5. Praia Boa Viagem Praia da Boa Viagem is the beach located in the most fashionable district of Recife, capital of the state of Pernanbuco, situated in the Northeastern coast of Brazil. The beaches there are beautiful and the weather is always nice and warm, inviting swimmers and surfers to get in the water—but don’t…

Being the senior member (in age, that is) of the Decibel contribs, any time anything “old school” comes around, it frequently gets kicked our way. And we’re totally OK with that. Especially when we get to shine a little light on a burgeoning metal fest in Baltimore that’s all about celebrating old-school metal. Defenders of…

Upstart British death metallers Vallenfyre will be new to most, but the group’s membership is as seasoned as they come. Featuring Paradise Lost’s Gregor Mackintosh on vocals/guitar, Paradise Lost drummer Adrian Erlandsson, My Dying Bride’s Hamish Glencross on guitar, and Doom bassist Scoot, Vallenfyre have only issued the Desecration / Iconoclast 7-inch to date. Limited…

This is some pretty hefty call-and-response type shit going on here, so it you’ll thank me in advance for not yammering on with no end in sight about how great Tom G. Warrior is, about how Celtic Frost and Hellhammer‘s collective legacy is responsible for some of the most essential records in metal, a whole…

The Sammy Hagar outfit encourages manscaping. I thought I’d get a head start on my Halloweening this weekend, so I began looking around the web for costume ideas. That, coupled with pumpkin beers and the Misfits discography, led me to seek out what America thinks qualifies as a heavy metal costume. The Dallas Costume Shop…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love; stuff that’s essential listening for students of extreme metal that you’ve probably never heard of; stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall Of Fame for.  This time around,…

Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of Cliff Burton’s death. Metallica were traveling through Sweden on the Damage Inc. tour in support of Master of Puppets, when the band’s bus crashed just outside Ljungby, killing Burton. He was 24. Sometimes it’s easy—perfectly natural, too—to over-egg it and go nuts when evaluating the dead’s music or art….

According to the calendar hanging on the wall about two feet to the left of my bulbous head, today is Rosh Hashanah. In technical terms, this means today is the first of the high holidays, or Yamin Noraim, celebrated ten days before Yom Kippur and is observed on the first two days of Tishrei, the…

09/23/2011, Terminal 5, NYC Is this exciting, or what? Seeing Queens perform their self-titled was cool, but I never, ever thought I’d get to see Kyuss…or, uh, anything like Kyuss, either. When I found out about the NY date, as Decibel’s self-appointed toke-master general, I felt it was my duty to attend. In addition, I…

I distinctly recall the first time I heard Ministry’s The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste.