Interviews

All of a sudden thrash’s heyday—it’s nascence—has inspired a bunch of books. Bazillion Points of Light’s Murder in the Front Row provided a photographic document of the California scene that started in L.A. with Metallica and Slayer and then blossomed into something amazing in the Bay Area shortly thereafter. Now UK author Neil Daniels offers…

Witchsorrow’s sophomore album will be ripe for picking come the end of May. This is exciting news for doom heads. But what’s that you say, the timing could be better? The British trio’s Sabbath/Vitus morbido-doom doesn’t really make for a summer record, right? Those who think that crestfallen pessimism and slo-mo riff ‘n’ dirge was…

British legends Paradise Lost will release their thirteenth album on Tuesday, the latest entry in a discography that is quickly approaching a quarter-century worth of releases. To celebrate this achievement, we asked guitarist Greg Mackintosh to a pick a non-PL record that related in some way to each of the thirteen full-length PL records that…

Last week, I interviewed one half of Calgary’s Mares of Thrace – the singing/guitar playing half, Therese Lanz – about a bunch of stuff that didn’t really have anything to do with the band or their upcoming release (next week!) on Sonic Unyon Metal, The Pilgrimage. This week, I offer this chat with drummer Stefani…

Orange Goblin’s appetite for ale is the stuff of legend. When the Deciblog caught up with them prior to the long-awaited release of Eulogy for the Damned, frontman Ben Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, drummer Christ Turner and guitarist Joe Hoare were piecing together the making of an album that was recorded over nine weekend sessions….

Speaking to Terrorizer frontman Anthony “Wolf” Rezhawk just before comeback LP Hordes of Zombies dropped, there was a lot that needed thrashing out. Firstly, there was the prospect of the Californian grind crew getting back together again after founding member Jesse Pintado’s death in 2006. Also, drummer Pete “Commando” Sandoval’s well-publicized back trouble, which has…

If you root around the internet for about three-and-a-half seconds, you can find all sorts of info on Calgary’s doom-y, sludge-y, math-y metallic duo, Mares of Thrace. Most of that will pertain to the band being comprised of two women – drummer Stefani MacKichan and guitarist/vocalist Thérèse Lanz – and all that clappity-clap about hot(test)…

The uncharacteristically warm winter that we just witnessed on the East Coast may have masked it, but summer is only weeks away from another triumphant return. And accompanying that inevitable reappearance, of course, will be staples like baseball, grilling and the beach. While the upcoming Torche album could serve as a perfect complement to any…

It’s possible Scott Kelly doesn’t sleep. Between his solo work, projects like Shrinebuilder and the untouchable legacy of Neurosis, you could rest a battleship on his laurels. But the man seems to never tire, with something new always around the bend. And to keep his fans in the loop with tours, releases and whatever else…

What is the Deathhammer? Bob Bagchus: Deathhammer represents the book of death metal. Our view on real death metal. It’s like the rules of what real death metal was supposed to be. Death metal was supposed to be hard, raw, dirty, creepy, dark and brutal to the bone. Music to be scared of. Just listen…

Just rocking up at ANTHRAX‘s recent London show to talk about comic book movies and assorted off-topic horseshit, we didn’t expect to have a video camera following us downstairs, backstage, our every move as we squeezed our wheasing, bloated selves onto a sofa to catch 20 minutes with the band’s commanding officer, Scott Ian. But…

The eponymous antihero of the Troma Entertainment joint Mr. Bricks: A Heavy Metal Murder Musical awakens from a night of hot carnal action to find his comely young sweetheart missing and a bullet lodged in his forehead. His reaction is a bit unorthodox: He breaks into song…and then starts cracking skulls with his kiln-fired namesake,…

** Writer, director and videographer Jeff Speed discusses the finer aspects of Municipal Waste’s “Fatal Feast” video and his affinity for ’80s sci-horror. How did you find the location? It’s pretty unique to film a metal video on the set of an old television series, especially one as cult as Firefly. Jeff Speed: I’ve actually…

Trevor de Brauw is a busy man. Besides his gig as a member of the mighty Pelican, the guitarist is also a publicist, prolific tweeter (@trevordebrauw) and party to several side projects (Chord, Let’s Pet, Bee Control). And, lest we forget to mention, he’s also got the “solo artist” thing going, as evidenced by the…

