Vastum

Vastum axewoman Leila Abdul-Rauf on her fifth solo album, Calls From A Seething Edge, and the non-linear process of writing experimental music as opposed to death metal.

All ticket options for Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest at the Fillmore Philly on April 4-5, 2025 are officially on sale. Don’t wait!

Exodus performs all of their landmark Bonded by Blood album and Dismember deliver a special full set of their classic Like an Ever Flowing Stream and WAY more at Metal & Beer Fest Philly 2025!

Hear and acquire this flexi disc single from Vastum featuring an exclusive new song, available as part of the Decibel Flexi Series. Hurry, quantities are extremely limited!

Pretty soon it’ll be time to pre-emptively reveal our Top 40 albums of the year. But before any of you finalize your own list, keep coming here every Friday to see who shuffles in at the last minute.

Get your deluxe Decibel subscription by Monday, November 6 to obtain this HIGHLY LIMITED flexi disc single from death metal deviants Vastum

We have only 100 copies available of Vastum‘s new LP, Inward To Gethsemane, on exclusive murky Gray & Black Marbled vinyl. Don’t blow it.

Hear three death metal D-beatdowns form Negative Prayer, featuring former and current members of Poison Idea, Vastum, Funebrarum and VoidCeremony.

Hear another new banger from deeply deranged death-crust purveyors Acephalix before their long-awaited new LP, Theothanatology, drops on September 30.

Hear Oakland black/death dealers Ulthar deliver their sophomore LP Providence in full a day ahead of its release on 20 Buck Spin

Ulthar offer savage, inverted black/death metal on “Asymmetrical Warfare.”

When Denver’s TRVE Brewing celebrates its anniversary every June, you can bet that owner Nick Nunns does it up right, putting on a weekend filled with metal bands and special one-off beers.

Among 2015’s other contenders, five curried nearly enough votes to make it onto our list… but only nearly.  Does that mean we shouldn’t spill some love-ink for them?  Hell no!  Here’s the five records that tied for #41 on our Top 40 Albums of 2015.

Hole Below
Knuckle-dragging workout anthems for people who walk on ceilings
dB Rating: 8/10

Bay Area heavyweights Vastum have detonated a new album every two years, and Hole Below is their exceptional, must-hear third.

Until interviewing Bay Area old-school nasties Vastum for dB #82, I thought metal’s attitude to man’s carnal desires extended just to the more is more philosophy of take it when you can get it, and like Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach was probably right when he said that sex addiction is one of the healthier addictions,…

Hammers of Misfortune are one of the most slept-on bands to be offering hauté metal compositions that’d sate vinyl gourmands’ appetite for a more adult alternative to power metal and something a bit more compositionally sophisticated than NWOBHM’s greasy denim bark. Like something that’s got all metal’s histrionic chutzpah but doesn’t require an ad hoc…