Decibel #195 - January 2021 by Red Flag Media

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT NECROT

NAPALM DEATH no.

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30 YEARS

OF A

METAL MONSTER

JUDAS PRIEST PAINKILLER

HALL OF FAME A

JANUARY 2021 // No. 195

EXODUS DIRK VERBEUREN CADAVER DEEDS OF FLESH UNDERGANG FROZEN SOUL CONTRARIAN HERETICAL SECT

EXTREMELY EXTREME

January 2021 [R 195] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 8 metal muthas Smuggling Live Cannibalism in Disney cases 10 low culture Smells like teen spirit

14 contrarian The technicalities of time 16 bloodbather Silent, but deadly 18 deeds of flesh Outliving the body

11 no corporate beer Dan’s the man

20 gama bomb You gotta fight for your right to party

12 in the studio:

exodus

22 heretical sect A morning star in the southwest 24 undergang Three’s company 26 frozen soul Almost trapped in ice 28 cadaver Waking the

But they’re not gonna like it

features

reviews

30 q&a: dirk verbeuren The uber-prolific drummer has a Metal Archives listing that reads like a stock ticker

65 lead review Hatebreed drop an album heavier than mom’s spaghetti with Weight of the False Self

35 special feature:

66 album reviews Releases from bands that could really use some acetaminophen right about now, including Fuck the Facts, Killer Be Killed and Tombs

the top 40 albums of 2020 No GBK, no Judas Iscariot

80 damage ink I have something to say

One More Shot at Glory

COVER STORY COVER PHOTO BY GEORGE CHIN/ICONICPIX • CONTENTS PHOTO BY ROSS HALFIN

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, paid at 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. © 2020 by Red Flag Media, Inc. ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. 2 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

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REFUSE/RESIST

January 2021 [T195]

PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

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AD SALES

James Lewis

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U.S. presidential election. But today is election day in America. Well, technically, about 100 million Americans voted before election day, so this is more like release day for that new album that’s been streaming in full on Bandcamp for the last two weeks. Except with perhaps slightly more at stake than simply discovering if those 17 new Striborg albums are any good. On the subject of black metal (see, I really don’t want to write about the election), you may have noticed that we recently announced the publication of USBM: A Revolution of Identity in American Black Metal through Decibel Books. Longtime Decibel contributor Daniel Lake has spent the last three years tirelessly fashioning 100 interviews into a compelling 544-page book that some keyboard warriors are, of course, eager to complain about before reading a single fucking word of it. The rest of you will find an exhaustive chronicle of the oft-maligned movement’s messy birth and awkward growth while the author confronts the sketchy actions/beliefs that a handful of the scene progenitors committed/held (despite a few artists' best efforts to sidestep them). If you were gracious enough to pre-order a copy, they should be shipping your way in late November. And if you are one of Decibel’s devoted deluxe subscribers, please know that the Decibel Flexi Series celebrates its 10th anniversary in this issue, which is not something I counted on 10 years ago. I did, however, trust Brutal Truth to deliver the first-ever entry in the series. A decade later, old friend and former Decibel columnist Kevin Sharp steps up yet again (along with our good Napalm Death pals) to deliver Venomous Concept’s ridiculously timely "Vote Clown Party" (what election?) flexi disc. Love to those dudes, to all of the other bands who've contributed to the series, to Holy Mountain Printing, who have sponsored most of these discs, and to Pirates Press, who have printed every last one of them. But most of all, thanks to all of you lovely people who have supported this crazy endeavor by subscribing, allowing us to produce over 120 of these floppy pieces of magic. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES

ART DIRECTOR

Aaron Salsbury aaron@decibelmagazine.com

Michael Wohlberg

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CUSTOMER SERVICE

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COPY EDITOR

Andrew Bonazelli

BOOKKEEPER

Tim Mulcahy

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CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

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Vince Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Louise Brown Chris Chantler Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Chris Dodge Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Jonathan Horsley Neill Jameson Sarah Kitteringham Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Andrew Lee Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Andy O'Connor Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Joseph Schafer Rod Smith Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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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, paid at 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 ©2020 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA

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I really don’t want to write about the

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

READER OF THE

MONTH hung my paintings in his store, and I’ve had paintings in public since then. I haven’t had anything turned into merchandise for bands, but during the COVID shutdown, I painted the state of West Virginia as a rotten head (inspired by Repulsion) for the West Virginia band CHUD.

Stephen Martin Charlestown, WV

Have you developed any constructive new hobbies without the opportunity to attend live shows this year?

I wouldn’t say any new hobbies developed besides attempting to play tennis with my wife and my daughter beating me on video games. Right before COVID shut everything down, I was commissioned to do Star Wars paintings for a May 5 tattoo party (which didn’t happen), so I ended up painting the six bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back. After that, I painted a bunch of old comic panels, and random stuff like Ms. Pac-Man and GWAR. Judas Priest’s Painkiller is the Hall of Fame/ cover story for this issue. What were your three favorite albums of 1990?

“Were” or “are”? Because I can give you two lists! I’m sure I’ll miss or forget an album,

6 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

and it’s only three, so I can’t say Lunachicks or Anthrax. I’d go with the first Disharmonic Orchestra album [Expositionsprophylaxe]; it’s like death metal Voivod. Second would be Rust in Peace—that album will never get old. Scumdogs of the Universe is my last pick. I remember the day 29 years ago when my cousin popped [GWAR’s] Live From Antarctica in the VCR in my dad’s garage and blew my mind. You do a fair amount of painting. Have you ever been commissioned to create album or merch art by any bands, or do you strictly paint for yourself?

I started painting about 20 years ago because I was depressed with everything and needed an outlet, so my paintings were never seen outside of my house for the longest time because I didn’t care if anyone saw them. Eventually, a friend

Disharmonic Orchestra are one of your alltime favorite bands. Give us your Not to Be Undimensional Conscious Hall of Fame pitch.

Well, I told Albert 20 or 30 times to induct it, so the word is “harassment” if it’s not inducted. [Laughs] The drumming is brilliant, the lyrics are out of this world, guitars roaring like the ocean, that funky bass, and that band picture! Music sounds kinda boring after listening to Disharmonic Orchestra. I love Iron Maiden and the Ramones, but Disharmonic hit a special spot in me that loves weird progressive metal like Atheist and Voivod. The Vladimirs from Cincinnati are also a great band to check out, with the members in other great bands like Sono Morti and FaithXtractor. I’d also say induct Sigh, Lunachicks, [Blood Duster’s] Str8 Outta Northcote, [Brutal Truth’s] Kill Trend Suicide and a bunch more, but I’ll stop at Sleater Kinney’s The Woods.

Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novels Black Metal, Vol. 1, 2 and 3 For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while compulsively refreshing fivethirtyeight.com every 20 minutes for the last three weeks.

Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell

This Month's Mutha: Karen Jones Mutha of Alex Jones of Undeath

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in the Bronx, and spent most of my childhood and adult years living in the NYC suburbs; in 2002, my husband Owen and I decided to relocate to Rochester, NY, to be closer to his family. I’m a librarian, and I’ve always worked in business settings. I’m currently working part-time from home, but hoping to ease into retirement along with Owen within the next few years. My big loves are dogs (including our rescue dog Ralph), travel, NYC, theater, reading, music and art. Oh, and coffee. Any particular reason why he changed his stage surname from Joseph to Jones?

Unfortunately, we had no idea when we named him Alex that there was going to be an InfoWars nutjob with the same name, and I think Alex got really tired of people mentioning it, so he was experimenting with different variations—like using just his first and middle names. Now he’s switched back to Jones because he is proud of his surname and he’s just going to ignore the comparisons to the other Alex Jones, who will hopefully fade into obscurity soon. All three members of Undeath had never played in bands together before forming. What were some of Alex’s interests outside of music?

He really enjoys getting out in nature, camping and hiking, which I have to attribute to the influence of his partner, since I am pretty much the opposite of “outdoorsy.” He also loves art, which may be attributable to all the times we dragged him to the Met when he was growing up. 8 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

And he’s a true Rochesterian and supports the Bills through all their ups and downs. Undeath put out a limited-copy VHS-only release called Live From Hell this year. Do the two of you share any favorite movies (VHS or otherwise)?

I think we share a love of a lot of classic films, and also some of the Disney films he grew up watching. We still have some of those Disney VHS tapes in our basement, but now we just watch them on Disney+ (which I initially got, of course, so I could watch Hamilton). Are you a fan of some of the old-school death metal bands Undeath are inspired by, like Cryptopsy or Cannibal Corpse?

I’ve got to confess that death metal is probably the one genre of music that I’ve really not explored. I like classical, ’80s new wave, Broadway and, of course, all of the ’70s singersongwriters that were big when I was in my teens. But I’m trying to expand my horizons! We’re really proud of Alex and the band! What’s something most people wouldn’t know about Alex?

As a child he was very artistic and spent many hours creating his own comic strips. He had one set of characters called Rufus Rodney (the bad guy) and Toasty (the good guy, who was a piece of toast), whom I still remember very fondly and ask Alex to draw every once in a while. I have a collection of all of his comic strips saved for posterity! —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Sépulcre, Ascent Through Morbid Transcendence  Bad Religion, Stranger than Fiction  Judas Priest, Painkiller  Metallica, Ride the Lightning  Obituary, Live at the Dynamo Open Air 1992 (bootleg) ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Sick Thoughts, Songs About People You Hate  PJ Harvey, Dry  The Jesus Lizard, Goat  Skull Cult, New Mutilator  Beta Boys, After Dark ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Carcass, Despicable  Nader Sadek, The Serapeum  Undeath, Lesions of a Different Kind  Necrophobic, Dawn of the Damned  Nasum, Inhale/Exhale ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Judas Priest, Painkiller  Lamp of Murmuur, Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism  Paradise Lost, Obsidian  Tombs, Under Sullen Skies  Fawn Limbs, Sleeper Vessels ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  L.O.T.I.O.N., Multinational Corporation, Alphabrain  Nitelight, Nitelight Plays: Death’s Symbolic  Curl Up and Die, We May Be Through With the Past…  Curl Up and Die, But the Past Ain’t Through With Us  Municipal Waste, The Last Rager

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Zachary Ezrin : i m p e r i a l t r i u m p h a n t  Pyhrron, Abscess Time  Mr Bungle, Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo  Indricothere, Tedium Torpor Stasis  Kilter, Axiom  Encenathrakh, Thraakethraaeate Thriathraake

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Canada’s sons of darkness present an enthralling three song release entitled “Confluence”. Conceived in COVID isolation, WAKE present their ever-expanding evolution with their most ambitious music to date!

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MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES West coast power trio GRAYCEON return with their epic new full length entitled “Mothers Weavers Vultures”. The band’s 6th album finds them fine tuning their ever evolving adventurous sound.

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Death Metal titans GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY (members of Pyrrhon, Woe, Mutilation Rites, Belus) present their crushing debut entitled “Ageless Violence”. Seven sinister compositions of old school death metal in the vein of Cannibal Corpse, Death, Ripping Corpse, Suffocation and Deicide.

