latter was dark the former is pitch black, though the album ranges from murky forests to the brightest city lights. It is a celebration of the divine spirit and our ability to tread liminal…

Okay, I’m going to be honest with you guys here: by the time you’ll be reading this, I’ll be relaxing on a tropical island, listening to AC/DC bootlegs, and lamenting absolutely nothing except maybe sunburn. Still, I know most of you poor bastards are stuck in much more inhospitable climes. To that end, I have…

“The long wait is finally over,” says Carach Angren to Decibel. “We proudly present you our fourth full-length musical horror story telling the utterly dark tale of two children on a quest to escape total darkness. As the music and lyrics take you from chapter to chapter you will learn about the inevitable outcome…This Is…

In the new edition of Decibel with our tour headliners on the cover J. Bennett gets into a fascinating conversation with Liturgy frontman Hunter Hunt Hendrix (aka Triple H) about just what constitutes “black metal,” among other topics. There’s no need for any investigation or atom splitting when it comes to this band. Hacavitz is…

What It Once Meant — the documentary detailing the life, death, and (semi) resurrection of Indecision, hands down one of the smartest, most audacious, uninhibited hardcore bands ever — is a real triumph of an often fumbled form: Poignant and funny, harrowing and inspiring, the film opens up a window on a unique assemblage of…

Counting members of such forward-thinking hardcore acts as Have Heart, Fucking Invincible, Verse, and Soul Control amongst its ranks, Sweet Jesus‘ vivifying and powerful debut full-length You Destroy Yourself pays homage to late 80s/early 90s D.C. emotive hardcore without sliding into pure imitation. Today Decibel brings you a taste of what’s to come with the…

So Decibel assumes at this point you’ve got your dozen roses, the perfect card, maybe some wine. All these have been easily attainable and, really, almost unavoidable for the last four to six weeks. Valentine’s Day mood music, on the other hand, has remained maddeningly elusive for those inclined towards the extremely extreme. Until now….

Later this month, Dutch sextet Izah will release their first full-length document of sludgy aggression through the always dependable Nordvis Produktion.  It represents a major step in a very long road for the band, and its four gargantuan tracks make that point crystal clear.  But these aren’t the sprawling teases that some bands employ in…

Finnish Viking metal quintet Ensiferum return with their sixth album One Man Army next week, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait until the February 20 release date to hear the thing. In this day and age, who in the hell has the patience to do such a thing? The band and Metal Blade…

I originally got my hands on Barishi’s self-titled, self-released, full-length album via guitarist Graham Brooks who was filling in for fellow Vermonters, Vaporizer during a tour with Vattnet Viskar. After figuring out who the hell I was, he passed along a copy of the record and Bob’s yer fucking uncle. That was about a year…

Former Caustic Resin guitarist/vocalist and Built To Spill-er Brett Netson went and done got himself a brand new rock quartet — that’d be Brett Netson & Snakes — and Decibel has got the opening single from the band’s ridiculously killer, utterly fucking triumphant Scavenger Cult EP. Here’s the breakdown: The Scavenger Cult EP features three…

“Fear and Fury,” the first taste of new Pallbearer music since our favorite album of 2014, Foundations of Burden, is one of the Little Rock doom quartet’s shortest songs yet, clocking in at just under six minutes. But it’s not wanting for the intense, emotional thunder the band has built their following on. It was recorded specifically…

One of the more pleasant surprises for me so far this year has been Karma to Burn‘s new LP. I’m a big fan of Almost Heathen (especially these two neck snappers), and the reason Arch Stanton–much like 2001 precursor–works is simple: the riffs. Just check out “Twenty-Three” below (yes, all of their song titles are…

A year and a half after making a very strong first impression with the Knights of Darkness EP, Finnish speed metalers Ranger are set to return in 2015, this time with full-length debut Where Evil Dwells under their collective bullet belts. Unlike other bands that profess to creating old-school heavy metal with a more modern…

What’s better than a wolf? A black wolf, of course. What’s even better than a black wolf? A black wolf with umlauts. Oakland’s Blackwülf bring some serious stoner vibes to the party, hitting the listener with some fat bottomed rock. “Wings of Steel” is so fresh that it comes from an album they haven’t even…

“Some of you might have been conceived to this song,” Ringworm frontman James “Human Furnace” Bulloch told the gathered at Sonny’s Tavern, the small, homey New Hampshire bar the Cleveland metallic hardcore levelers were then steadily transforming into an overly-amped emotional and physical pressure cooker. “The album it’s on came out in 1993. You do…

The videos that arrive at Decibel headquarters are often predictably bad. There are the things we loathe (lyric videos), things we find annoying (videos talking about the making of videos) and the low budget (we’ll just record ourselves playing live and hope people give a shit). Boy, did Shredhead’s new animated stop motion video just…

It took us a good 10 years to get it right, but Rwake is really just pronounced “wake”. Good to know since Relapse is re-issuing the group’s debut demo, Xenoglossalgia (The Last Stage of Awareness), with stunning limited 3D art with 3D glasses. We can finally sound intelligent while descanting about Dostoyevsky’s formative years, vegan…

A year ago, metal enthusiast and writer Dayal Patterson presented the world with his authoritative document Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, claiming the dark hearts of literate misanthropes everywhere.  To anyone who read the book and thought it could have been more developed… well, the author thought so, too.  This year, we will have…

Last week, we debuted the track “Caravan” from Monolith’s soon to be released album Against The Wall Of Forever. It turns out that there is a pretty decent audience for the band’s proto NWOBHM sounds. So, our friends at the new label Funeral Noise Records (a spinoff of death metal staple Gore House) asked if…

It’s not often a new band drops jaws. Dutch black metallers Kjeld, from Friesland, are one such band. Corrupting the good minds of northern Netherlands (and Germany) for the better part of their eight years as a band, Kjeld is modern yet reflective on new album, Skym. They play “Proud and pure Frisian black metal…

The 2015 Decibel Tour is still just under two months away, but it’s cold and terrible out (grim in a bad way), and you deserve some righteous news before the weekend. We have six outstanding, hand-picked regional openers who will get the party started in advance of At the Gates, Converge, Pallbearer and Vallenfyre’s trail…

Nightmares about my nonexistent children being killed by a falling flatscreen. Thanks, Super Bowl commercial. Season in Hell So, it’s several days after the big game. The dust has settled. We’ve watched every obnoxious and sad self-filmed fan reaction to Malcolm Butler’s miraculous end zone interception that the internet has to offer. I don’t think it was…

Every depressive suicidal black metal dude we went to high school with is dead.  Well, not really, though we probably could’ve seen it coming if it were true.  What I mean is, Xasthur groaner Scott Conner got a new gig playing dark bluegrass.  And where the fuck are Striborg and Nortt?  I feel sad sometimes,…

Most of the promotional methodologies of the digital age are platforms I don’t quite get and don’t think I’ll ever be able to hang with. In addition to the constant fishing for complements that are disguised as update/progress reports (“We’ve got two-and-a-half new songs written and we can’t wait for you guys to hear them!”…

Undead is Listenable Records‘ latest signing, but beyond that, there’s nothing else we can tell you (seriously, we asked) other than we’re pretty sure it’s not one of the ten other bands going by the same name on Encyclopaedia Metallum. What we can offer, however, is a premiere of “Voices”, which at least gives a…

We will never miss a chance to host some new music from our friends in Sandrider. They were the band, after all, that premiered a song here on the ways one might conceivably become the ultimate urban legend. If our math is correct this is the third time they’ve made a streaming appearance on the…