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Autopsy Exhumed Chimaira Revocation Solitude Aeturnus Cynic
Black Metal, Blood and... Ballads?
Watain Their most daring album yet
Dave Brockie’s
Russian Attack
Battlecross Man's Gin Havok Mammoth Grinder Pest also
sep 2013 // No. 107
extremely e xt r e m e
September 2013 [T107] decibelmagazine.com
upfront 10 metal muthas:
matthew widener Liberteer and the pursuit of happiness
12 grinding it out Personal gut-check 13 brewtal truth Hall of foam 14 cry now No sleazy way out 16 live review:
the 2013 decibel magazine tour Sophmore slump this
18 studio reports Cynic focus on their third odyssey
20 lycus Location, location, location 22 morne Power of the riff 24 battlecross Disturb your enthusiasm 26 havok Bloodily bonded busybodies 28 man’s gin He’ll drink your milkshake 30 mammoth grinder Unsettling down 32 pest Crowning on the throne 34 ramming speed Collision, of course
66
cover story
Watain
Let them prey
features
36 call & response:
chimaira
Passing out of relevance 38 exhumed Liberty and death metal 40 autopsy Art of the unspeakable 42 revocation Just fracking around 44 q & a: phil anselmo If we’re the whores, when do we get paid?
52 dave brockie in russia Just what is war good for? 54 the decibel hall
of fame: solitude aeternus Melodic towering doom with a tinge of… punk?
96 south pole dispatch Coming never to a Decibel near you
reviews 78 lead review Seventeen years after their lone misfire, Carcass plant the exclamation point on an otherwise incredible career 79 album reviews Records that didn’t get axed at the last minute so we could troll you with more questionable ads, including Deeds of Flesh, Body Stuff, Norma Jean and Mammoth Grinder 94 sub:culture Customs and discourtesies
cover and contents photo by Ester Segarra Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright© 2013 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All issn 1557-2137 | usps 023142 rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.
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extremely extreme
September 2013 [T107]
Publi s her
Alex Mulcahy
Editor- In-Chief
Albert Mudrian
albert@redflagmedia.com
managing Editor Andrew
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Cr eative di r ector
jamie@redflagmedia.com
ar t di rector
Bruno Guerreiro
Jamie Leary
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Co ntro lle r
Nicole Jarman
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Patty Moran
cu s tomer se rvice
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just words
may remember my Watain from the editor live review from our August 2007 issue [#34]. Okay, no one except former Customer Service guru Mark Evans remembers that review—and that’s only because that show took place the night his Cows Orphan’s Tragedy shirt was officially retired. This was only the fourth gig of Watain’s first U.S. tour, so most promoters were unaware of the band’s propensity for depositing buckets of animal blood into the audience. Fortunately I was, so I positioned us near the back half of the club, at what I thought was a safe distance. Apparently, I underestimated some Swedish dude’s arm. A sound best described as a “thwack” quickly followed a warm sensation across my face just before a now a “tie-dyed” Cows shirt came into my blurry view. And then, finally, the stench. Within two seconds, Watain had successfully assaulted all of our senses—because Mark actually got that shit in his mouth. Undeterred by the barnyard money shot, I grabbed Mark and toxically waltzed through Watain’s opener—only because Nachtmystium’s Blake Judd had impaired my judgment with shots of something prior to Watain’s set—before we rushed to the men’s room by their second song to stop the spread of mad everything’s disease. But nothing was going to save Mark’s shirt. Six years later, the Watain experience that began with animal bloodheaving now entails me personally defending their extended ballads as “the best songs they’ve ever written” while running cover story quotes declaring them “the most dangerous band in the world” from a guy who co-wrote songs on Use Your Illusion I & II. Despite chronicling Watain’s rise from the black metal underground (their sophomore LP Casus Luciferi actually cracked our first albums of the year list nearly a decade ago) via glowing reviews, multiple cover stories, a spot on the inaugural Decibel Magazine Tour, all the way through a GG Allin cover for our vaunted Flexi Series, even I don’t know exactly what to make of them at this point. And I can only assume that some metalheads averse to operating beyond self-imposed genre boundaries might sound false alarms with segments of The Wild Hunt. What I do know is that Watain are one of the most consistently unpredictable, fascinating and—if you get too close—truly dangerous bands left in extreme music. And what’s fucking trver than that? albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief