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Scene Cancer e’ve now arrived at the end of another year. It’s time for the customary circle-jerking that every creative industry does to celebrate either whatever put itself ahead of the pack in an earnest, heartfelt and innovative way—or whatever flavorless vanity project a label threw enough money at to make the rest of us believe it somehow has merit. (I mean, depending on how cynical you are right now, at the edge of the year of our lord, 2020.) It’s also tradition that I take swings at all of these things, but it feels a bit hollow this year. It’s not because of what’s happened this year (and likely in most of the upcoming one, if we’re being honest with ourselves); it’s just that I don’t need to waste any more breath railing against the industry at this age. The end arrived when I publicly proclaimed that, while I don’t much care for it, the new Isengard album is essentially Pentagram, minus the elderly mother battery. Soon enough, an industry relic tried to swat at me for my comment—imagine watching a snowball fight at a nursing home. It made me take stock of how many of those types I’ve seen come and go over nearly 30 years, and how few of them (besides Ula Gehret and a handful of others) actually still matter. Same with some of these record labels you can’t escape publicity from, all with the flavor of concentrated tap water and the identity of the people buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Time wipes away much of this mess, and then someone writes a book about it, but leaves out the unimportant parts and these people/ bands/labels/ideas all just kind of fade away. Unless some has-been bitches about it on the Internet; then it has a shelf life of at least two days before people go back to forgetting the thing in question ever existed. The other reason is I’m writing this is because, for the first time since I started 10 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

contributing to Decibel, I submitted a full list of 40 records I enjoyed this year—and since then I’ve even added a half dozen more. I haven’t been this excited about new music since I was in my early 20s. And this isn’t really my default character trait. I have people constantly sending me shit to check out and half the fucking time I don’t even listen to it. I’ve also told bands, “Sick set”... bands that I spent the entire show in the parking lot smoking and being talked at by some asshole I don’t like about shit I don’t care about just in case they want to offer me drugs or a drink. This establishes me as a self-identifying piece of shit, but also should act as a billboard for just how much good music was released this year. I didn’t get to quarantine because I’m considered an “essential worker,” so I did my best to try to constantly share what I was listening to, so that others stuck wherever had something to dip into. Also, bands that had lost a lot of revenue could have their inboxes filled with new fans telling them they listened to their record on YouTube and downloaded it for free off a blog. I somehow found this enthusiasm for discovering new music and sharing it that I haven’t had since tape-trading after I finished my homework in fucking high school. For the first time in years, it felt like a compulsion. I don’t know what that says about 2020, and I don’t have any witty shit to say about everything that happened this year that I haven’t spread across the previous 10 or 11 months. I don’t have any real vision for 2021 besides Krieg doing a split with one of the bands I won’t shut the fuck up about (whom I consider to be the best younger black metal projects going) and becoming a father, which I also probably won’t shut the fuck up about. This year—musically—was a fucking ride and, for tonight at least, I feel gratitude for being able to share it with you and have (some of you) actually appreciate it.

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES BY CHRIS DODGE

Catching a Buzz

he grassroots slogan of destina-

tion brewery Sante Adairius Rustic Ales is “Know Your Brewer.” I do. His name is Danny Buzzard. He’s a solid dude. Killer guitarist. Stellar brewmaster. Humble, funny, chill—much like his greater Santa Cruz beachside surroundings. And it turns out he brews at SARA. We first met three decades ago as regulars at Berkeley’s famed punk mecca 924 Gilman. Buzzard was a metalhead first. And one with good taste, “My first band was Speed Zone Ahead in OKC in 1986,” he relates. “We opened for Cryptic Slaughter and they totally blew me away. CS changed my life.” He moved to the SF Bay Area in 1988 and formed the frenetically unglued thrash unit All You Can Eat. AYCE’s history spanned the ’90s, and their hyper-spastic stage presence is the stuff of legend. Let’s just say I’ve never seen another group where the drummer joins the rest of the band in synchronized high jumps during the set. During this time, his wife Kyrsten was schooling the nappy-haired hardcore hero about real beer, thanks to her tenure at San Francisco’s iconic Toronado Pub. “I didn’t really know what beer was or what it could be,” Buzzard admits. “She introduced me to

we manufacture

 Hawking the good stuff Danny Buzzard (center) and his contributions to all things beer and metal

many styles that I didn’t know existed, most notably Belgian.” From there, the tumblers in Buzzard’s brain unlocked a bevy of beer knowledge. “The beer that changed everything for me was when I moved to Santa Cruz and I had Sante Adarius’ 831 IPA. Perfection in a glass.” Inspired—or, as we say in Cal, “stoked”—Buzzard quickly buddied up with SARA owners Tim Clifford and Adair Paterno. “I was working a shitty job that I wanted to quit and I just told Tim, ‘I have no experience brewing, but I want to learn. Hire me.’ Surprisingly, he did. I kind of felt I bullied my way in there.” SARA’s beer program leans heavily on barrel-aging with estery forays into yeast and bacteria experimentation. When asked why this brewery has remained a staple for brew enthusiasts for over eight years, Buzzard sheds some light: “Our water and our house cultures are unique. You won’t find them anywhere else. Also, the community SARA has built and nurtured since day one is vast and amazing.” With this in mind, I assumed Buzzard shared by mantra commonalities between the craft beer scene and the hardcore scene both being positive and supportive of their own, but his only comment on parallels is, laughingly, “there are assholes in both!”

Nurturing his musical roots, Buzzard currently grinds his axe with zinc-nosed supergroup Seized Up, comprised of heavyweights from Bl’ast and Good Riddance. Seized Up borrow less from the melodic leanings of the latter and more from the ham-fisted aggressiveness of the former (although with fewer Bl’asty time-signature hiccups). Just straightahead, nuts-out Reagan-era-style hardcore. Their new album, Brace Yourself, plays at 45 rpm, for Chrissakes—that’s as ’80s as you can get. Lucky for them, label Pirates Press Records doubles as a pressing plant, meaning schizophrenic, splattered vinyl color combos for collectors. Buzzard pushes himself to progress as both a musician and as a brewer: “Tim Clifford, Jason Hanson and Jon Drinnan from SARA have taught me all I know about brewing. I am still very young in the brewing world even at my old age. [Laughs] All I can do is learn, learn, learn. It’s something I do on a daily basis.” And his view of the shit parade of 2020 echoes the same frustrations of the Decibel family: “I want to bang my head and put my arm around a stranger and hold our beers to the heavens in a toast of brotherhood and sisterhood once again. Seeing and playing live music is my life, and I want that back. Wear a goddamn mask.”

VINYL RECORDS • CDs • DVDs • BLU-RAY • AUDIO CASSETTES • BOOKS • MERCHANDISE Portland, USA Prague, Czech Republic, EU Perth, Australia

www.xvinylx.com DECIBEL : JA NUA RY 2 0 21 : 11

STUDIO REPORT e haven’t recorded an album in a proper studio in years. The last time we recorded everything in a studio was [1992’s] Force of Habit… actually, it was ALBUM TITLE [2005’s] Shovel Headed Kill Machine, but both times Persona Non Grata we hated it.” PRODUCER Exodus guitarist Gary Holt is flipping through his memory bank, recollecting the various recording scenarios used by the Steve Lagudi (engineering) veteran thrashers over the years. For 2004’s Tempo of the Damned, and Exodus they built a temporary studio in a warehouse by the beach. 2007’s STUDIO The Atrocity Exhibition: Exhibit A was captured in a vacant rehearsal The garage next to studio. Its follow-up, Exhibit B: The Human Condition, was done in a Tom Hunting’s house Northern California vacation house where the band lived, drinkRELEASE DATE ing and barbequing when not making metal. Their previous Summer 2021 album, 2014’s Blood In, Blood Out, was recorded at a goat ranch. For LABEL their forthcoming LP, they took the not-usual-for-Exodus step of Nuclear Blast shipping a mobile studio cross-country and setting up shop on property owned by drummer Tom Hunting. “Tom purchased a place four or five hours north of the Bay Area a couple years ago,” Holt says, “and next to the house there’s a three-car garage/workshop that the previous owner used as a filmediting studio. So, it was already perfectly set up. Our original plan was to fly Andy Sneap out, but then COVID happened, so we looked at alternatives. One guy that came to mind was Steve Lagudi,

EXODUS

who is Machine Head’s right-hand man and owns a complete mobile studio. So, we shipped a shit-ton of gear out here and set up a studio A, B and C with two drum sets where we can work on stuff in one room, move to the main room when we’re ready, then track. We also have a rental house up the street, so we work in shifts. It’s been a remarkable and super-creative experience. There’s no commuting, no pressure or watching the clock. It’s been awesome!” The excitement in Holt’s voice is electric as he speaks like a proud father, albeit a proud papa praising a particularly virulent and destructive sonic Tasmanian Devil. “This album is crushing and so fucking heavy!” he enthuses. “The aggression is insane and over the top, but there are also some huge surprises. For a lot of the riff-writing, I was at home with the TV on watching the world burn, so it’s not surprising it’s monumentally huge and like a wrecking ball!” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

MEMORIAM ARE SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF TO THE END U.K.-based death metal supergroup Memoriam are currently holed up in Parlour Recording Studio with knobmaster Russ Russell (Napalm Death, At the Gates), where they’re tracking their new album, titled To the End, for new label Reaper Entertainment. “The process has been incredibly smooth,” says throat-lead Karl Willetts. “We have been working for some time on the new songs that we are recording, as

12 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

there is very little else going on right now due to COVID-19. On this album, we were very prepared in advance, possibly the most prepared for recording that I have ever been, from my perspective.” The band, which also welcomes Sacrilege skin-basher Spikey T. Smith (replacing Andy Whale due to a shoulder injury), is picking up where 2019’s Requiem for Mankind left off. They’ve dialed in their signature sound, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for growth. “With this album, we have built upon [our] sound, and there is a lot of variety within it,” Willetts confirms. “We have tried out new ideas, which is great. The creativity within the songwriting process for me is really what being in a band is all about.” —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY TAYVA MARTINEZ

EXODUS

CONTRARIAN

Prolific progsters bridge the death metal generation gap

ithout sounding too ridiculous or precious, we’re trying to pick at the intellectual peaks of metal history, whether it’s Fates Warning’s Parallels or Perfect Symmetry, Individual Thought Patterns, Unquestionable Presence or even further back to Somewhere in Time or Rage for Order.” ¶ Jim Tasikas has captained Rochester, NY’s Contrarian as a prog-tech-death outfit since 2014, but as the inspirational and influential titles dropped indicate, he’s also not ignoring the rich corners of metal’s past. ¶ “We want recurring themes and good songwriting, not arpeggio sweeps and scales everywhere,” he explains. “If you look at Chuck Schuldiner, he wasn’t really the godfather of death metal; he was wearing Watchtower and King Diamond Tshirts. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about ‘pure’ death metal, and that’s what we’re after.” ¶ Over the course of six years and four albums—the latest being Only Time Will Tell—Contrarian have potently inserted themselves into any conversation concerning those adeptly carrying the torch lit by Cynic, Necrophagist and Death. Contributing factors to their peek above the competition: attention to the details of composition; understanding the subgenre’s progression; a desire for difference; Tasikas and fellow guitarist Brian Mason’s meticulous obsession 14 : JA NUA RY 2021 : DECIBEL

with their instruments; and having Nile’s George Kollias as an ex-member. When Kollias bowed out before a tour supporting 2019 predecessor Their Worm Never Dies, Tasikas’ heart stopped and lodged itself firmly in his throat until a call from fellow Rochester native and Sick Drummer Magazine chairman Ian MacDonald. “Ian reached out saying he had a guy, and that was Bryce Butler,” Tasikas says. “[He] did our tour with Pathology and Necrotic Wasteland, could play George’s parts, and was equally talented and creative. It worked out well.” With the Dallas-based Butler drafted in and work beginning on Only Time Will Tell—“our quick turnaround on albums is due to a decade of writing riffs while looking for a drummer”—a generation gap was being bridged as part of the process. “Half our band are Gen X-ers and the other half are millennials,” Tasikas points out. “Bryce was born in the mid-’90s, and when he flew up, we literally spent a week doing metal education and history! He

had never heard Human or Individual Thought Patterns. He didn’t know Confessor. He had never heard Atheist or Spiral Architect. He grew up listening to deathcore before finding Dream Theater and the prog drumming world.” With material and education completed, the band embarked upon the unique process of tracking guitars first with knob-twiddling legend Neil Kernon. “Actually, that’s how things were done traditionally and historically,” Tasikas notes. “It makes it more challenging for a drummer, but our whole premise was that we weren’t going to quantize or edit; we were going to leave some slop in the music. We told Neil we needed to go back to Rage for Order, Unleashed in the East and Back for the Attack for the recording, and he was jumping for joy. I wanted to pick up where things were left off in the late ’90s; not be regressive and nostalgic, but see what would have happened if those deathcore and metalcore dark ages never happened!” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

