Interviews

Digital artist Stephan Dreadford accidentally fell into the craft of animating famous heavy metal cover art. The single incident, which involved doing animated cover art for social media for his brother’s band, has now pushed Dreadford down a very cool path. Over a very short time, Dreadford has animated numerous cover paintings, turning them into moving pieces of awesome–by such artists as Ed Repka to Andreas Marshall–from static greatness. Dreadford’s vision has put into–well, actual–motion covers by Judas Priest, Sodom, Blind Guardian, Helloween, Pantera, Kreator, and many more. He sees the art like we all do… Living, breathing covers, but instead of using our imaginations to see where, for example, Mark Wilkinson (cover artist for Painkiller) wanted go, Dreadford does it for us. Read on as we extol the virtues of Dreadford’s GIF prowess.

Get the scoop the new Blekkmetal film and Enslaved‘s Ivar Bjørnson’s BardSpec project.

Worried that you might not find fitting way to mark the twentieth anniversary of Cannibal Corpse’s Vile that doesn’t require being, say, devoured by vermin, mummified in barbed wire, or eaten from the inside? Were you hoping to celebrate George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher’s debut via a more metaphorical than naturalistic orgasm through torture?

War master Andy Whale re-enters the realm of chaos for death/grind victory with Memoriam.

Minneapolis’ El-Ahrairah find a new warren at the Greek tape label Underground Soundscapes, release self-titled full length tape.

Lariyah Hayes of Khaotika talked to Decibel about what’s planned for her series of Darkadya books and how she was motivated by her brush with death. 

** Sweden’s In Mourning are one of the country’s most unsung death metal acts–melodic, if you’re looking for an additional qualifier. Formed in 2000, the band took a good eight years before inking a deal with Norwegian indie Aftermath Music. Two years later, In Mourning dropped Monolith on the Pulverised label to great acclaim. But it wouldn’t be until 2012’s The Weight of Oceans where the Swedes found their sound and audience. Moored by the indomitable “A Vow to Conquer the Ocean”, In Mourning’s third album crushed Year End Lists and set the stage for In Mourning to take on the mantle Opeth left behind on the Heritage effort. Well, In Mourning have returned with Afterglow, an album four years in the making. With the drummer Daniel Liljekvist (ex-Katatonia) and a pack of killer songs in “Below Rise To The Above”, “Fire and Ocean”, and 10-minute monster “The Grinning Mist”. Decibel found guitarist Björn Pettersson prepping for the release of Afterglow.

When I first saw extreme metal Brooklynites Kosmodemonic, they were killing it on a stage Watain doused with pig’s blood soon after.

Death worshipers Gruesome let the metal (and horror) flow in new video. 

What is a Cannibal Accident?  How could it happen?  Well, their music sounds like their album art looks – like a ghoul-possessed intestinal tract giving violent birth to even more grisly demon-innards, rending flesh without end.  If you’re gonna gore-grind, this is how you should do it:  phlegmy-wet and funny as hell.  Listen right here and tell us we’re wrong.

** Behemoth frontman Nergal and Decibel have a long history. From Behemoth’s first cover in August 2007 [HERE], to the group’s covers thereafter [HERE and HERE] to headlining the first Decibel tour in 2012, the Poles have occupied a special place in our dark hearts. And let’s face it. They belong there [in our dark hearts]. From the group’s humble beginnings as a Mayhem and Root cover band–more or less–to the stupendous The Satanist album, Behemoth have come a long way from the alleys of Gdansk to the top of extreme metal’s global heap. Decibel caught up with Nergal on the group’s The Satanist tour, where we asked the single more important question there is to ask.

KEN mode’s Shane and Jesse Matthewson have decided to take a step back from being full-time road dogs and focus on their new venture, MKM Management services, which combines their desk job skill set with their rock and roll lifestyle experiences.

Catching up with Rick Rozz (& bassist/vocalist Michael Grim) to exacerbate our need to hear the debut EP of his new band, The End.

In this month’s issue of Decibel, we bring you a flexi so close to our hearts that it’s practically a third ventricle.  We got Asphyx mouthpiece Martin Van Drunen to talk about his relationship to the magazine and its editor, as well as the way the band put together our most recent edition of the flexi series.