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Anthony Bartkewicz Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Shawn Bosler Brent Burton Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner John Darnielle Jerry A. Deathburger Chris Dick Sean Frasier Jeanne Fury Nick Green Joe Gross Jason Heller Jonathan Horsley Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Frank Lemke Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Kirk Miller Greg Moffitt Justin M. Norton Matt Olivo Etan Rosenbloom Scott Seward Kevin Sharp Rod Smith Zach Smith Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel Jeff Wagner Co ntr ibuting photographe rs
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Decibel subscriber service/change of address: 215.625.9850 x105 or contact@decibelmagazine.com To order by mail: Consult the subscription page To order by phone: 215.625.9850 x105 To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com VISA/MASTERCARD/DISCOVER accepted Subscribers: please alert us of any change of address 6-8 weeks before the date of your move. Decibel is not responsible or obligated to re-ship issues missed because of a move we were not informed of 6-8 weeks before the move took place. Decibel B ack Iss ues /Me rchandi se
To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright ©2013 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PR INTED IN U SA
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j a c k s ong u i ta r s . c o m
fanbase Reader of the Month
Jonathan Blandford Louisville, KY
You are gainfully employed at a private Catholic university in Louisville, KY. How do you plan to work this month’s Watain cover into the curriculum?
Ha. I don’t think my employer is going to foot the bill for an Erik Danielsson guest lecture anytime soon, nor would I want to provoke the ire of the custodial staff by getting lamb’s blood all over the dry erase boards. In all seriousness, I pride myself on being an unabashed metalhead in a profession where most people listen to jazz, classical and NPR on their office computers. I’m not a huge Mastodon fan, but I was in grad school when Leviathan came out, and for some reason I thought it would be fun to play it for a van full of colleagues—one of whom is a fairly accomplished Melville scholar—while we were en route to a conference in Chicago. They were some combination of amused and horrified, except for the Melville scholar, who, as it
6 : s e p t e m b e r 2 0 13 : d e c i b e l
turns out, is a big fan of Dio, the Scorpions and Operation: Mindcrime. For my money, though, the most literary of heavy metal bands is and will always be Iron Maiden. Sure, their “Murders in the Rue Morgue” has little to do with the Poe story (no orangutan, for starters) and their “Stranger in a Strange Land” has even less to do with the Robert Heinlein novel. On the other hand, I think they nailed “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” And I have a theory that they cribbed the plot for “The Number of the Beast” from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown. Read it and tell me I’m wrong. At said university, you’re an assistant professor in the English department. Hows are gramer?
I wouldn’t read the magazine every month if it weren’t well-written. For a bunch of drunks, you guys do all right. (If you change that to “alright” in copy-editing, I’ll know you’re slipping.) Amuse us by pitching your ideal 2014 Decibel Magazine Tour lineup.
I know you just did death and grind this year, but a Carcass/Bolt Thrower/Autopsy tour would be nifty, and would have the unshowered masses turning out in droves. To go in another direction, I’d be keen to see Down, the Melvins and Trouble share a stage. Down would draw big enough crowds to make it worth your while, and the Melvins would break up the sludgy proceedings with some of their characteristic audience-baiting oddballery. Plus, they’d be the only band of the three not playing Trouble riffs. Make it happen, Decibel.
