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We spend a lot of time talking to artists—whether in blog posts or in each month’s issue—and rightfully so. After all, they put their blood, sweat and tears into making the music that brings us together. We haven’t necessarily dedicated a lot of space to the people actually putting out those releases, however, so we…

***Rocked out by Sister Sin singer Liv Jagrell during their recently completed tour opening for the metal queen, Doro. Check out their video for “Heart of Cold” HERE, or even better, catch them on their current headlining trek, tour dates HERE. February 2, 2013 – Atlanta, Georgia @ The Masquerade Trying to stay in good…

Live Evil Festival 2013 will take place on October 18th-20th at the Highbury Garage, London, with two UK exclusive shows from reformed NWOBHM elders SATAN and Ohio slayers MIDNIGHT already confirmed. With bands picked on the condition that they’ve featured in Fenriz of Darkthrone’s Band of the Week blog, Live Evil is resolutely, 100% fundamentally…

Normally when we do a giveaway in conjunction with streaming media we talk all kinds of rubbish to get you to a link where, inevitably, you’ll email us and then wait an eternity to see if you’re a winner or a loser. Well, since we’re metalheads we’re all winners. Just some get free rad stuff…

It’s no secret, the audio/vision division of Scion, henceforth known as Scion A/V, has given some amazing opportunities to bands with limited means. Arsis, Revocation, Enslaved, Immolation, Meshuggah, and so on have all benefited from the niche-market, passion-fueled benefactors at Scion A/V. Whether it’s a CD or a 12″, a car used as tour support…

For your streaming pleasure today we’re happy to premiere a song from Finnish death metal band Deathchain’s new album Ritual Death Metal. What makes this track special is that it features guest vocals from Entombed’s LG Petrov. Learn more about Deathchain below and then stream “Like Worms Upon The Lands.” You can preorder the CD…

Courtesy of the good people of Horror Pain Gore Death Productions, the Deciblog is honored to roll up with this exclusive album stream of Floridian doom quartet DRUID LORD‘s debut LP, Hymns for the Wicked. Hymns originally dropped on Hallowe’en, 2010, sold out on CD and vinyl, and is now up for reissue tomorrow (February…

Dark Gods: Seven Billion Slaves — the first volume of VON‘s Dark Gods trilogy — is still a few weeks away from release, but for those wondering what the soundtrack is going to be like down in the sulphur mines, Decibel has an exclusive stream this morning of the seething, sinister track “Hands of Black…

If we didn’t know otherwise, Imperium Dekadenz could be some new nu-black’n’djent band from California. The word “imperium” invokes something grandiose or powerful. The, uh, word “dekadenz” recalls band meetings where kids with improbable instrumental skill and unfortunate spelling capabilities meet. But that’s not the case at all. Actually, both cases are incorrect, as Imperium…

Apparently 2012 was a pretty shitty year for Pristina vocalist/bassist Brendan K Duff, which would be pretty apparent even if it wasn’t in the press materials – you don’t name your album Hopeless•Godless when you’re pleased with life’s plentiful bounty. It’s not like his band was ever chipper, but their second album takes a particularly…

Wow! DARKTHRONE release The Underground Resistance on Peaceville, and holy hell, there’s actually singing-singing on it. This is going to be polarizing amongst their fans. It’s definitely a little bit of a left turn. This is standard fare for the former black metallers; you know, death rock riffs, proving that they are “troo” black metal….

We last heard from grindcore supergroup Lock Up in the summer of 2011, when they finally delivered long-awaited third album Necropolis Transparent. Since it might take Shane Embury (Napalm Death), Nick Barker (ex-Cradle of Filth), Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) and Anton Reisenegger (Pentagram) another nine years for a proper follow-up, we figured it’d be…

Egyptian-born Nader Sadek, stage set designer and mask maker extraordinaire for kvltists Sunn O))) and Mayhem, received further notoriety nearly two years ago by writing a phenomenal death metal record and getting legendary gentlemen like Steve Tucker (ex-Morbid Angel), Rune Eriksen (Aura Noir, Ava Inferi), and Flo frickin’ Mounier (Cryptopsy) to lay it down all…

First thing’s first, bands: if you’re going to get back together and don’t want to have photos from your embarassing past dug up, the very least you could do is provide us hacks with at least one (1) recent picture. Otherwise, well…here’s a look at what New York’s prog-thrash conceptualists Toxik used to look like…

Astrohenge was yet another band I stumbled across last year while perusing what was once a plethora of music blogs. As our Q&A with their fellow countrymen Dragged Into Sunlight indicated, Astrohenge is part of a diverse crop of UK bands “doing their own thing.” Although it’s been over a year since the London quartet’s…

