News

Brooklyn-based doomsters Fin’Amor, which translated to ‘courtly love’, were formed in 2008 to bring down the world and make its citizens perpetually glum. That is to say: No Fun. No Smiles. No Happy. No Sunrises. Along with Fin’Amor’s doom bringing they’re also taking in goth, progressive music, and death metal. Essentially, fans of My Dying Bride, Draconian, and Swallow the Sun are in for a true (and rare) American treat.

Screaming Banshee hail from Rome, home of Fleshgod Apocalypse and Hour of Penance, and they ply an admirable racket that draws from all kinds of deathly styles from melodic and technical to old-school and raw.

Hailing from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, progressive power thrashers Anuryzm are set to release their second full-length on June 15th, All is Not For All. I got in touch with guitarist John Bakhos and vocalist Nadeem Michel Bibby in order to explore my on-going curiosity about metal from places not normally associated with metal and to discuss the band’s forthcoming album.

Ex-Corn On Macabre frontman Billups Allen has expanded his wry, off-kilter take on our collective existence from lyrical couplets into a wonderful new novel entitled The League — almost certainly the only tale to combine a deep dive into the amateur sumo wrestling underground and a Hawaii Five-0-esque murder mystery with a bookworm romance and a Black Sabbath motif. 

Switzerland’s Ølten has one of the most entertaining bios I’ve come across in a long time. They obviously don’t need a hack like me to help, so let’s nab a couple of zingers from their various profiles on various online portals:

It’s springtime, and this means the fish are biting! If you’re an avid fisherman or fly fisher, you’re already out and have been catching fish. If you’ve never been, it’s never too late to start.

This afternoon, we continue making our own lives that much more difficult with the ongoing practice of ranking the songs that comprise some of the greatest albums of all time; albums previously inducted into our untouchable Hall of Fame. Today we explore Life of Agony’s classic debut River Runs Red (originally inducted way back in issue #7, which you can buy here).

Doom may not be “stimulating” in the same ways as say grindcore, but that doesn’t mean the former is any less adept at meeting the definition than the latter–they just succeed in different ways.  Take Monolord.  The trio’s tunes may not never be classified as anything close to pharmaceutical grade amphetamines, but they’re nevertheless replete with riffs that rouse and get the blood pumping.  On the topic of stimulants, the Swedes decided to base their playlist around one of the more mild–and most popular–ones:  coffee.

One of the most intriguing post-hardcore bands to emerge in the 90s was Craw. However, their first three records — considered by many to be American underground classics — have been out of print for more than a decade.

Miami four-piece Maruta are back together after a (thankfully) brief two-year time-out. They clearly did not come back to start sucking.

Bummer break-up news: German black metal institution Bethlehem are calling it quits… kind of. 

It only makes sense that a brutal death metal outfit called Dysentery would have an album called Internal Devastation. But that was four years ago. 

Hey, you got your Sabbath-y math rock in my Neurosis-esque epic doom-sludge!

Well, you got your Neurosis-esque epic doom-sludge in my Sabbath-y math rock!

Shades of the infamous walkman crash Reeses Peanut Butter Cups commercial of the 1980s, this is how I imagine the first encounter between members of The Ditch and the Delta must have gone down. 

On April 21, 2015, the Bay Area metal scene—and the underground metal scene as a whole—lost a prolific and talented artist named Drew Cook, guitarist for Oakland-based bands Dimesland and Wild Hunt.

King Parrot don’t care that you’re snappy dresser, or smart as a whip, or have enough money to buy pussy for an eternity. They’re a grindcore band—actually more than that—with an all-fun, no bullshit disposition.

Lucifer‘s debut album Lucifer I is a must-hear, and you’ll be the first to find out why.

Looking to combine his love of distortion and bug bites (and paintball!), is Alberta-based promoter Tyson Travnik, the mastermind behind Farmageddon Open Air, an annual gathering 45 miles outside of Edmonton, near Riley, Alberta. Two-thousand-fifteen will be the third year of his fest and it promises to be the biggest yet 

The metal fiends at independent film production company FreqsTV were cool enough to ask our editor-in-chief, Albert Mudrian, to participate in a pretty damn wide-reaching documentary short (for just a seven-minute run-time)!

Clouds Collide is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Chris Pandolfo of Allentown Pennsylvania, and has been steadily showing tremendous promise when it comes to the soaring, epic “metalgaze” pioneered by Alcest and made popular by Deafheaven. The great thing about Clouds Collide is that Pandolfo has used those influences in a constructive way rather then simply imitate, a great example being the 2013 debut full-length Until the Wind Stops Blowing…, a heartfelt tribute to his late mother that was equal parts agony, reflected in the searing black metal passages, and wistfulness, heard in moments that dared to approach the majesty of Ride.

In his equal parts bewitching and harrowing memoir Punk Elegies: True Tales of Death Trip Kids, Wrongful Sex, and Trial by Angel Dust former Slash Magazine mainstay Allan MacDonell delivers a gorgeous, iconoclastic, wonderfully actualized, deliciously literary encapsulation of the 1970s Hollywood punk scene. 

To celebrate the book’s release MacDonell was kind enough to send this exclusive playlist along to Decibel…

No, this doesn’t sound like Prong. Sometimes the (labored) headlines just write themselves around here. Vancouver progressive quartet Neck of the Woods mean business. Operative word: mean.

“Once this song was written, we had a much more clear idea of where the album was headed.  A more grimy, riffy direction,” says Vattnet Viskar’s Nick Thornbury to Decibel.

So, like, yeah, I missed some stuff, but release dates shift around and stuff.  The new Noisem, Blossoming Decay, is really good. I didn’t get a shot to tear apart the new Six Feet Under.

June’s Decibel features our third Agoraphobic Nosebleed flexi, “The Honkey Reduction EP, ” a ripping re-recording of four tracks from their first two full-lengths.

Need a fix of heavy/proto metal before our Pentagram rehearsal flexi drops in the July issue?

Four tapes essential for enduring the impending sunny weather.

Master mechanic/goddess of metal Mary Bielich of Derketa (day job: Honda automotive technician) has plenty to say about ripping things up on stage, on tour and under the hood. Take notes.

Helmed by a fellow who goes by the name of Outre-Tombe, Akitsa is one of many bands to help create the fertile Québécois black metal underground that you see before you today. It just so happens Akitsa has a new full-length album Grands Tyrans coming out – its fifth, to be exact – this coming June 2 on New York’s great avant-garde label Hospital Productions.

…according to Variety. It appears they failed to take our casting advice from TEN YEARS AGO. The issue’s sold out, so for your viewing pleasure, we resurrect “Cast Iron: Decibel thinks these Hollywood stars are ready for their grim and frostbitten close-up.” 

“I fucking hate metal band performance videos,” says Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh (also of Vallenfyre), “so when I got told that we needed to do one I was obviously annoyed but then came the idea to do a performance video of utter misery. The slowest song we have ever recorded.