How would you separate [id] from Eclipse as a musical statement? Cut from the same cloth or something else entirely?Marc Okubo: I feel that Eclipse is our strongest release to date. We have matured with our songwriting and our performing. Periphery’s Misha Mansoor helped write and produce the album and I couldn’t be more excited…

Rot of any description isn’t the sort of thing that comes to mind when you think of Cancun. But even dudes living life by the beach, surrounded by fluorescent coloured drinks, bronzed locals and tourist eye candy aren’t immune from becoming obsessed with death metal and grindcore, dedicating one’s life to the noise and kicking…

Sure, Meshuggah releasing its seventh full-length on Tuesday was an event in and of itself. But what has gotten somewhat lost amidst the furor is that, for the quintet, this year marks a quarter century of polyrhythms, polymeters and, of course, polytours. To celebrate both achievements, we enlisted the help of some of the many…

As above, so below. Through his work with EyeHateGod, Outlaw Order, Arson Anthem, and The Guilt of… Decibel readers have long known Mike IX Williams as one of extreme music’s most distinctive, subversive and iconoclastic voices. Less attention has been paid, however, to Williams’ similarly idiosyncratic and visionary literary output, including his excellent collection of…

When ENSLAVED‘s Grutle Kjellsson and Cato Bekkevold go fishing they don’t fuck around. It’s really not like going down the pond chasing blue gills or Tommy cats; in Norway, even the trout are built super-hench. You might have caught some footage of them catching alligator gar in Texas a few years ago, but you’ll definitely…

It’s only fitting that on the eve of Metal Blade—the home of metal legends like Cannibal Corpse, King Diamond and Gwar—stepping out of its comfort zone to release the new Astra record, we’ll now go consecutive weeks mentioning Mahavishnu Orchestra. You see, to celebrate the upcoming release of the San Diego quintet’s sophomore effort (which…

** Fear Factory’s The Industrialist is out June 5, 2012 on Candlelight Records. We spoke to frontman Burton C. Bell about the record’s storyline. “I am a being… My existence has value… My purpose right now is to relate my witness, without any bitterness or partiality, the motives of my present reality.” We can only…

http://vimeo.com/37255948 Andrew Bonazelli is one of those shitheads who in school would do his homework on Friday so he had his weekend free while you were happy to sweat it out until 1st Period Monday. But that sort of ridiculous work ethic is how the man can be Decibel‘s managing editor, blog guru, social media…

There could have been no better producer for We Are Knuckle Dragger‘s debut album than Steve Albini

On Friday we brought you the minutes from an interview we were lucky enough to conduct with Triptykon frontman, Celtic Frost/HellHammer mainman Tom G. Warrior while he was on tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy. Warrior seemed pretty ecstatic just to have the opportunity to play music, and that’s something that…

Tom G. Warrior was opting out of the press circuit while haring through the UK on last week’s Defenders of the Faith tour with Cannibal Corpse, Enslaved and Job for a Cowboy, but the Triptykon mainman granted the Deciblog an audience. Of all the times we’ve been in the company of Warrior since the Celtic…

If you read Shane Mehling’s review in our March issue, you’ll know that we—along with most of the interwebs—hold Pallbearer’s recent debut in rather high regard. While it’s way too early to say whether Sorrow and Extinction will go on to be talked about in the same breath as a Calculating Infinity or Remission, the…

Dr. Vivek Venkatesh’s office at Concordia University in Montreal is almost certainly unique in the world of academia. There probably aren’t many professors out there, for instance, who mix and match All Pigs Must Die prints and Latin salsa posters or keep vinyl collections as close at hand as research materials. And if any Decibel…

In terms of being recognized as a major force in the world of extreme music, Finland can often be overshadowed by its Scandanavian neighbors Norway and Sweden. Although the Land of a Thousand Lakes has its fair share of metal stalwarts both past and present—Sentenced, Children of Bodom and Finntroll, to name a few—it’s fair…

“When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” Nietzsche promised in Beyond Good and Evil, but Mr. Philosophize with a Hammer never did recommend any appropriate mood music for making goo-goo eyes at the infernal regions. Which is why it is such a great thing for we lovers of darkness…

OK, so there is a cynical body of thought that might consider black metal as a live performance artform and argue that the genre is best served by careful cellaring. Like it’s a take-home experience, one to be kept in the studio/bedroom, only ever to be enjoyed on record. Of course when we say “enjoyed”…