BLOODBATHER

Experimental Florida duo is awash in possibilities

here’s a beautiful moment early on in The Orchid Thief: Susan Orlean, faced with the collision of myriad natural and man-made species of the titular flower in the Sunshine State, writes, “Sometimes I think I’ve figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida, swamped by incongruity and paradox, and I have to start all over again.” ¶ As go the flowers, so goes the music scene—extreme and otherwise—as deftly demonstrated by Broward County purveyors of multi-dimensional sonic mayhem Bloodbather. Their Silence EP is a bit like listening to early Converge wilding, slam, metalcore and Skinny Puppy/Aphex Twin industrial weirdness cauterized together with a blowtorch. It’s furnace-hot, nasty, lawless, swamped by incongruity and paradox, and heavy as fuck. ¶ “Bloodbather was always meant to be a melting pot—an outlet to just do whatever the fuck we want,” guitarist/synth manipulator Salem Vex tells Decibel. “Fuck staying in genre lanes. Make your own lane.” 16 : JA NUA RY 2021 : DECIBEL

And so, on Silence you’ll hear not only echoes of the metal and hardcore clubs of South Florida, but also the Fort Lauderdale goth nights Vex hosted, the abandoned Miami warehouse raves he and vocalist/bassist Kyler Millo attended (“It honestly inspired me a lot,” Vex says. “A lot of that shit is just as abrasive and crazy as metal”), and the Front 242-esque industrial clang of a region under perpetual construction. It’s a unique cultural squall, but, as Vex notes, anyone inclined, like Bob Marley, to emancipate themselves from mental slavery can start right where they are. “If a band isn’t doing whatever the fuck they want—if they aren’t pushing their sound—that’s probably just mindset more than anything else,” he says. “I mean, access to different kinds of inspiration isn’t an issue nowadays—online, you can jump instantly right from the most popu-

lar classics of any style of music to the demo of a hardcore band that only three people had on cassette in the ’90s to really fucking sick underground electronic music. It’s a new era. That’s why you see a lot of the old manufactured, industry plant-type bands failing now—people can easily find something better, something more real. We want to be part of erasing those old rules.” As the pandemic brings the stakes of daily living into starker relief, authentic expression and rage will likely become more affecting and empowering as well. “It seems like we’ve been sitting on this record forever with all the pushbacks,” Vex says. “As much as the delays suck, though, I feel like it happened for a reason. It’s a pretty terrible time. I’d love it if our music could play some small part in helping people get their anger and frustrations out in a positive way.” —SHAWN MACOMBER

DEEDS OF FLESH

DEEDS OF FLESH The legacy of the late Erik Lindmark is at the center of new LP Nucleus

he thought of a Deeds of Flesh album without late founder Erik Lindmark on vocals was practically unthinkable, but not as unthinkable as letting his final body of work follow him to the grave. Therefore, it was only appropriate that long-serving drummer Mike Hamilton and vocalist Jacoby Kingston, both of whom had moved on from their positions, committed to finishing what would become Nucleus at Lindmark’s December 2018 funeral. ¶ Hamilton acted as de rigueur creative director, going back to when he helped hire his replacement back in 2016. Darren Cesca would go on to track the album, which is to say, yes, it’s been done musically for nearly three years, according to Hamilton: “I understand there are people saying online, ‘How much involvement did Erik have with his record?’ Well, he had 100 percent involvement in the record. He just never got a chance to contribute vocally because of his passing.” ¶ The decision to welcome back Kingston was easy; it wouldn’t feel like a proper Deeds of Flesh record with anyone else. However, coming up with the first words the co-founding vocalist would growl on an album since his 2007 departure required the duo to dig deep 18 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

into Lindmark’s mind. They wanted the swan song to close out the science fiction storyline started on 2008’s Of What’s to Come and 2013’s Portals to Canaan: a trilogy of sorts. It starts with a recap—imagine a brutal version of the Star Wars opening crawl—before telling the tale of a monolithic processing center where aliens harvest human energy and implant them with a parasitical enhancement called the “Nucleus,” creating superhumans. In standard sci-fi fashion, it ends with an epic battle. Despite the extreme care given to the words, one of the most touching moments on the album is instrumental closer “Onward.” “We wanted to do a track just in honor of Erik,” explains Hamilton. “Erik came from Swedish descent, so he always had that Viking vibe and was very proud of his Swedish heritage. We wanted to do something in the vein of like a Viking send-off.” Another heartwarmer comes growled, grunted and gurgled. A

veritable who’s-who of death metal shows up for guest duty, including the vocalists of Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Suffocation and Gorguts. Early bands from Lindmark’s trailblazing brutal and technical death metal label, Unique Leader, also contribute: Disgorge, Disavowed, Decrepit Birth, Severed Savior, Inherit Disease and Sarcolytic. The vocalist of the latter, Jon Zig, is also notable for his artwork on many albums for both Deeds of Flesh and Unique Leader. That Deeds of Flesh’s hefty wish list all agreed to contribute underscores the respect that Lindmark earned. “I think Erik would be proud of it,” muses Hamilton of Nucleus. “The music is in his vision. I think he’d be very proud of what we’ve done with the vocals and with the storyline. We did everything in his honor. There were no selfish reasons other than just doing it in his vision and making sure that his final body of work was seen by the world.” —BRADLEY ZORGDRAGER

GAMA BOMB

GAMA BOMB Irish thrash mob are out to sea on new maritime-inspired opus

e’re all, of course, anxious to finally put 2020 in the rearview mirror. But before we celebrate the imminent arrival of what most certainly will be a better circle around the sun in 2021, let’s pause and enjoy a late entrant for one of the most non-shitty things to drop in the last 12 months: Gama Bomb’s new LP, Sea Savage. Sadly, due to its arrival on December 4, via Prosthetic, this album likely won’t be included on many Albums of the Year lists, but we can assure you that it offers a welcome escape from both the seasonal and general madness upon us. And, by all accounts, that was the point. ¶ “Sea Savage is the first record we’ve made that doesn’t include explicitly political songs,” vocalist Philly Byrne emails us from his home in Dublin, Ireland. “At first, I struggled with that, but then I realized: In a world gone mad, escapism is a political act. I wanted to bring people on a journey, put a beer in your hand, 20 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

tell you a few stories, get a few laughs. The world can wait.” Inspired by Moby Dick and his growing obsession with maritime stories, Byrne, with the help of his Gama Bomb mates—guitarists Domo Dixon and John Roche, bassist Joe McGuigan and session drummer James Stewart (Vader)—crafted a concept album that “is an imaginary play about the crew of a ship going in search of a yeti, but losing their minds on the high seas.” However, with the inclusion of Terminator 2 references (“She’s Not My Mother, Todd”) and songs like “Miami Supercops” and “Ready, Steady, Goat!” the “concept” is, uh, fairly loose. Says Byrne, “The songs are all crazy scenes in that story, making less narrative sense as we go.” A clear, linear narrative was never the intention for Sea Savage,

but finding creative inspiration in the idea that the band is, according to Byrne, “a Victorian theatre troupe, presenting Sea Savage as a play in two acts—the two sides of the record,” provided a focus for the album as a whole. The concept may be nutty, but the songs are impressive in their ability to take old-school influences (Nuclear Assault, Accept, Judas Priest) and make them modern-sounding. As far as the current crop of 21st century thrash bands go, Gama Bomb have few peers. And integrating a yeti into the tale allowed Gama Bomb to tie in its mascot, Snowy, the “Gamabombinable” snowman. “I think Snowy sums up our attitude to the band,” says Byrne. “Have fun, love horror, don’t take yourself too seriously.” —ADEM TEPEDELEN

HERETICAL SECT Black metal’s newest mystery men wage battles in the southwest

he american southwest is not the first location that springs to mind when seeking inspiration for a new black metal band. It is devoid of the icy Norwegian winters that inspired Immortal and their ilk, and it lacks the forests and natural landscapes of Cascadia. Yet there is much evil that dwells just below the surface. ¶ It is that very evil that Heretical Sect, a newly formed anonymous black metal quartet from Santa Fe, NM, tap into. ¶ “Black metal’s allegiance to the land has largely ignored the historical context of the Southwest,” the band collectively states. “We hope to expand the palate away from Nordic themes and create a greater connection to place. Because of this connectivity, playing music can be a sacred act. A chance to reclaim ritual from the hands of the holy. A chance to exorcise violent, vengeful and sorrowful emotions that do not have a sanctioned outlet in our society.” ¶ In order to fully delve into that history and connection, the members of Heretical Sect— 22 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

who also play in Superstition and Predatory Light—don hoods and obscure their identities, taking on stage names. “Everyone comes to this band as true believers in the genre,” Heretical Sect explain. “As those who are seekers of something more than what this culture offers—to not let every aspect of life be commodified or exploited. It is the cutting of ties and freeing of mental energies. It is the skinwalker, the warg, the shaman set loose. We do have active members from many other bands, and it seems necessary to step into a realm of differentiation. At some point, the ideas of the band stretched outside of a collection of songs and demanded more of us.” They liken it to King Diamond—no one is there to see Kim Bendix Petersen, but rather his corpsepaint-wearing alter ego and the music that comes with it. On

their debut album, Rapturous Flesh Consumed—due December 11 on Gilead, Heretical Sect use their style of black metal and death/doom to draw parallels to the world today from the religious zealotry and genocide of indigenous people by the likes of Salvador de Guerra, a Catholic priest who committed various atrocities over his life. These beliefs and actions, Heretical Sect tell Decibel, are antithetical to the core of heavy metal. “It is easier to say racism doesn’t exist than it is to say, ‘If I don’t do something or say something, it is my fault and I am responsible for these things.’ Too often extreme metal has been fertile ground for anti-intellectualism, a glorification of mindlessness. But the spirit of heavy metal is to challenge society in an uncompromising manner the same way social movements do.” —VINCE BELLINO

PHOTO BY BRANDON SODER

HERETICAL SECT

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UNDERGANG

Copehagen’s infamous manglers set out on a new life totally dedicated to grisly death

efore “the world turned into a horror movie with the pandemic suddenly arriving,” David Torturdød, the Copenhagen-based guitarist/vocalist with the nastiest/ toughest riffs and the grossest, lowest vocals, says he “had arranged to leave [his] regular loser day job as a janitor to go full-time with [his band] Undergang,” and also his other bands, his label Extremely Rotten Productions, and his new brick-andmortar spot of the same name. Torturdød says he “[spent] the first three months of [the pandemic] still working at the school as a janitor,” but “since the summer of 2020,” the frontman stresses that he’s “gone full-time on death metal.” ¶ First thing, he says, he “got the art [for the cover of Undergang’s fifth album Aldrig i livet] done during August 2020” so they could finally release it. ¶ Aldrig i livet Google-translates to “never in my life.” The long-running tradition of titling songs and albums in their native Danish, Torturdød proves in his grammatically sound responses, seems more of a personal choice than a practical one. The title translates closer to “over my dead body,” he explains:

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“The title is also a nod to our ‘Døden’ trilogy, with ‘Død’ meaning death and ‘liv’ meaning life. I doubt that it’ll lead to a ‘Livet’ trilogy, though.” The ‘Doden’ trilogy ended in 2015 with Døden læger alle sår. Which makes 2017’s Misantropologi a standalone album and their last as a trio. It’s hard to imagine how Torturdød and drummer Anders Dødshjælp could ever top Misantropologi, their peak as a trio. “Undergang always worked good as a three-piece,” Torturdød explains, “but I had been interested in trying out with two guitars live for a bit, and once we started doing so, I didn’t want to go back to having only one guitar live again.” Out of the plethora of axemen they no doubt had to choose from, Undergang brought in lead guitarist Mads Haarløv, who “had been a friend for some years before joining the band.” At Netherlands Deathfest in 2017, it was decided that he was the

man. After Undergang got home from their U.S. tour with Necrot that August, they started rehearsing with Haarløv. In March 2018, Undergang also found a permanent bassist in Martin Andersen. Aldrig i livet “was slowly written,” Torturdød says, through 2018 and 2019. Dødshjælp’s drums and all the vocals were recorded at Ballade Studio in Copenhagen with Lasse Ballade; guitars and bass in a converted workshed-cum-studio owned by Haarløv. Greg Wilkinson, who recorded the last two Undergang albums, handled the mixing and mastering. “Greg makes the band sound the best on recordings,” Torturdød notes, “so even if we didn’t have a U.S. tour leading up to the album recording this time, we still [wanted] to work with [him].” The world may have “temporarily ended,” as the frontman puts it, but Undergang are only getting started. —DUTCH PEARCE

FROZEN SOUL For Texas-based new jacks, it’s old-school death metal and chill

rozen soul were one of the lucky bands who got a tour in this year before COVID-19 put the brakes on such endeavors. The luck didn’t end there, though, as the Texans made it through the snowy January tour unscathed, despite their Fort Worth home offering no preparation for driving in snow. Vocalist Chad Green recalls a pile-up that put 60 in the hospital and another five in the grave as they left Philadelphia for New York City, and fluffy snow freezing solid as they exited the latter. ¶ “It’s like we literally had an icy wake behind us everywhere we went on tour,” enthuses Green, adding they hadn’t thought of the East Coast weather until friends texted them warnings. “We didn’t really think blizzards existed in our minds at the time.” ¶ The snowball of their frigid theme was a series of happy accidents. What started as a rough idea surrounding their Metallica-inspired moniker evolved when Green started penning sub-zero lyrics for 2019 demo Encased in Ice and upcoming LP debut Crypt of Ice. Guitarist Michael Munday thinks it helps them stand out from the glut of death metal bands singing about rotting bodies covered in maggots.

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Indeed, the temperatures would prevent decay and larval life. Ultimately, the killings reach an elemental apex on “Hand of Vengeance,” which is about setting a person ablaze, then freezing them... except they’re alive the whole time. The motivation comes from a very human place—hatred for child murderers and abusive people. These slayings are justified by an inhuman shadow called the Wraith of Death, which Green compares to fictional antihero Dexter Morgan. “It’s the one that delivers people to the crypt,” he explains of the formless figure that will drive music video storylines and even host an upcoming livestream. “It’s basically delivering these people to a frozen purgatory.” Frozen Soul bring that setting to live shows with snow machines. Green recalls the crowd’s confusion when they first introduced the blizzard-blasting, adding, “Even I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was inhaling bubbles. It was just wild.”

And the soundtrack to that is just as wild. Munday highlights influences from the extra-heavy way that Mortician chug—somehow simultaneously loose and tight—while Green points to the transitions of Sentenced’s Shadows of the Past. The duo agrees that the Bolt Thrower influence is so prominent it hardly needs to be mentioned. “We do everything in our power to set our riffs up to where they beat you in your fucking head,” explains Munday. And the way the guitarist phrases that underlines their propensity for enjoyment, enforced throughout interviews. “We like to joke, we like to laugh, we like to have a good time,” says Green. “But everybody feels anger, everybody feels pain, everybody is a little cold.” Similar to how the ice hardened from mere entrapment to permanent home from EP to LP, the latter will solidify Frozen Soul in the death metal scene. —BRADLEY ZORGDRAGER

PHOTO BY ADAM CEDILLO

FROZEN SOUL

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CADAVER

ecibel rings chief cadaver corpse Anders “Neddo” Odden slightly tardy of our scheduled time. He picks up immediately, but there’s a distinct buzzing sound in the background. It’s a staccato, bee-like whir, stopping and starting indiscriminately. I don’t ask, understanding it to be an unholy digital artifact determined to interrupt our transatlantic conversation. We move forward, both eager to get to the bottom (six feet, naturally) of Edder & Bile, Cadaver’s first fulllength since 2004’s nasty (and unheralded) Necrosis. ¶ “Consider this as Cadaver Mark III,” says Odden. “This version of Cadaver had its start in three phases, actually. The new songs started to take shape in 2012. I had collected stuff that I thought would be for a solo album, where I would send out songs to different singers. I had several demos. During this period, I was also heavily involved with Satyricon. We did a metal cruise, but Frost couldn’t get his visa on time, so we had to find a session drummer. Soilwork just so happened to also be on the same cruise. That’s how I met Dirk Verbeuren. That’s when I also learned he was a huge Cadaver fan. I told him about the songs I had. 28 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

He agreed to put drums to them. At this stage, I thought, ‘This could very well be the third round of Cadaver.’ We finally met again and jammed—after he had joined Megadeth—in 2016. That’s when I realized Cadaver would live once more.” Edder & Bile isn’t just new Odden material, however. He had a frenzied and grotesque sensation to open the mausoleum doors to source material suitable for his (and Verbeuren’s) morbid vision. The three-decade-plus gap between the Into the Outside demo and Edder & Bile needed to be bridged. The desire and means to build were there— they just needed the motivation. Indeed, it was Verbeuren’s play as supercatalyst for Cadaver to return thoroughly reanimated. From opener “Morgue Ritual” and the Kam Lee-guested “Feed the Pigs” to the wicked old-school pounce of “Years of Nothing” and “Circle of Morbidity” (featuring Jeff Becerra),

Edder & Bile’s vile arrival couldn’t have been more propitious. “I really tried to dig deep here,” Odden says. “I learned all the old songs on the guitar again. Doing that and going through the archives, I tried to figure out who I am. To understand my voice. Death metal isn’t too special these days. Not like in the ’80s when there were only a handful of bands worldwide. I found this hidden—or lost—track from the Into the Outside demo called, ‘Morgue Rifling.’ So, I repurposed that track on ‘Morgue Ritual.’ It’s me revisiting my 16-year-old self with my new energy and wisdom. Edder & Bile is the record I’ve always wanted to make. I couldn’t be prouder of it.” As for the Skype noise, it eventually stops. I asked Odden if he’s also noticed it. He did, but laughs heartily. Turns out, the Norwegian legend, at 47, was getting the Cadaver logo inked on his arm. Yeah, death fucking metal! —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY HANNAH VERBEUREN

CADAVER

Norwegian heroes reanimate aboard the good ship death metal

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interview by

QA j. bennett

DIRK VERBEUREN WIT H

The drummer for MEGADETH, CADAVER, BRAVE THE COLD and BENT SEA discusses his many projects 30 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

irk Verbeuren’s CV reads like a who’s who of extreme metal. it. Of course, I prepared really well—as you

Besides spending 12 years playing drums for Swedish shape-shifters Soilwork, he’s done time with Aborted, the Devin Townsend Project and fallen Nevermore vocalist Warrel Dane while filling in live with the likes of At the Gates, Testament and Satyricon. These days, he’s splitting his time between Megadeth and resurrected death dealers Cadaver while lending his skills to Napalm Death guitarist Mitch Harris’s Brave the Cold and writing his own music for grind all-stars Bent Sea. ¶ “Someone might look at my discography and think I’m one of the Spinal Tap drummers or something, but I’ve learned to mold myself to do what I have to do,” the Belgian drummer tells Decibel from his home in Los Angeles. “I’m super humbled and honored to be able to do what I do. If you’d told 16-year-old me that I’d be doing any of this, I’d be like, ‘No way!’” Below, our man discusses the forthcoming albums from Megadeth and Cadaver while giving us some insight into Brave the Cold’s debut and his ongoing work with Bent Sea. How are you holding up on Planet Virus?

Staying busy. It’s the only thing we can do. I’m just really privileged to be able to work from home, and I have loyal drum students every week. I have some session work, and some music projects of my own that I’m always busy with. So, I’m one of the fortunate ones, I’d say, because for some people it’s way more difficult. You’ve got a lot going on, but let’s start with Megadeth. What’s the status of the new album?

I was over in Tennessee in late May and early June recording drums while [Dave] Ellefson was recording bass. They’ve been working on guitars for a while now, but last week I went back to take band photos, so we’re making progress. We started working on this album over a year ago now, so it’s nice to see it moving ahead. We’ve been working with Chris Rakestraw, who’s supertalented, so he’s co-producing the record with Dave [Mustaine]. He’s a great dude. You’ve been in Megadeth since 2016, but this is your first album with them. That must make your membership feel even more official, I’d imagine.

Yeah. I came in a few months after Dystopia came out and pretty much did most of the touring for that, but it’s really exciting to be involved at a higher level. Of course, it’s great to play the songs that are around already, but Dave really extended an invitation to all of the other band members—myself included—to contribute to this new album, so we did. So, I actually wrote some stuff and some of that ended up being recorded, which is very exciting. I don’t know if it’s going to end up on the record or not, but fingers crossed. PHOTO BY HANNAH VERBEUREN

I realize you probably can’t say too much about it because it’s still in the works, but does the new album recall any particular era of Megadeth?

It’s hard to say because the overall picture is so dependent on the songs being completed. I don’t know anything about how the vocals are gonna be. All I can say is that when we were working on the songs outside of Nashville, where Dave lives, one of the coolest things was to go through Dave’s huge vault of riffs. He has an archive that goes back to even before Megadeth existed. Going through that stuff with him kinda puts you in the spirit of the early records. I discovered Megadeth through Peace Sells… with Gar Samuelson on drums, and he was a really unique player. He came from the jazzfusion field more than anything else. Going through the riff vault kinda brought me back to that vibe for the drumming, and also for the writing of the record, so that’s what I tried to bring to it. But there’s some really heavy stuff— maybe some of their heaviest stuff ever. How did you get the Megadeth gig?

I was on tour with Soilwork, and I got a call from the Megadeth camp that Dave wanted to talk to me. So, of course, I was shocked and surprised, and I ended up speaking to him on the phone a few days later. After I finished the Soilwork tour, I went home and studied the Megadeth set and then started playing with them. That’s pretty much how it happened.

would for a gig like this—and everything went super smooth, whether it was the one and only rehearsal we did or the shows we did after. A few weeks into the tour, Dave basically sat me down and said, “Are you gonna be my drummer now?” [Laughs] So, I was super honored, of course. I knew in my heart that it was the right thing to do, and the Soilwork guys were super understanding and encouraging. What was your first show with them like? I imagine you were some combination of nervous and excited.

Yeah, that’s it. It was the Rock on the Range Festival in Columbus, OH. As well-prepared as I was, you can’t not be nervous. There was that moment when I told myself, “I can’t believe I’m on this stage with Dave Mustaine and Dave Ellefson—and Kiko [Loureiro].” I remember seeing Angra back in the ’90s when I was living in France. They were pretty big there. So, all these guys are musical heroes to me, and you’re like, “I can’t believe I’m here. I better nail this shit.” [Laughs] But it was super fun, and they really made me feel comfortable and at ease, so in the end it was just an incredible experience. Let’s talk about Cadaver. You’ve been in the band for six years, but Edder & Bile is the band’s first album in 16 years. How does it feel to be a part of something that’s been such a long time coming?

It’s super exciting. The way it happened was that I filled in with Satyricon, and I didn’t actually realize that Anders [Odden] played with them. I had to talk to him because Cadaver’s Hallucinating Anxiety really hit me back in the day. It was a unique album, and I followed them ever since. One thing led to another, and he told me he had a bunch of demos laying around. Then it was like, “Let’s do this.” Soon after that, I was full-on touring with Soilwork and then Megadeth, so it was really just about finding the time. But we worked on it here and there remotely, and then Anders came to L.A. and we did the album old-school style, playing together with no click track on most of the songs—the real thing, if you know what I mean. Not to dis bands that work another way, but that’s just what Cadaver is to me—like the old Earache days, which were super formative in my musical world. So, to have it finally coming out is really cool.