For your streaming pleasure today we have the international debut of Paganland. The Ukranian band will release their first album Wind Of Freedom via Svarga Music on Marth 4. The band was formed in 1997 and released a few demos and splits but didn’t get to a proper record until now. Check out the eponymous…

If Decibel was worth its weight in ink, paper, and stress—mostly on the shoulders of our beloved EIC Mr. Mudrian—then we’d have some staffers who were there when Thergothon dropped its only long-player Stream from the Heavens like a Cthulhu tentacle on wee Italy-based indie Avantgarde Music. We do have staffers who were there, bought…

A few months back (I’m too lazy to look up the actual issue), I did a Black Label Debutante Ball on Elektrohasch Schallplatten, a German psych/Stoner label. Since then, they’ve been sending me awesome stuff via priority mail from Europe, and since they’re putting all that money into postage, I figured I’d return the favor…

The most aptly titled release of the year so far is almost certainly Howling’s A Beast Conceived — a hellacious sonic amalgamation of Heartwork, Ride the Lightning, and Tom G. Warrior-style sinister riffage fronted by the restless extreme music paragon Vanessa Nocera and brimming with lyrical homages to cult horror movie classics like The Beast…

Plugging a radio show in this day and age seems kinda quaint when you consider that music can be streamed all over the Internet but, with upcoming guest DJs Bill Taylor from Immolation and Esa Linden of Demigod, Metalenema is a special case. Their show’s remit—death and black metal, both classic and contemporary, with “some…

February 19th, 2013 is no different from February 18th, 1995. Sure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 4,003.33—its highest ever up to that point—and the NHL was in a lock-out shortened season. But black metal? Not much has changed. There have been off-shoot genres, more commercialization, DIY “bands” bunkered in limited edition cassette releases,…

Welcome to Tales From the Metalnomicon, a new twice-monthly column delving into the surprisingly vast world of heavy metal-tinged/inspired literature and metalhead authors… If any subcultural phenomenon has ever truly earned the designation “stranger than fiction,” surely it must be the late eighties/early nineties youth crew/krishnacore straight edge scene. Yet, outside of a couple oral…

Because every day another band records another song.  Because 83% of those songs are unlistenable and you can’t be bothered to sift through the dreck.  Because metal is about not giving a shit and waking your own personal storm.  Because music is universal, expression is boundless, and even indie labels (whatever that means these days)…

Now that the puck has finally been dropped on a (truncated) hockey season, it looks like we’re going to have to sit and wait for the esteemed Keith Huckins – he of Rorschach, Deadguy and Kiss it Goodbye fame – to unglue his eyes from the bank of Center Ice Package-equipped widescreens mounted in his…

Perhaps the most fun (and subversive) thing to drop in my musical inbox this year: a copy of Satanic Threat’s In To Hell. I missed it in 2008. As soon as I saw the cover — a perfect homage to Minor Threat’s HOF worthy Out Of Step — I was sold. So sold that I…

If you’re wondering what “Blodsvept” means, it’s Swedish for “Blood Wrapped” or “Enveloped in Blood.” At least that’s what my rudimentary Swedish tells me. But it sounds pretty brutal coming from Finnish folk metal outfit Finntroll, who have heretofore not dabbled in the art of blood titled songs. Unless you count “Det iskalla trollblodet,” “Slaget…

Norwegian hard rockers Audrey Horne may have a sound that marries Seventies arena rock to a chug/gallop/chug reminiscent of early Priest and Maiden, but the band’s name is all homage to a memorable character from David Lynch’s infamous early nineties crash n’ burn foray into network television. Thus, on the eve of the release of…

Belgian gore-lords Aborted have been kickin’ corpses and plenty of detal metal ass since the mid-’90s. But they’ve only reached their true potential—that’s a personal opinion—in recent years, where they’ve added more meat, guts, and other musical offal to their boiling cauldron. Although I’m partial to Goremageddon: The Saw and the Carnage Done, I think…

Stepping into a recording studio can be intimidating for the inexperienced musician. Sure it’s always intimidating for the experienced musicians. Of course it is. That’s precisely because bands that have been over the course know that it’ll be costing them money and lots of it. For the green band cutting their first demo, that debut…

If you’ve had enough Municipal Waste to last a lifetime—hey, those landfills keep getting higher and higher, right?—it’s the right time to bring things to Washington, DC. Iron Reagan, the best new band name if there ever was one, was formed by Municipal Waste throat-ripper Tony Foresta and skin-basher Landphil Hall, with ex-Darkest Hour pacemaker…