Interviews

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)…

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…

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)…

photo credit: Lou Strummer France’s grindcore miscreats, Nolentia has recently made their newest and second album available to the world’s general populace and specifically those of you who enjoy your Nasum and Pig Destroyer weirded up a notch. The album’s called May the Hand That Holds the Match That Will Set This World on Fire…

Helen Money, aka Alison Chesley, dropped a new album earlier this week via the inimitable Profound Lore Records. As our Brent Burton described in Issue #101, the cellist’s playing is rather unorthodox as she “stretch[es] and distort[s] the possibilities of amplified cello with a bevy of effects.” To celebrate the release of her third record…

Welcome to Blues Into Metal, an occasional Decibel interview and blog series on the history and ties between America’s homegrown music and the extreme fare our readers cherish. In it, we’ll seek out musicians from both genres to discuss the links and shared history between the blues and metal – and the misconceptions about both….

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 this post was up last week for about a minute, but you didn’t see it,…

Mount Pleasant, Michigan’s Cloud Rat play grind and they play it really well. They have a new album in the holster and on the ready entitled Moksha, courtesy the fine folks at Halo of Flies. What follows is an interview with guitarist Rorik Brooks and some vids and crap I lifted from their website. Check…

With the throes of winter usually comes a dearth of new releases. So after perusing the innumerable year-end lists, there’s no better time to catch up on all of the records you missed, not to mention your back catalog. If you’re in a band, it’s also a good time to put out something new given…

Not only is The Cemetery an exquisite slab of nasty/fun uber-brutal indie horror — think Cabin Fever via Evil Dead — it also throws extreme music fans a serious bone with a soundtrack featuring a gang of grind n’ blasters including Fleshgod Apocalypse, Gorod, Ulcerate, Circle of Dead Children, Defeatist, The Year of Our Lord,…

When the Deciblog caught up with GOJIRA frontman/guitarist Joe Duplantier last week, he was clocking up the road miles across Canada on in a tour that’ll see the French progressive/death-ish metal quartet take in the west coast of America before snaking along the south and terminating in New York. Supporting their fifth album, L’Enfant Sauvage,…

How will the new album, Circle, differ from Beginning of Times?Esa Holopainen: Our producer Peter Tägtgren has brought lot of old school ideology back to band. I guess that we have needed sort of encouragement to go for slightly more extreme sound world. It is more low bass-ed, guitar-oriented and there’s shit load of varieties…

Let’s face it: there are too many bands out there releasing too much music for any one magazine-blog-social media platform combo to cover it all adequately. Or at least cover it all to the adequate degree that all those bands and PR people would want to be covered. Stuff gets lost in the shuffle the…

The dudes in Ancient VVisdom’s have already put together a pretty impressive resume considering they only got started in late 2009. For starters, the Austinites have put out a split and debut full-length and hit the road with Ghost and Blood Ceremony (and, along with Pallbearer and Royal Thunder, will be supporting Enslaved starting January…

Clamfight has a much better ring to it than, say, Mollusk Warfare (and we already have Insect Warfare). We’d quickly exhaust our nautical jokes in a sentence or two so we’ll leave it at the headline. Here’s the scoop: for your listening pleasure below is Clamfight’s new album I Versus The Glacier. This writer digs…

Even though VON have been kicking around since ’87, are pretty much responsible for Watain’s existence (their name, at least), they only managed to get their shit together and release debut LP, Satanic Blood, in October of last year. There are mitigating circumstances and all, what with the band splitting and going into what appeared…

What prompted you to return to Convulse? It’s been a very long time.Rami Jämsä: My old pal from Nokia asked [us] to play in his Heavy Metal festival 2012. At first I refused. Then original bass player Juha took contact and showed his interest. Pretty soon it was clear that there was no chance to…

If you’ve been keeping up with our last two issues (which also happen to be our year-end and 100th), you’ve probably noticed that there’s a new Holy Grail record coming out this month. While you’ll have to wait until January 22nd to see if your excitement about Ride The Void even comes remotely close to…

“The weak pale in the face of both baking and metal!” Metalcakes proprietor Kathy Bejma declares when asked how she first came to realize heavy metal and cupcakes belonged in the same mixing bowl. “Plus ovens are like little mini hells accepting your sacrifice of unborn chickens, butter, and sugar…Occasionally I’ll get the How dare…

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… Gonzo dark fiction author, screenwriter, martial arts sensei, serious connoisseur of heavy metal and hardcore — there’s a lot thrown into the mix when it comes to the literary force of nature…

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)…

Not only does Rotten Sound have a new EP coming out later this month, but the Finnish quartet is also celebrating its vicennial. So when bassist Kristian Toivainen suggested putting together a playlist with picks from a certain year, it took us back to a feature we used to have in the magazine. Back in…

Often, there is a lot of left over content that doesn’t quite fit the narrative or direction of a story. Case in point #1: Converge for dB #96. Case in point #2: Throughout the interview process, the members of Converge had rad stories to tell, but somehow the quotes never quite made the cut. So,…

Anthrax main-man Scott Ian isn’t about to quit metal and hit the after-dinner speaking circuit or anything, at least not just yet. But following a successful one-off spoken word show in London last November he has booked a 16-date spoken word tour of the UK. He’s calling it Speaking Words, because a spoken word tour…

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)…

To celebrate the Mayan apocalypse, last week Ancestors shared the first half of its end of the world playlist. Doomsday or not, we automatically scheduled the second half of the Los Angeles quintet’s picks to run this morning to help satiate this guy‘s voracious appetite for the written word. But, in the off-chance we manage…

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… “We have to raise hell, man,” Jake Hamer chides his wavering rock n’ roll brethren early on in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s 1988 let’s-give-the-fucking-PRMC-something-to-really-fear barnburner The Scream. “It’s our sacred duty….

Vit kill.  Probably not literally, but who knows?  Their brand of grueling harshitude is just about my favorite kind of ear-hate:  a doomy churn filled with motion and eventful anarchy, a corpse-painted wretch that forgoes all amusical mopiness in favor of mounting, forboding horror.  Fans of genre-shunting black mood enhancement take heed.  Vit are shuffling bleakly…

On the surface, the name Phil Lawvere might not mean a whole lot. But if you take a root around your record collection, the importance of Lawvere’s contribution to the world of metal becomes pretty evident, pretty quickly. As the man who painted the covers to such classics as Endless Pain, Pleasure to Kill, Terrible…