So, you didn’t even have to audition?

Not really, but here’s the thing: I really came in as a temporary replacement for part of a tour. It wasn’t an audition-type thing. They basically looked me up and thought I could do

With both Megadeth and Cadaver, you were a decades-long fan before you joined. How does that change your perspective?

There’s always this legacy to respect. Every DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 31

Blast feats  Verbeuren keeps the beat in your favorite bands, most likely

All these guys are musical heroes to me, and you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here. I better nail this shit.’

What’s the story behind Brave the Cold, your new project with Mitch Harris from Napalm Death?

I’m a huge Napalm fan—they’re one of the reasons I’m here today. I bought Scum blindly and at first, I didn’t get it, but it eventually became one of my favorite albums. Mitch came to a couple 32 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

of shows I played and asked me if I’d like to play drums on some music he was working on. So, of course, I had to say yes. This was two or two and a half years ago, so this project also took some time. He came out here and we recorded a ton of songs. The cool thing is that Mitch was able to obtain these animated videos for most of the songs on the album. They’re basically these animations that artists made that Mitch adapted to fit the song length and story, and then got clearance to use them. I’ve seen the clips for “Blind Eye” and “Hallmark of Tyranny,” and now I want to check out the original films. They’re both really cool.

Yeah, they’re really well done. And it’s a different artist every time, so they all have their own style, but there are really strong, current messages in all of them. That’s another thing I’ve always respected about Mitch: He’s always been a creator and somebody with his own vision, from

Menace to Meathook Seed all the way back to the Righteous Pigs days. But all the guys in Napalm are amazing—past and present. And now you’re in two different projects with Napalm guys. Your grindcore band Bent Sea features Shane Embury on bass.

[Laughs] Yeah, Bent Sea happened because my wife encouraged me to write my own music back in 2010-2011. I really doubted myself at first, but the truth is that you’re going to fail at 100 percent of everything you don’t try. So, I just kinda went with it. I really believe in spontaneous creation, especially with something like grindcore, which I feel really depends on urgency and the magic of the moment. But I actually didn’t set out to start a grindcore band—the music just turned out that way as I was finding my artistic voice. The passion I have for the Earache era of my teenage years really came out, and I’m super proud of it.

PHOTO BY HANNAH VERBEUREN

band and every bandleader probably has a different route that they wanna follow when it comes to the legacy. With Megadeth, I had learned the songs the best I could in the short amount of time I had. But as time went on, Dave asked me to kind of refine my understanding of the songs and find little drum details to reproduce live what fans wanna hear, which is the songs the way they are. With Anders and Cadaver, it was instantly about creating new stuff. We did end up playing a show last year, and of course we played old stuff, so there was a learning process there as well.

A R e volu tion of identit y in A mer ic A n Bl Ack M e ta l by DA N I E L L A K E foreword by TOM G A BR I E L WA R R IOR

AvAi l aBle exclusively at

STORE.DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM 34 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

P R E S E N T S

T H E

T O P we manufacture

ALBUMS of

VINYL RECORDS • CDs • DVDs • BLU-RAY • AUDIO CASSETTES • BOOKS • MERCHANDISE Portland, USA Prague, Czech Republic, EU Perth, Australia

ou can pretty much divide 2020 into three movements: The Before Times, which was the wonderfully naïve period of January through the first two weeks of March; the last two weeks of March; and the seemingly interminable slog of April through whenever you’re reading this. Only one album in Decibel’s Top 40 Albums of 2020 was released in that two-week window of mid-to-late March—appropriately titled Devouring Ruin—where anxiety, fear and confusion took hold of virtually everyone in the music industry. While artists and labels scrambled to make sense of the fluid landscape that followed in the spring and summer, many albums still miraculously found their way onto the release schedule. And in a year without live music, these were appreciated on perhaps a deeper level than ever before. Love and respect to everyone who sacrificed security in the name of art, providing many of us with our only escape from this year’s miserable reality. We are equally grateful for this opportunity to bring you, dear reader, perhaps the only 40 things that didn’t suck about 2020. — A L B E R T M U D R I A N DECIBEL :

: JAN 2021

www.xvinylx.com D E C I B E L : J A N U A R Y 2 0 19 : 3 5

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Dark Fortress

Fawn Limbs

Exgenesis

Megaton Sword

Oranssi Pazuzu

RECORDS THAT TIED for #41

41 My Dying Bride, The Ghost of Orion, [ N U C LE AR B LAST] 41 Haunt, Mind Freeze, [ S H A D OW K I N GD OM]

41 Venomous Concept, Politics Versus the Erection, [ S E ASON OF MI ST]

41 Undergang, Aldrig i livet, [ DA RK D E SCE N T] 41 Undeath, Lesions of a Different Kind, [ P R O STHE TI C]

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FORBIDDEN WORDS for 2021 by Albert Mudrian

1 Cancelled 2 Postponed 3 Livestream 4 ZoomJam 5 Trump

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PODCASTS by DECI BEL CONTRIBUTORS by Nick Green

1 Radical Research 2 Requiem Metal Podcast 3 Blizzard of Bozz 4 Hour of the Barbarian 5 All Pugs Considered With Shawn Macomber

T O P

METALLICA-RELATED BORED-AT-HOME YOUTUBE F INDS by Kevin Stewart-Panko

1 ...And Justice for Jason 2 ...And Jason for All 3 Hypnotizing Power: The Story of Master of Puppets 4 Random Hip-Hop Head Reacts to “Enter Sandman” Live in Moscow ’91 5 Some Girl Cries After Watching the “One” Video

: JAN 2021 : DECIBEL

Spectres From the Old World •

C E N TURY M E D IA

Spectres From the Old World is a (dark) metal masterclass. From husk to guts to brains, the German black metallers emerged from the crossroads scathed immaculately and galvanized cosmically. Dark Fortress worked on what would be Spectres From the Old World for five years. From the radix of V. Santura and Asvargr’s otherworldly oeuvre, they summoned great and petrifying scapegraces. Indeed, “The Spider in the Web,” “Pali Aike,” “Isa,” “In Deepest Time” and “Swan Song” are peerless in their caliginous spectacle. — C HRIS D IC K

Sleeper Vessels •

RO M A N N UM E RA L

It doesn’t matter if you look both ways before you cross the street; the sidewalks are train tracks and the road is the Autobahn. Fawn Limbs’ “Geometric Noise” and “Mathematical Chaos” will have your head spinning like The Exorcist, but that’s not to say it’s demonic; no, it’s possible that the self-proclaimed sonic descriptors undersold the cacophony. Its grinding energy makes the gut-shaking low-end of Frontierer stop momentum like a clothesline. (That band’s Pedram Valiani mixed Sleeper Vessels, and vocalist Chad Kapper guests.) What else did you expect from current and former members of Psyopus, Artificial Brain and Infinite Nomad? — BRA D LE Y ZO RG D RAGE R

Solve Et Coagula •

RA IN W ITHO UT E N D

Hope fades. Light dims. We’re nearing the end. Hyperbolic to the dead, but this is precisely what Exgenesis’ debut, Solve Et Coagula, sounds like. One of several projects by songmaster Jari Lindholm (ex-Slumber/Atoma), Exgenesis expertly conspire—with vocalist Alejandro Lotero and drummer Christian Netzell—to dispirit, haunt and astonish. From the eldritch “Hollowness” and the monolithic gloom of “Where the Hope Ends” to show-stopper “Coagula” and the summer dying of “Solve,” Solve Et Coagula is the void in all of us. — C HRIS D IC K

Blood Hails Steel - Steel Hails Fire •

DYIN G VICTIM S

Delivering ridiculously hard on their promising 2019 debut EP, Switzerland’s Megaton Sword followed up with a debut full-length so mighty it’s like Niralet was but a feint for this true attack. The eponymous opener plants a heavy banner, as direct as it is titular, as refreshingly new as it is reminiscent of New Dark Age. From there, the album spirals toward delirium, drunk on its own daring—which makes sense considering that Megaton Sword sing (exclusively) about a magical land where the beer flows in rivers. — D UTC H P E A RC E

Mestarin kynsi •

N UC LE A R BLA ST

Through ouroboric krautrock rhythms, lacings of psychedelic rock’s most nightmarish head trips, and the austere sonics of trip-hop and 1970s sci-fi synth manipulations, Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu draw down the moon to perform post-black metal alchemy to those most attuned to their transformative frequencies. Mestarin kynsi is mind, body and sinister soul music, a consciousness-expanding, ayahuascafueled vision quest that fans of experimental music would pilgrimage barefooted to experience if necessary. Oranssi Pazuzu are unquestionably one of extreme metal’s very few truly progressive masters. — D E A N BROW N

Compiled by

35 34

Svalbard

When I Die, Will I Get Better? •

T O P TRA N SLATIO N LO SS

As with 2018’s It’s Hard to Have Hope, Svalbard’s third full-length has a hardcore heart—largely because guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Serena Cherry still addresses gender-related issues with enough clarity and intensity to potentially enlighten even pathetic dumbfucks whose working vocabs include “PC.” Escalating quality and enhanced presence aside, the biggest album-to-album difference is the way Cherry and guitarist/vocalist Liam Phelan fold thick layers of metalgaze gauze and glory into the furiously tremolo-picked riffs and chords that form the melodic backbone of the Bristol-based quartet’s attack. — RO D SM ITH

RUSH SONGS sans NEIL PEART by Raoul Hernandez

1 “Working Man” 2 “Finding My Way” 3 “In the Mood” 4 “What You’re Doing” 5 “Take a Friend”

T O P

METAL BANDS NAMED COVID-19

Enslaved Utgard •

by Shane Mehling

NUCL EAR BL AST

For some bands, losing a powerhouse drummer who played on 15 years’ worth of iconic albums would undoubtedly be a killing blow, but we’re talking about Enslaved here—the universe better come up with a lot more than a personnel change if it wants to squash the Norwegian legends’ decades-long momentum. In fact, Ivar Bjørnson and company only had to glance across the mixing board to find a suitable replacement in longtime producer/collaborator Iver Sandøy, whose powerful singing perfectly complements the band’s progressive black metal stylings and imbues Utgard with a soaring, mystical energy. — M ATT SO LIS

1 COVID-19 (Russia) 2 COVID-19 (Birmingham, AL) 3 COVID-19 (New York) 4 COVID-19 (New York) 5 COVID-19 (Brazil)

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EXTREME ALBUMS of 1970 by Nick Green

In the Company of Serpents

Xibalba

Lux •

SEL F-REL EASED

The fourth full-length from Denver’s In the Company of Serpents can be hard to follow from a thematic standpoint. Much like the themes of mythology and Gnostic mysticism, the odd time signatures and tunings on Lux are meant to promote an ill-at-ease feeling. “The Chasm at the Mouth of the All” isn’t the band’s first attempt to fuse Americana and sludge, but it’s the trio’s finest synthesis yet. Forget metal—it’s the most radical thing to happen to country and western music since Orville Peck. —NICK GREEN

Años en Infierno •

Devouring Ruin •

1 Black Sabbath, Paranoid 2 Stooges, Fun House 3 Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath 4 Miles Davis, Bitches Brew 5 Deep Purple, In Rock

SOUTH ERN LORD

Los Angeles pit bosses Xibalba excel at activating the most primal, bloodthirsty parts of the brain. Años en Infierno scratches the same pineal gland itch with the same tools: D-beats, chainsaw guitar tone, and a bleak worldview barked out in English as well as en español. But while the band still offers no serenity, it does so with a more sophisticated sense of atmosphere and space on songs like “En la Oscuridad.” Blast this shit while you tell the ICE agent at the door to get the fuck out. —JOSEPH SCHAF ER

