Metal

We’re inching closer to the U.S. release of Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult—Restored, Expanded & Definitive Edition and to celebrate, the first 500 pre-orders of the book will now receive a FREE 3-inch x 4-inch woven patch of the incredible cover art courtesy of Pull the Plug Patches (while supplies last)! Pre-order your copy

Greetings, Decibel readers! Hope you had a happy Halloween. I hope you watched a horror movie. I hope the kids who arrived at your door had a higher proportion of scary costumes to cute or “clever” ones. I got together with my trivia group for our normal Tuesday-night outing with my makeup on from The

Today we celebrate the official release of The Scott Burns Sessions: A Life in Death Metal 1987 – 1997, a massive oral history of the acclaimed Morrisound recording career of iconic death metal producer and engineer Scott Burns. And Decibel is proud to share the second and final excerpt from the 460-page hardcover book authored by

Are you fan of classic heavy metal that sparks the imagination and sends you to an epic land of riffs and soaring vocals? Then you’ll be a fan of the new song and video from Icarus Witch. “Shadowchaser” comes from the band’s new album, No Devil Lived On, out now via Cleopatra Records. According to bassist

According to Merriam-Webster, “ophiolatry” means “the worship of or attribution of divine or sacred nature to snakes.” You can certainly feel the snakes of death metal surround you as you listen to “Abyss of Alienation” from Brazil’s Ophiolatry, featuring hypnotic riffs, brutal vocals and crushing rhythms reminiscent of Hate Eternal, Nile and Steve Tucker-era Morbid Angel. The song

When I was asked to listen to the reissue of Motörhead’s Another Perfect Day for its 40th anniversary (the album was released in May 1983, and the reissue is out tomorrow), my initial response was: why? Most Motörhead album rankings have it at the middle or the bottom of the pile. With the exception of

The “tipos” of Mexi-merican brutal death/grind veterans Rottenness don’t know how to sit still. Infamous for giving the world these charming album covers from back in the day and formerly being powered by the spoils of Latin pop singer Ricky Martin’s labour,  the band continues to fire on all cylinders by adding more activity to

Photo courtesy of Sentient Ruin Abyssal Rift have just unveiled a track from their forthcoming album Exptirpartion Dirge, out December 1 via Sentient Ruin. The debut album from this heavy, dismal, unrelenting Ohio project is gonna be a great way to end the year. Some of the best death metal is experimental but still straightforward, striking

Regulars trained by years of scrutinizing tiny bits of pixels may have noticed something slightly different in today’s post. Oh yes, for all you life-long junkies of button mashing that just cannot get enough of the digital world, your ultra-nerd frenemies at Kill Screen are happy to introduce Side Quest, occasional editorial DLC that will

photo by Ellie Alonzo It’s often been said that tough times inspire great music, especially great protest music, and Yatsu are a great example to help corroborate this. The world is on fire, and these guys don’t mince any words when talking about it. Or rather, furiously screaming about it on their explosive new album

Back in 2019, a shadowy figure named Våndarr released a self-titled three-track demo under the project name Cirkeln. After that demo, Cirkeln released an EP and two full-length records nodding to Bathory’s genre-spawning influences. In barely four years since, Våndarr has slashed his mark on the crowded battlefield of solo black metal. Like an arcane

When discussing game-changing late-’00s grindcore platters, conversation usually gets a bit awkward, people quickly trying to piece together Pig Destroyer’s discography in their head, wondering what year that band’s thrash started being more noteworthy than their grind. Sure, on a smaller, regional scale, bands were still blasting with as much passion as ever, but the

Blind Guardian’s journey to their fifth album, Imaginations From the Other Side, wasn’t all that different from most bands of their era. Formed as Lucifer’s Heritage in 1984, the quartet—featuring bassist/vocalist Hansi Kürsch, guitarists André Olbrich and Marcus Siepen, and drummer Thomen Stauch—bent the tenets of speed metal to their Teutonic will on two demos,

Photo by Elena Solotroff We’re gonna go ahead and ease you into the Halloween insanity (fireworks are part of the celebrations up here in Canada) with some dark ambient noise courtesy of Bloodyminded/Anatomy Of Habit founder Mark Solotroff. Solotroff is also the founder/owner of the BloodLust! label, purveyors of industrial electronic noise since 1995, and today

You might have gotten the impression that we like the work of one Tom G. Warrior at Decibel Magazine and you would be absolutely correct. From his pioneering work in Celtic Frost to genre-boundary obliteration in Triptykon to his early days with Hellhammer, Warrior’s music has been featured frequently on the site, which is why we’re stoked

Lace up those white high-tops and battle vests: it’s time for some old-school style thrash courtesy of Midwest wrecking crew Degrave in the form of their new album, Volume. Their third album since debut Full Tilt in 2017, Volume rips like it was performed by a well-oiled machine who knows exactly what they like: Slayer, D.R.I. and Megadeth with a dash of

Tom Gabriel Fischer helped build the foundations of extreme metal in the early ’80s and has never stopped creating or innovating. Fischer’s canonical metal works are well-known: the Hall of Fame-certified Celtic Frost masterpieces Morbid Tales and To Mega Therion and Hellhammer’s Apocalyptic Raids (Frost’s Into the Pandemonium would also be there were it not

You got five minutes? What about four and a half? That’s all you need to enjoy Bleach Everything‘s All Alone in Dirt, the new EP from Richmond, Virginia’s favored sludgy hardcore punk(-ish) band. Like we said, the EP is four-and-half minutes long and contains four songs; within those limitations, Bleach Everything manage to cover a pretty damn

Metal fans have used many superlatives to praise Mercyful Fate’s Hall of Fame-certified debut, Melissa. Still, few have discussed how different the album was from everything else at the time. In the early ’80s, shorter, faster, and louder was the rule. Venom’s Welcome To Hell was a caustic punk album about Satan. Hellhammer embraced barbaric

This past week saw some crazy news and killer new releases hit the intertubes. From Dream Theater regaining a founding member to The Obsessed dropping a cool new single, a buncha shit went down. As such, we’re taking the time this week to update our Top Tracks of the Week playlist with some of the