Every other Friday, Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases. Waldo here, and while there’s PLENTY of new metal releases to hate on coming up in the next few weeks, your old feathered friend is going to turn DOWN the hate…

Anyone want to add a circle and line over my man K.K. Downing because he has left Judas Priest before their fake farewell tour. One of the band’s founding members has decided to hang up his flying V after 40 goddamn years, citing internal problems with “elements of the band” and management. I’m not sure…

Discovery Channel has Shark Week. Decibel Magazine has Stream Week. We’ve ‘streamiered’ (copyright, please) Septicflesh’s “A Great Mass of Death” (Season of Mist), In Solitude’s “Serpents Are Rising” (Metal Blade), and now we’re saving the best — Decibel Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian has officially screamed the following platitude while standing on his desk both hands outstretched…

You ever heard “Piano Metal”? No? Well it fucking sucks.

Almost every band has that album: you know, the critically and/or commercially reviled dud in an otherwise passable-to-radical back catalog. Well, every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and said dud is, in fact, The…

You know, it wasn’t just me that went apeshit over Septicflesh’s previous album, Communion. Yes, I thought Sumerian Demons sucked, so going from suck-a-puck (it’s hockey playoff time) to rule-the-school (it’s exam time) is quite an accomplishment for the longstanding Greeks. Decibel contributor, The Mountain Goats mainman, and Stephen Colbert-approved John Darnielle also felt the…

There are probably more than a few Decibel readers who, like me, have never seen an episode of American Idol. Just never got around to it, and it’s a good thing, too, because it saved us the trouble & heartbreak of boycotting the show when Steven Tyler, like, totally sold out, man and, perhaps tempted…

The retro metal thing hasn’t played itself out quite yet. Sweden’s In Solitude (interviewed in the upcoming dB #80) are, perhaps like countrymen Ghost and Enforcer, on the forefront of the throwback-yet-modern sound emanating from the greatest metal country on planet Earth (my determination; feel free to dispute). Sure, the name In Solitude sounds like…

Photo: Andrew Savulich You’re probably already aware of the Decibel staff’s somewhat unnaturally obsessive love of baseball. On one side, you have Albert and the Phillies; on the other side, you have Andrew and the Mets. When these teams square off, run for cover. And don’t come out until the following day, when the victor…

OK, I’ve never owned a vest. Not sure why. When I was young, I remember older kids around the neighborhood (we’re talking Flint, Michigan here) would sport denim vests proudly over the top of name-a-‘80s-metal-band-or-cola-here t-shirt. It was their uniform. Even in mid-August, they’d walk around in their denim vests (hair picks in the back…