Wake

TRANSL ATION LOSS

Calgary’s Wake have spent the majority of their discography being one of grindcore’s most exciting and thoughtful bands, but Devouring Ruin is when the quintet decided they could go even further. With songs that range from two minutes to over 10, the band uses electronics, splintered time signatures and soaring, melancholic solos to create an extravagant album, a reach that’s far more ambitious than most of their contemporaries. But they remain grind kids at heart, and their blasting is as savage and ugly as ever. —SHAN E M E HLIN G

T O P

TWEETS of 2020 of PEOPLE STILL IRRATIONALLY HATING LARS ULRICH

1 @dc_delorme: The older I get the more I wanna beat the shit out of Lars Ulrich for being Lars Ulrich 2 @nickisfatt: I really like Metallica, that being said Lars Ulrich is one of the worst drummers of all time 3 @keeganvd7: Lars Ulrich suck 4 @kberg86: Anytime I see Lars Ulrich on a screen, he gets a loud “FUCK YOU!” from me. I like Metallica but I do not like him 5 @DJ_1955: Just wanted to say fuck Lars ulrich

DECIBEL : JAN 2021 :

T O P

COVID LOCKDOWN WARDROBE ITEMS (and NUMBER of CONSECUTIVE DAYS WORN BEFORE LAUNDERING)

Cirith Ungol

Proscription

Celestial Season

Midnight

by Kevin Stewart-Panko

1 Jungle Rot “Death Metal” socks (11 days) 2 Harm’s Way “Pst Hmn” basketball shorts (21 days) 3 The Young Gods "Only Heaven ’95 Tour" longsleeve (27 days) 4 Blood Incantation logo hoodie (29 days) 5 Origin logo sweatpants (36 days)

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REASONS INTERNET METAL DORKS CRIED in 2020 by Neill Jameson

1 Bands denouncing racism 2 Saying you don’t like Thin Lizzy 3 Flippers selling those Goatowar records you missed 4 Saying you were disappointed with the new cool record of the year 5 Goatowar preorders

T O P

DETAILS from F IVE F INGER DEATH PUNCH’S ANTI-MASK MUSIC VIDEO by Shane Mehling

1 The Ralph Waldo Emerson quote 2 The masked actor who doesn’t know how to use the nose wire 3 An explicit reference to QAnon 4 The band’s cowardly defense of their dangerous conspiracy mongering 5 It was all a dream… by George Washington

: JAN 2021 : DECIBEL

Forever Black •

M E TA L BLA D E

Cirith Ungol always struck me as the metal equivalent of a fly caught in amber, forever frozen in the early ’80s. The influential SoCal doomsters actually formed a decade earlier, but did their best work before Master of Puppets irrevocably changed the metal landscape. Forever Black, released decades later by a reformed (mostly) original lineup, retains the “caught in time” vibe, but offers improved sonic quality and songs that are not only more focused, but as contemporary as one might expect from dudes well past retirement age. — A D E M TE P E D E LE N

Conduit •

DA RK D E SC E N T

Set for an absurd Thursday release in September and strapped with a somewhat mundane, clinical-sounding band name, Conduit showed up on the radar, but just barely. Until it started playing. Everything about this record shook me from my lockdown-induced malaise. The passion on this black/death barrage bursts from every monstrous second. The Finns sculpt dramatic riffs out of their bestial sonic monolith and find dynamic phrasing within the ravaging chaos. Proscription play songs with a bloodlust that is both admirable and refreshing. —DANIEL LAKE

T he Secret Teachings •

BURN IN G WO RLD

There’s no lingua franca that allows for the Romany Nosferatu-in-paisley overture of 1995’s Solar Lovers and if you got it, then a portion of you exists with it beyond the margins of rational time. Celestial Season’s recent reemergence arrives with an epiphany: While their old acolytes have undeniably grayed, CS have not. Those romantic platitudes, alien utterances and psychedelic digressions return intact. And like Solar Lovers, it’s flawed in the purest way, greeting us after all this time wild-eyed and with a rose in its teeth. Resplendent, uncanny and ever within season. — FO RRE ST P ITTS

Rebirth by Blasphemy •

M E TA L BLA D E

Self-professed “antisocial megalomaniac” Athenar brought his old-skool, oneman-band black metal to Metal Blade for album number four and the results are… strikingly similar to the rest of the Midnight canon. We’re not here to tell you that he’s “matured,” or whatever, because Rebirth by Blasphemy is as philthy as anything he’s done, and it generally sticks to a well-established formula that includes all the wartiest bits of Venom, Motörhead and the Dead Boys. — A D E M TE P E D E LE N

Krallice

Mass Cathexis •

SE LF - RE LE A SE D

Mass Cathexis is a balancing act between atmosphere, brutality and technicality. Easily Krallice’s most focused material since 2012’s genre-redefining Years Past Matter, their ninth record is an explosion of tightly structured chaos. Guitarists Mick Barr and Colin Marston often sound on the verge of spinning out of control, but they never do, thanks to a sense of restraint and efficient song lengths. While not a total return to an older form, Mass Cathexis is a reminder of everything Krallice do best—just in shorter, controlled bursts. — VIN C E BE LLIN O

Compiled by

ACxDC Satan Is King •

T O P

PROSTHETIC

Nearly every year-end list has a record or two they’ll mention as “timely,” but in the case of Satan Is King gouging its way into a socially and spiritually fucked 2020, the descriptor is incredibly apt. Politically charged, grinding powerviolence seems like a natural jelly to this year’s peanut butter, but ACxDC crawled their way to the top of the pile with a long awaited full-length that managed to defy even the loftiest expectations. File alongside Dropdead as the nastiest record spewed by grinding punks this year. —NEIL L JAM ESO N

Temple of Void

Atramentus

22 21

T he World T hat Was •

SH ADOW KIN GD O M

In a year with new albums by Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, it takes something special to stand out in the realm of doom-death. But Detroit’s Temple of Void have always been special, and The World That Was showcases their strongest talents—ominous dirges interspersed with propulsive tank-beat passages. Their third LP adds a potent axis to their onslaught, and an expanded sense of melody—from acoustic passages to synthesizer beds—considerably strengthens their dolorous assault. —JOSEPH SCH AFER

Stygian •

NEON METAL ALBUMS of 2020 by Jeff Treppel

1 Carpenter Brut, Blood Machines, [ N O Q UA RTE R] 2 Master Boot Record, Floppy Disk Overdrive, [ M E TA L BLA D E ]

3 Magic Sword, Endless, [ J OYF UL N O ISE ]

4 Meteor, System Failure, [ SE LF - RE LE A SE D ] 5 Dan Terminus, Last Call for All Passengers, [ BLO O D M USIC ]

20 BUCK SPIN

Mariusz Lewandowski’s cover painting for Stygian perfectly captures the music’s shadow-casting spell. Featuring three members of Quebecois voidspawns Chthe’ilist, Atramentus specialize in sun-murdering monolithic dirges. This debut drips with haunted atmosphere as distant organs and gurgled invocations conjure phantoms. Split into three parts, the album’s ectoplasmic interlude feels like a self-contained horror soundtrack. But as the album lurches to its open casket, gothic melodies and soulful solos join the procession. Surrender to Stygian and let the cemetery croons tuck you in with a final lullaby. — SE A N F RA ISE R

Tombs

Under Sullen Skies •

SEASON OF MIST

Under Sullen Skies doesn’t want for ideas. Here we join Mike Hill and co., for a danse macabre through his influences and stylistic inclinations—the latter never straying far from black metal’s molten spite, yet edging towards the anthemic on tracks like “Bone Furnace,” seesawing between sludgy NYHC muscle and Celtic Frost morbidity on “Void Constellation,” through occultist fevers like “Angel of Darkness” and the funereal death rock of “Sombre Ruin.” Whenever the intensity ebbs, melancholy flows, an emotional consistency to bind it all together. —JONATHAN HORSL EY

Haunt Flashback •

CHURCH

Another year, another 18 Haunt releases. Flashback takes the edge over previous 2020 full-length Mind Freeze for one simple reason: glorious, glorious synths. Although sole proprietor Trevor William Church previously experimented with keyboards, they’re fully integrated here, and they provide the extra meat on the bone that his trad metal outfit needed. Highlights like the title track and “One With the Universe” benefit from the melodic thrust provided by the electronics. This feels like the Pyromania to If Icarus Could Fly’s High and Dry. — J E F F TRE P P E L

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CANDIDATES for a NEW SIX FEET UNDER VOCALIST by Matt Solis

1 Jim Carrey 2 A constipated hamster 3 A sentient respiratory infection 4 The goat from Ghost Bath 5 My broken refrigerator

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DECI BEL CONTRIBUTOR HAIR METAL BANDS by Nick Green

1 Bon Zelli 2 Twisted Pittster 3 BennettBoys 4 D.I.C.K. 5 Enuff Z’Alucky

T O P

ALBUMS of 30 YEARS AGO by Albert Mudrian

1 Entombed, Left Hand Path 2 Obituary, Cause of Death 3 Judas Priest, Painkiller 4 Megadeth, Rust in Peace 5 Bad Religion, Against the Grain

DECIBEL : JAN 2021 :

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BROKEN QUARANTINE PROMISES of 2020

Kirk Windstein

Pallbearer

Lamp of Murmuur

Godthrymm

Dropdead

by Shane Mehling

1 I will write a bunch of killer riffs 2 I will discover a bunch of killer new music 3 I will work out and fit into those old band shirts 4 I will finally draw that black metal logo 5 I won’t cry during the finale of Schitt’s Creek

T O P

NOISE ROCK BANDS I JUST MADE UP that SHANE MEHLING would be TOTALLY INTO by Albert Mudrian

1 Bedwetter 2 Hammer to Throat 3 Spazzz 4 Dead Fairies 5 Unemployable

T O P

DUNGEON SYNTH RELEASES of 2020 by Dutch Pearce

1 Blood Tower, Clock Dreams 2 Empyreal Forest, Divinations 3 Forlorn Pizza Parlor, Abandoned in the Pizza Shop to the Night of Devouring Emptiness 4 Mournful Moon, ..As Shadows Fall Over Zenitheaen 5 Nachtjäger, Night Hunters

T O P

TITLES for F UTURE DROPDEAD ALBUMS by Kevin Stewart-Panko

1 Dropdeader 2 Dropdeaderer 3 Dropdeadest 4 Dropdead II: Electric Boogaloo 5 Dropdead III: Dropdead Drops Dead in 3-D

: JAN 2021 : DECIBEL

Dream in Motion •

EONE

Dream in Motion is the first-ever solo venture from Crowbar founder Kirk Windstein. At once solemn and ethereal, boasting 10 slow-burning odes—including a faithful cover of Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”—the introverted affair is driven less by the gargantuan riffs for which Windstein is notorious and more by the pure weight in sincerity of his distinct, gravelly vocals. Ceremonial harmonies—still downtuned and soaked in that unambiguous bayou tone—summon an air of tragedy, as his brooding words, echoing and honest, paint lurid images of a lifetime of anguish, sorrow, perseverance and hope. — LIZ C IAVA RE LLA - BRE N N ER

Forgotten Days •

N UC LE A R BLA ST

Four albums in, these Little Rock doom-dealers still have the mournful melody game on lock. And while Pallbearer’s propensity for extended meditations is alive and well on centerpiece “Silver Wings,” Forgotten Days features some of their first songs under the five-minute mark. As such, “The Quicksand of Existing,” “Rite of Passage” and “Stasis” condense their uncanny knack for tuneful thunder into a satisfyingly compact format. Meanwhile, frontman Brett Campbell delivers his finest vocal performance to date, making Forgotten Days the band’s best since Sorrow and Extinction. — J . BE N N E TT

Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism •

SE LF - RE LE A SE D

We don’t know a whole lot about the man behind Lamp of Murmuur. But we know one thing for sure: His music totally rules. Along with bands like Hulder, Thy Dying Light and Akasha, Lamp of Murmuur represent the new awakening of raw old-school black metal. But the project goes beyond simple ’90s secondwave worship and adds a wave of chorus to the guitars, as well as a stream of death rock and gothic nail polish to the atmosphere. A refreshing breath of cold, haunted air. — J . A N D RE W ZA LUC K Y