letterbombs Maniacal Mail Chris Dick did a great job with the oral history of Metal Maniacs [Aug ’13, #106]. For the record, though, Liz Ciavarella had nothing to do with me not rehiring Katherine Ludwig. The fact of the matter was I had a wife and two babies I had to support, so I took that salary for myself, thus editing both Metal Maniacs and Modern Screen’s Country Music magazines simultaneously. Liz came later. Also, I had nothing to do with the hiring or firing of Alicia Morgan. —Mike Greenblatt I have attached the pic of the real last issue of Metal Maniacs with Kreator on the cover, dated March/ April ’09. My wife always nags me about why I save the covers of my old issues. I do it because I don’t trust my memories and want a printed reference for what was going on during those years. I saved the entire last issue of MM because it was the last issue. (I don’t think my subscription even got finished with a substitute publication!) My first issue of MM was Feb. 1992 and had all the Big Four prominently displayed along with Primus and Atheist, with Pestilence and Napalm Death in the “Thrash Report.” (Man, I feel old!) My first issue of Decibel was #3 with the formerly relevant Cradle of Filth on the cover. I’m sure somebody already pointed the slip-up out to you, but I was just so excited my magazine cover collection came in handy before the dementia set in! —Ian Heran
Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novels Black Metal, Vol. 1. and Black Metal, Vol. 2 For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com
web gems presents:
s s e f o k c u n S s o ie Symph n insane and inspired In which we recount the most comrades in blog posts of the month from our
PALMS, UNSURPRISINGLY, SOUNDS LIKE DEFTONES FRONTING ISIS This is a well-written and relatively enthusiastic review—snarkiness of the headline aside. The post is being recognized in this space because two of the three cover stories the managing editor has supplied for this magazine were on Deftones and Isis, and for very different reasons, it’s safe to say neither of them will appear on the cover again. The editor-in-chief can tell you more, but until that wonderful moment, like Kip Wingerschmidt says, “This is a moody, soulfully evocative album that creates several rather haunting moments.”
ATTILA’S CHRIS FRONZAK: HUMBLE, REALISTIC In case you missed Shane Mehling’s helpful 1 out of 10 review of Attila’s About That Life in the July issue, we’ll sum up: They fucking suck. They could be secret troll geniuses. But no—most likely, they’re simply the Limp Bizkit of deathcore, as evidenced by the T&A-drenched lyric video to “Break Shit.” Either way, regarding frontman Chris Fozziebear’s tweet that “I wrote the most controversial metal record that exists,” MS shrugs, “Honestly, Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry is more controversial ... I doubt if Tipper Gore has ever even heard of Attila.”
The Black Dahlia Murder Goat of Departure
TAGS: DEFTONES, ISIS
Abysmal Dawn In Service of Time
TAGS: ATTILA
EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: NORMA JEAN, “IF YOU GOT IT AT FIVE, YOU GOT IT AT FIFTY”
BODY STUFF: U JAM?
Thirty seconds into Norma Jean’s comeback single, we hear a lot of Dillinger Escape Plan and Every Time I Die mixed with probably a lot of Christian metalcore bands that ripped off way better secular bands. Which doesn’t mean this song isn’t good! After all, it’s the only one that Mark Hunter of Chimaira could see himself kicking ass in a pit to (turn right a couple times for his Call & Response). Like MS sez, “Wrongdoers is going to be an absolute slammer; it’s fast, it’s grindy, it’s metal, it’s punk rock, it’s everything you want Norma Jean to be.”
Curran Reynolds is the rare publicist whose emails we don’t automatically delete. It helps that he’s a lifer—students of both Decibel and MetalSucks are well aware of his drumming prowess in not just NYC art-metal crew Wetnurse, but longtime noise terrorists Today Is the Day. Well, Body Stuff is his long overdue one-man heavy metal machine; we think there’s a little Austerity Program influence, particularly in the percussion, but MS senior editor Anso DF also (correctly) recommends first effort “I Will Be He” to fans of Torche, Faith No More and Jesu.
TAGS: NORMA JEAN
TAGS: CURRAN REYNOLDS, WETNURSE
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