Now that sales of their actual music have gone in the crapper, bands are continuing to find new and bizarre ways to help fans squander their hard-earned cash. KISS were onto this like three decades ago, but it’s taken awhile for some of their contemporaries (and even newer bands) to cotton on to the fact…

Sure, Twitter has more than its share of detractors. And it isn’t as if the revulsion to 140 characters or less is completely baseless — though Christ knows you all could be a little less self-righteous about it! (Pro tip: approach it like Sudoku.) Nevertheless, ye holdouts amongst the Decibel readership are depriving yourselves of…

Morbid Angel are playing a shopping mall tonight. It’s OK, though, ‘cos it’s not like they are opening it, or performing exclusively for the switching on of the festive lights. That sorta shit’s demeaning and they’ve already had a tough year of it. There weren’t too many organs of record with their ass in the…

We know who coined the term ‘blast beat’ or ‘blastbeat’, but which group was the first to employ the technique now synonymous with extreme metal drumming? Now that is a question I bet even a TakeLessons drum teacher wouldn’t be able to answer. Was it grindcore legends Napalm Death? Was it crossover heroes D.R.I.? Or…

There are many different kinds of giveaways but in my opinion it doesn’t get much better than this. In fact I’m hoping no one wins and I get this by default. The new remixed, remastered, definitely definitive way you are supposed to hear Coalesce’s masterpiece Give Them Rope is coming out one final time (probably)…

Depending on your outlook on album art, it’s either an outmoded concept destined for the trash heap or a mandatory connection between the visual and audial. There have been some creative examples of album art in years past, but it’s a bit of a head-scratcher when two bands of underground stature end up with very…

As evidenced by our “Cutest Kitties in Metal” article back in the December 2009 issue, we here at Decibel are staunch friends of the feline. Sure, goats are semi-regularly sacrificed at Decibel HQ whenever we need a little bump in subscription numbers, but no cats are ever harmed in the making of our hallowed mag….

Seven psalms of uncompromising Satanik supplication. That is how the press release accompanying In Nomine Odium describes the long-awaited new album from French black metallers Haemoth. Well…here’s hoping Old Split-Foot is prepared for a cacophonous cauldron of churning fuzz, pitch-black ambience, and way-more-than-two-minutes-hate. Hoo boy. Stellar stuff, but not exactly easy listening — check out…

It was the other week at Candlefest in London that reminded the Deciblog that Dave Hunt, vocalist and master of ceremonies for Birmingham/Orange County(!) duo Anaal Nathrakh, had dutifully filled an optional extra on an email interview. It was right around the time when Hunt was mooting the idea that the Deciblog had imbibed amphetamines—which…

What do you think separates One for Sorrow from Across the Dark?Niilo Sevänen: The core of the music is still the same, but we don’t want to repeat ourselves and make the same album again and again. I think we’ve always managed to evolve and bring some new twists to our music. This time the…