Reflections •

DYIN G VICTIM S

Written in riffs the size of imposing Gothic architecture, with vaulting leads that wring the heart and impress upon the mind (and narrated by one of the best bellows in doom history), Godthrymm’s debut album Reflections sounds like the autobiography of English guitarist/vocalist Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride, ex-Solstice). With Shaun Taylor-Steels (also ex-MDB) on drums, Glencross seems to look back on his life and write the doom masterpiece he’s always had in him, in eight chapters. Part homage, part resuscitation, Reflections proves the vast potential of the epic doom genre, raising the bar almost beyond reach. — D UTC H P EA R C E

Dropdead •

A RM AGE D D O N

It’s been over 20 years since these Rhode Island rippers issued a full-length, preferring to spread their bullet train hardcore via splits and EPs. On Dropdead 2020, they did the most Dropdead thing they could by uncoiling and striking with 23 brief powerhouse bombs. Guitars churn like NYHC on accelerants, with piston-pumping drumming and a ridiculous clarity to Bob Otis’ vocals deliberately designed so you can hear him call out the final days of decency and democracy. — K E VIN STE WA RT- PA N KO

D E C I B E L : J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 : 41

T O P

DEMOS of 2020 by Dutch Pearce

Ripped to Shreds

Vile Creature

Of Feather and Bone

Armored Saint

Incantation

1 Yoth Iria, Under His Sway 2 Poison Ruïn, Poison Ruïn 3 Coagulate, The Art of Cryptosis 4 Ukcheansalawit, Tekipuk 5 Meurtrières, Meurtrières

T O P

FLEXI DISCS of 2020 by Albert Mudrian

1 Cirith Ungol, “Brutish Manchild” 2 Satan, “Twelve Infernal Lords” 3 Trappist, “Growler in the Yard” 4 Hyperdontia, “Punctured Soul” 5 Graf Orlock, “Violent Ultimatum at the Local Dojo”/“Bleak News Report in the Office Breakroom”

T O P

BEERS of 2020 by Chris Dodge

1 Weathered Souls Brewing and 1,100-plus collaborating brewers worldwide, Black Is Beautiful imperial stout 2 New Anthem Beer Project, Neon God double dry hopped IPA 3 Enegren Brewing, Valkyrie German-style amber 4 Humble Sea Brewing, Socks & Sandals foggy IPA 5 J. Wakefield, BBA Live & Let Brew imperial stout

T O P

PEOPLE EDDIE VAN HALEN is JAMMING WITH in HEAVEN by Shane Mehling

1 Jimi Hendrix 2 Neil Peart 3 Heaven isn’t real 4 5

: JAN 2021 : DECIBEL

亂 (Luan) •

P ULVE RIZE D

Andrew Lee is extreme metal’s Renaissance man, having dropped seven releases in 2020. Some of them find him playing all or most instruments, making the furious flurry even more impressive. Fortunately, quantity and quality aren’t mutually exclusive, especially on high-water mark project Ripped to Shreds. With a new crop of old-school death metal bands popping up, 亂 (Luan) proves that, while you can cram the night before, the best way is to study for your whole life. A test is hardly that when you’re intimately familiar. — BRA D LE Y ZO R G D R AG ER

Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm! •

P RO STHE TIC

There may be strength in numbers, but not exclusively. As a duo, Vile Creature sound like they’ve assembled an orchestra (or an army) to fulfill their distinct vision of doom metal. Most striking are the final two songs, “Glory! Glory!” and “Apathy Took Helm!” It’s an emotionally draining experience where angelic choral arrangements mix with grating feedback and haunting, windswept guitars crash against screams and sludge. It’s the kind of vacillation between optimism and total, raving despair that makes it a perfect soundtrack for these times. — SHA N E M E HLIN G

Sulfuric Disintegration •

P RO FO UN D LO RE

Loosely written around the concept of suicide and composed with audience suffocation in mind, the Denver death metal trio opens up the event horizon good and wide for album number three. The chaos is raw and organic. From a distance, the cover art has an Altars of Madness vibe—this color-matching was accidental, a Freudian slip. But there’s got to be something in that, a freak of kismet, because toe-tappers such as “Baptized in Boiling Phlegm” similarly reach new heights in atom-splitting horror and artful blasphemy. — J O N ATHA N HO RSLE Y

Punching the Sky •

M E TA L BLA D E

If there was ever a year where we needed the power and glory of traditional, old-school metal to lift us to victory, it was the COVID-annihilated 2020. And there’s no better band to provide that soundtrack, to remind us why metal is the best music ever, than Armored Saint. On their first full-length in five years, they—as always—lay down anthem after metal anthem. John Bush’s soaring voice is as perfect as ever, guiding us all to victory, forcing us to win, always, hands down. — GRE G P RATT

Sect of Vile Divinities •

RE LA P SE

As fanatics and if means permit, Incantation’s catalog deserves proprietorship. But if the legends are a neoteric experience, then it’s not debut Onward to Golgotha, but instead Sect of Vile Divinities where I’d ritual first. OK, that’s a lie. I’d bookend the Incantation experience with a dark room, candles and “Propitiation” blasting as loud as fucking possible. Next, cue up “Black Fathom’s Fire,” “Chant of Formless Dread” and “Siege Hive” for the abominable transformation to continue. Thank us later by an offering of crafty libation and wicked hand signs. — C H R I S D I C K

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 43

T O P

“COOL” ALBUMS of 2020 by Neill Jameson

1 Kommodus, Kommodus 2 Fanebærer, Den Forste ild 3 Circle of Ouroborus, Viimeinen Juoksu 4 Nyredolk, Indebrændt 5 Serment, Chante, Ô Flamme de la Liberté

T O P

DUMBASS COMMENTS MADE ABOUT the USBM BOOK before ANYONE COULD READ IT and KNEW WHAT WAS ACTUALLY IN IT

Göden

Beyond Darkness •

SVA RT

The collective known as Göden command attention from the very first moment of Beyond Darkness. This is doom at its most infernal, wallowing in Stephen “Spacewinds” Flam’s massive guitar tones, Vas “NXYTA Goddess of Night” Kallas’ prominent vocal croak, Tony “The Prophet of Göden” Pinnisi’s ice-shroud keyboards and the contributions of a half-dozen other musicians. Beyond Darkness welds the martial to the anarchic in impossibly perfect expressions of soul-dominating anguish. Winter fans’ expectations were high; Göden clear them with airless miles to spare. — DA N IE L LA K E

Paradise Lost

Uada

Sweven

Necrot

Obsidian • N UC LE A R BLA ST

Longing, sadness, despair. Doom. It’s all very 2020, of course. No matter. Paradise Lost have been the master of these forces for decades now, and on Obsidian, they continue the winning streak they’ve held for several records. The album arrived back in May, peak quarantine in a number of places, and the lyrics sung by Nick Holmes on “Fall From Grace” felt all too real: “As we fall from grace / And we touch death’s hand too soon.” With heavy, mournful riffs to match. — J . A N D RE W ZA LUC K Y

Djinn • E ISE N WA LD In Arabic mythology, the Djinn were amorphous spirits that could take many forms and generally suited whatever purpose the storyteller needed. Hooded menaces Uada do something similar on Djinn, only with musical genres instead of magic—although the results are pretty magical. Black metal is the base element of their alchemical concoction. Into that mix they throw post-punk, NWOBHM, post-rock and even a Vincent Price sample. Also, loads of hooks. The enchantment lasts for the entire hour runtime of their sophomore effort. — J E F F T R EP P EL

by Albert Mudrian

1 Judas Iscariot??? Kult of Azazel??? I Shalt Become??? Grand Belials Key??? Lol you included Deafheaven but not those essentials. Decibel has always been and will always be tourist trash. 2 Deafhaven??? But no gbk? 3 I wonder if they bothered to interview the guy who booked all the early WITTR tours, and all the Ludicra tours? He might have some insight into this history. (Checks). Nope. 4 Akhlys?? 5 Forgot Judas Iscariot and Grand Belial’s Key

T O P

BANDS of 2020 in ANAGRAM FORM by Nick Green

1 Alpha Tandem 2 Complainant Here 3 Him, A Reptilian Trump 4 Vagaries Hyped 5 First Aid Trip

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T he Eternal Resonance • SVA RT When Morbus Chron dissipated in 2014, we were robbed of an ascendant and transcendent death metal project. But visionary Morbus Chron vocalist/guitarist Robert Andersson has returned with Sweven, named after that band’s terminal opus. On Sweven’s The Eternal Resonance debut, death metal slips into parallel dimensions and emerges as a new lifeform. Andersson’s vocals surge with raw desperation that becomes the album’s power source and beating heart. Sweven’s intrepid artistry transforms death metal into a slippery canvas for agile melodies and prog exploration. — SE A N F RA SIE R

Mortal • TA N KC RIM E S Remember in Point Break when Grommet snatched a suspiciously packed parachute from Johnny Utah and exclaimed, “This one’s set for a neck-breaker!”? That’s exactly how it felt back in May when Tankcrimes announced the imminent arrival of Necrot’s sophomore LP. Expectations were as high as that plane, due in no small part to the massive impact of the Oakland trio’s 2017 debut, Blood Offerings, and the relentless touring that followed. Predictably, ol’ LBJ was correct—for 38 merciless minutes, Mortal flays the ears with top-grade death metal that deftly balances technical prowess, disgusting grooves and rock-solid songwriting. — M AT T S O L I S

sleeper vessels

romannumer alrecor ds .c om fawnl imbs. bandcamp. com

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 45

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Spirit Adrift Enlightened by Eternity 20 BUCK SPIN

sunday morning text to Spirit Adrift pilot Nathan Garrett nets an appropriate response: “Oh shit!!! Guess that means we’re in the Top 5. So awesome!” ¶ Less than 24 hours later, the cosmic conquistador strolls into Astro Record Store in Bastrop, a half-hour east of Austin, where Garrett and his wife loaded onto 1.35 acres back in March. Spawned in Florida to wildlings who met at a school for the deaf in his mother’s native Kentucky, he sprouted up in Oklahoma overseen by the parents of his father, who he visited once in the capital at the Texas School for the Deaf. Twentyfive years it took him to sow that seed. “Whoa,” he exclaims, unearthing a pair of vintage John Prine LPs.

: JAN 2021 : DECIBEL

Today touches off release week, and by Friday, when Enlightened by Eternity finally drops, he too will drop—off the radar. From here to

eternity approximates his journey to make the heavy metal projectile that is this year’s fourth full-length, a portal of anthemic levitation and existential shred. Four woodshed years in Arkansas, and nearly a decade in Phoenix—half of it bouncing between death metal harshers Gatecreeper and doom comet Spirit Adrift—now deposits him in Texas to complete a cycle begun in March 2019. “I’d put in my notice with the previous band, which weighed on me a long time, so I felt totally free at that point,” recalls Garrett over breakfast nearby. “Everything was good; marriage was good, nice place to live, dog seemed fine. So, in that moment of writing the album, everything was fine, which is very rare. “I feel that way now, too, though. I miss my dog and wish there wasn’t a pandemic sweeping the planet, but internally, I’m back to that. It was ex-

tremely difficult to achieve, but other than being constantly sleep-deprived by the new dogs and being bummed out about tours being cancelled seemingly forever, internally I’m super at peace and feeling good, which is largely about where we moved to.” Garrett pays the check as thanks for dB serendipitously gifting him a third Prine LP after his sporting a Tshirt of COVID’s first musical victim during a rendezvous at his new home on 9/11. That day he revealed enough new tunes for a new LP, but today he’s far more concerned with meeting a contractor about the 13 acres on which he plans to build houses for himself and his grandparents. “This place is meant for us, because it’s southern, which is super important to me—very eclectic, conducive to the arts, and just plain cool,” he grins, green eyes blazing. “It’s been on my radar my whole life.” — RAO UL HE RN A N D E Z PHOTO BY DAVE CREANEY

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hough the terms album and demo can be interchangeable in the Paysage d’Hiver oeuvre, debut full-length Im Wald presents a challenge to the listener: endure and be rewarded. But it isn’t all about enduring. Two hours of black metal feels like a lot—and, if we’re being completely honest here, it is—but sometimes it can be presented in such a way which makes it just the right amount. This is, without question, such an example. ¶ “[Im Wald] was never planned to be that long,” says Paysage d’Hiver mastermind Wintherr. “In fact, when I started, I thought that it would be something comparatively short, like [2000 demo] Kristall & Isa for instance. It came to be quite different.” Through Im Wald’s adventure (or souljourney, as Wintherr calls it), the listener is presented with what is ultimately a thesis on Paysage d’Hiver’s existence: relatively small portions of everything he has done in the past, presented cohesively and without interruption. “It started with a library of riffs I recorded within two evenings about 10 years ago,” Wintherr explains.