** Twenty-two years. That’s how long Dark Funeral has been at it. It, being black metal. It, being the black metal lifestyle. It, being two EPs and six full-lengths, going back to 1994, when black metal wasn’t hip in your neck of the woods (unless it’s Olso, Bergen, or Stockholm). For the past seven years, the Swedes have been writing new album, Where Shadows Forever Reign. They’ve changed vocalists, with Emperor Magus Caligula exiting after 15 years of service to be replaced by Heljarmadr (Cursed 13). New drummer Dominator (The Wretched End) is an inspired blast machine. And bassist Natt (Angrepp) rumbles Lucifer’s great thunder. Reinforced with dark legions, Dark Funeral will take Where Shadows Forever Reign across the globe. Rise… Legions!

“Everything is permitted.” Considering that’s Norwegian experimental collective Ulver‘s genre description, hindsight confirms it’s no surprise they strayed so dramatically from the black metal that shaped their earliest albums. Following the release of their 13th LP, vocalist Kristoffer Rygg shares his thoughts on the band’s evolution and his own artistic journey.

New album, Bereft, turns all the black/death goodness up to (generating random and completely unexpected number) eleven, and we demanded an audience with Côté.  You might have read some of Côté’s thoughts in Issue #139 (May 2016, Amon Amarth cover), but now you can check out the rest of the interview and get a listen to this consistently powerful underground metal act.

Glorior Belli‘s flipped black metal’s atavistic script not once but six times since forming in 2002. Leader and intrepid boundary breaker Billy Bayou (notice it’s not stolen from Tolkien) has taken Glorior Belli into the bowels of Satan’s celestial abyss and back, with such notable releases as Manifesting the Raging Beast and The Great Southern Darkness serving as Bayou’s malign vehicle. Decibel is darkly pleased to present brand new Glorior Belli track, “Satanists Out Of Cosmic Jail”, from new album, Sundown (The Flock That Welcomes), along with a few Qs answered by Bayou from his throne atop the blackest black.

You’d be hard-pressed to describe Finland’s Moonsorrow without using some kind of synonym for “epic,” so the fact that their new LP, Jumalten Aika, out-epics anything they’ve done is nothing short of astounding. We caught up with guitarist/vocalist Mitja Harvilahti to discuss the musical, thematic and personal influences that helped bring this beast of an album to life.

Hickory, NC’s Rapheumets Well is a band heavily steeped in science fiction and fantasy. They slam dunk their lushly orchestral and luxurious symphonic melodic blackened death metal into a fantastical and fantastically creative and complex world that I don’t even want to embarrass myself trying to explain.

Oranssi Pazuzu is Finland’s gift to anyone hoping to spliff out with the alien invaders just before their extra-dimensional reality-shuffling machine divides and conquers and sends all our psychic energy back to their home planet as quaint souvenirs.  Värähtelijä rarely sounds familiar or simple, but consistently satisfies the need we have for rock music to truly progress.  Keep reading to find out why, while you could probably continue to exist without hearing Värähtelijä, you really shouldn’t want to.

We catch up with Fallujah vocalist Alex Hofmann for a quick chat.

“Only a handful of bands dare to leave the narrow(minded) frame which dictates what is so-called ‘true’ and what earns a negative connotation as ‘hip’. 95% of these traditionalist bands are the copycats of the copycats of the early 90ies Norwegian scene.”

We had the chance to interview Mr. Owen for an article in Issue #136 (Feb 2016, Abbath cover), but we had to cut down our man’s responses to fit in the space available.  Now you can read the entire interview, and hearing Owen’s freakish tunes is now only a click away.

Unfortunately, that even includes one-of-a-kind bands.

The Decibel Magazine Tour has been in full swing for three weeks now, and for Skeletonwitch, it’s been a perfect vehicle to introduce their new frontman, Adam Clemans. We caught up with Clemans and guitarist Scott Hedrick after a blistering 40-minute set at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom to talk tour stories, album plans, and Facebook etiquette.

When you take a step back and consider that yellow-and-blue flag waving Swedish death metal as pumped through the (real or imagined) Boss HM-2 pedal is almost a genre onto itself, it’s perplexed me since 2011, when they released their self-titled debut, that Gothenburg’s Miasmal hasn’t been a name on more lips and tongues.

“The diversity of this record is the fundamental concept behind Imperial Triumphant. The band from New York City must sound like New York City. And there’s no place on earth more culturally diverse than here”

This month, we wrangled the prolific East Coast trio Horrendous from their jobs holding down every recent Decibel event to discuss their contribution to the series.

Originally printed in our April 2016 issue, get acquainted with death ahead of the big event (Choosing Death Fest, that is).