Interviews

How did you get past the personal and professional challenges that faced you while writing and recording Black Rivers Flow?Alex Lackner: With everything that was being thrown at us during the process of making this record many would seem to fail. We didn’t even allow that to be an option. To start with, the whole…

We have been begging Virginia’s Drugs of Faith to release a full-length for years. Seriously, the grinding, rocking, absolutely devastating trio, led by “The Grindfather” Richard Johnson (Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Enemy Soil), have put out just enough songs to keep us salivating while never giving us what we really want. But now Corroded, the band’s debut…

You write long songs. At what point do you go, “OK, I’m done. The song is complete.”? M. Lehto: A Collapse of Faith and also the previous album The Womb of Primordial Nature have long songs on them, no question about it. It’s something that worked for me naturally as I usually like to make…

Scrawling out autographs in lines of hemoglobin and plasma script isn’t necessarily a requirement to land your band’s record in the top five of Decibel‘s annual year-end list, but take it from Watain (#2, Lawless Darkness), it sure as hell doesn’t hurt your chances any to open a vein or two. “The final goal has…

Like most pioneers of form or style, Andrew W., founder and sole proprietor of Aversionline, has never really quite received his due as one of the hands-down finest, most incisive writers on hardcore, metal, and its sundry cross-pollinations. Yet on the eve of its eleventh anniversary, his webzine-cum-mp3 blog nevertheless remains one of the primary electronic watering holes…

.neon has been ready for more than a year now. What took so long?Herbst: There were some problems between Prophecy and my old label. But fortunately all turned out to be cool in the end. You know, it’s very frustrating, when you work so hard on something and you simply won’t get anything back. I…

Since we do more interviews than we ever care to admit (transcription is the devil!), we figured we’d open the journalistic kimono to our Facebook and Twitter friends/haters when the opportunity to interview Chicago tech-death specialists Veil of Maya presented itself.  We always ask the same damned questions. “When did you form?”, “Why did Johnny…

Regular Decibel readers have long been aware of the charms, brilliant hot hot chaotic post-hardcore jams, and edifying intellectual aspects of Look What I Did. (Who could not love a band that titles an album Atlas Drugged then plumps it with songs like “My Girlfriend, Leo Strauss,” “Pussy Comitatus,” “Jekyll Island Fiat Scratch”?!) Those who don’t…

Former Arkansas governor, presidential candidate, and current Huckabee talk show host Mike Huckabee is Fox News Channel’s first (and possibly last) “Doom Metal Expert”. No shit! Decibel doesn’t even have a resident “Doom Metal Expert” — well, Scott Koerber and EIC Mr. Mudrian have the right credentials, but have never self-proclaimed “I am a Doom…

What is black metal?Carnifex: Nefarium’s (Myspace link) primary thought concerns the communicative aspect, with the idea that a black metal listener could understand a message of hate and anger towards those elements that can be [considered] personal. In an apathetic and driven world, powered by hypocrisy, we seek personal illumination to give the most adequate…

For those of us who prefer our Halloween more Samhain than All Saints’ Day it isn’t always easy to wade through the morass of dark culture in search of the elusive story/record/film that is both sinister and smart. Disappointments abound. So when Decibel caught wind of a discerning metalhead launching his own upscale horror publication,…

Bonded By YoYo from Shawn Macomber on Vimeo. Decibel caught up with Alex Lee of Bonded By Blood at the Hostile City Death Fest to chat up the amiable young shredder about his rumored alternate career plan should this whole thrash metal revival thing prove fleeting: Professional yo-yo master. As you’ll see, it sounds kind…

The Light… was written in an entirely different way than March…, and there’s a healthy four year period between the releases, so a lot of time was spent rehearsing and generally getting the feel for what we wanted the second album to be like. Most of the debut album was written in a relatively short period in 2005, whereas the The Light… songs have taken form organically in the rehearsal room in a real band setting, which I think makes the songs more real and solid.