On its surface, Im Wald seems disjointed compared to its predecessors; each demo has its own identity and sound, whereas Im Wald presents these myriad of ideas as one. With material dating back as far as 2001’s Winterkälte (“Alt,” for the curious), Im Wald is as much a timeline as it is an album. “By working with these old materials,” Wintherr says, “I got into

Paysage d’Hiver Im Wald

K UN STHA LL P RO D UK TIO N E N

a flow within which all the other songs rather spontaneously came to be. You know, once I have sort of established this ‘cosmic’ connection, it just flows timelessly. This is what happened here and the main reason why it got a little bit more expansive than I thought it would.” As far as how Im Wald came to be, Wintherr prefers to obfuscate. “Paysage d’Hiver is not so much about ‘intent,’ but ‘flow.’ Of course, my thoughts and intentions are also a part of it, but in my perception, this part is quite marginal. I can give some direction, but that’s about it.” With such a grand statement, Paysage d’Hiver’s future is uncer-

tain, but Wintherr remains resolute. “[It will be] something very different,” he says. “As Im Wald feels like an Opus Summum, it feels logical to me to do something different and unexpected, and explore—for Paysage d’Hiver terms—more unknown musical regions, because this, too, feels natural and logical. There will be more to come, for sure.” After such a long tenure as a solo musician, how does Wintherr maintain his passion for black metal? “Love,” he says. “I just love this music and I especially love creating it. Having the skills and means to do so is a huge gift, and I mean to honor it.” — J O N RO SE N THA L DECIBEL : JAN 2021 :

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Imperial Triumphant Alphaville CENTURY MEDIA

mperial triumphant’s alphaville will become a benchmark release for extreme metal this decade. That’s not early-days hyperbole; that’s just a fact. The ornate mask-adorned jazz-metal extremists have created a record of visionary scope and impeccable execution, one that pushes genre fusion to id-shattering levels of exquisite discordance. ¶ “It’s a pleasure to hear that so many people enjoy our work,” says sole founding member Zachary Ezrin (vocals, guitars, orchestrations) of the mass positivity that has greeted Alphaville since its release in July 2020. “If metal’s musical trajectory is to be anything like the history of classical and jazz, then things are only going to get more and more complex and challenging.”

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“Music is a powerful device,” adds supremo bassist/pianist Steve Blanco, “and even in the small, relatively obscure genre we’re in, it’s nice to know people are listening.” For every curmudgeonly traditionalist gripping Kill ’Em All for dear

life, there are 10 open-minded metal lifers happy to broaden their horizons by tackling an album as intimidating in its musical and aesthetic construction as Alphaville. “There has [been] and always will be a contingency of metalheads who listen to music beyond metal,” correctly notes drummer Kenny Grohowski, a man whose fluid ability to swing and blast at will is simply jaw-dropping. “Fact is, you don’t get Black Sabbath, nor Led Zeppelin, without blues, big band swing and bebop, so jazz has always been part of the genre. We’re just simply embracing an American musical tradition in our own way and allowing its influence to shine through our music.” According to the band, their latest and greatest LP has even been favorably heralded by the NYC and broader jazz scenes, with positive reviews also received in European jazz magazines. “Overall, the album [has been] accepted on its musical and creative merits alone, regard-

less of the genre we fall under,” confirms Grohowski. Such cross-pollinating genre impact during the most difficult year in recent memory is a testament to the supreme collective chemistry of this virtuosic trio and what they have achieved together on record; and despite crippling socioeconomic challenges, Imperial Triumphant retain a passion to pursue their craft at all costs. “The music industry is pretty much dead right now, but we’ve continued to work in whatever way we can,” says Blanco. “It’s been great to see our trio not get bogged down in [the] petty minutia of things beyond our control, and focus on what we can achieve. We’ve spent years building our universe, have been getting amazing feedback, and that’s certainly a positive.” “We genuinely appreciate all the support from our fans around the world, and we look forward to bringing you more fine luxury art in all its forms,” Ezrin concludes. — D E A N BROW N PHOTO BY ALEX KRAUSS

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love the word iron. I love the way it sounds. I love the material. I love the word; I love the way it looks. I also love ravening. Sounds cool. Means hungry. [Ravening Iron] is basically another way of saying ‘hungry swords.’” ¶ As a blacksmith by trade, vocalist Jason Tarpey of American epic heavy metal band Eternal Champion spends his days forging iron. His current repertoire is dominated by bushcraft knives, functional architecture and swords. If it sounds romantic and indicative of a bygone Hyborian age, it’s because it is: Tarpey’s life is defined by the themes that dominate the rapidly ascending band. Of course, Eternal Champion’s namesake refers to the many incarnations of the immortal hero, including Elric of Melniboné, the albino prince. Conceptualized by Michael Moorcock, Elric yields the hungry sword Stormbringer, consumer of all souls whose skin it pierces. Yet, on Eternal Champion’s second album, the vast majority of songs fixate on a world of Jason’s making, which is more fully fleshed out in his novel The Godblade, which will be released

in conjunction with Ravening Iron. It’s kismet—and yet, deeply intentional—that every piece of art released by the band is deeply interconnected to an existing tradition of fantasy and heavy metal. “The songs are all blood and thunder,” says Tarpey, who identifies the salacious (and rather contentious) nude antagonist on the album cover painted by Ken Kelly as Narila, a recurring character in his work. “She controls the Insane God who is tak-

Eternal Champion Ravening Iron N O RE M O RSE

ing the form of that dragon crawling up behind her.” Tarpey adds that the lyrics “deal with courage in the face of death, in the uncanny, in the power of will, in the primacy of the individual over the group, the connection to steel, to the horror that’s intrinsic to reality and suffering and struggle and lust even. I wasn’t afraid to put it in there. It’s about the delicate balance between law and chaos… I went into the melancholic side of the band. ’Cause I knew some of the songs are gonna be darker and slower.” Indeed, the music on Ravening Iron speaks to a moodier side of Eternal Champion, whose 2016 debut, The Armor of Ire, was a sleeper hit that snowballed into modern-day classic

status. Primarily written by multiinstrumentalist Arthur Rizk (who also does production, mixing and mastering work for his own band and numerous others), Eternal Champion are pulsating, primal and thunderous, evoking Manowar, Manilla Road and Omen. On Ravening Iron, the band has sonically shifted towards epic doom, to melancholic and magnificent impact. “That was a distinct decision that we made as we were writing,” says Rizk. “That we would have a couple doom-inspired tracks. We always liked Solitude Aeternus and Memory Garden… it always spoke to us because it was dark and heavy metal that was mosh-worthy.” — SA RA H K ITTE RIN G HA M DECIBEL : JAN 2021 :

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Napalm Death T hroes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism CENTURY M E D IA

very act of creation,” Pablo Picasso once averred, “begins with an act

of destruction.” And vanishingly few embody that ethos more honestly, fully or consistently than Napalm Death—a band to which iconoclasm and bold revolutionary/evolutionary change is not merely second nature, but, indeed, raison d'être. ¶ “The whole point of Napalm Death in the first place—I’m talking about before I even joined the band—was to challenge convention,” vocalist Mark “Barney” Greenway tells Decibel. “There are areas of the sound spectrum that haven’t been toyed with at all in terms of making music— and I want to go there… I don’t want Napalm to become even slightly conservative in its approach. I have no interest in the band growing old gracefully. I want to make even more fucking noise.”

“ I knew and hung out with Nic [Bullen], Justin [Broadrick] and Mick [Harris] back in 1986,” bassist Shane Embury adds. “Napalm Death were my favorite band then, and there has always been more to Napalm than just blast beats. Napalm’s about destroying conceptions and rebuilding them— then taking the best parts forward onto uncharted territories.” These strands of subversion and liberation woven so tightly into the Napalm DNA have never been more fully actualized than on the band’s 16th album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, which is both transcendent apogee and glorious annihilation; both the culmination of every mind-boggling leap forward since Scum blew up the scene in 1987 and sui generis piece of true, singular art. Though some riffs and concepts were conceived in the back of vans during marathon pre-pandemic tours, many of the songs were pieced together in studio across three kinetic sessions. “It’s more creative for me this way,” Embury says. “Surprise being the key element—I hate demoing shit.” That’s how you wind up with, say, improvised industrial instrumentation on the wild “A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen” or Embury playing drums on “Joie de Ne Pas Vivre” and “Amoral.” “Danny [Herrera, drummer] was like, ‘Sure, man, you know what you’re doing…’ He’s used to my manic-ness!” He continues: “I felt PHOTO BY GOBINDER JHITTA

like I was compensating for no [onhiatus guitarist] Mitch [Harris] this time around. Totally up to the task, but I wanted this album to be a mutation of all eras of Napalm Death.” “I think one of the things that sort of pushes that whole thing forward is the fact that maybe four or five albums ago, you might listen to a Napalm album and say, ‘Okay, well, this is the Swans-style song, this is the traditional song,’ and so on,” Greenway agrees. “But now we fuse those elements into one song rather than separating them out… amidst four of five different Napalm sub-styles.” The chemistry and trust between Greenway and Embury here is key: The two work separately— “I’ve never been there when Shane’s in a full-on writing session,” Greenway says, “as mad as that might sound after 30 years together”— in effect choosing to believe the synergy will be there as the band operates without a traditionalist/ homogenous net. “The object of the exercise is not to polish things until they squeak,” Greenway says. “The songs need to flow, sure, but also must have that confrontational, abrasive element; that sense of unpredictability; that off-kilter feel. Until it has that, a Napalm song’s not done… If there are scratches and notes are out of place, who cares? That’s all part of the cacophony. It’s all part of exploring the sound spectrum to my mind.”

Lyrically, however, the albums are more specific, more focused. Throes, for example, explores the hard-won social progress frittered away since likewise fantastic predecessor Apex Predator—Easy Meat dropped in 2015, particularly the “reemergence of nationalist figures and governments who are quite willing to marginalize already vulnerable people”—refugees, LGBTQ individuals—“to solidify their power base.” The damage done and the echoes of the 1930s terrify and infuriate Greenway. The balance between connecting humanitarian and lowercase “l” liberal ideas to listeners’ own everyday lives while also sating one’s own artistic muse and drive is not always so easy to strike. “The art of making music is a very selfish process,” Greenway acknowledges. “Which leads to a kind of contradiction because what Napalm projects in terms of ideas and lyrics is, I would argue, the least selfish thing that could be inflicted upon this world. But then, as an artist, you have to satisfy yourself first.” Would some fans prefer an album of 20 or 30 straight grinders? Of course. “In my mind that would be—to employ a murky old phrase—selling out,” Greenway offers. “That would be playing the game, almost, in some respects… I don’t write songs in some hope they’ll hook into some quoteunquote demographic. Not fucking interested! So, we’re going to write for ourselves first, yeah, but the end

result we hope is music for anybody who cares to listen under their own steam without any cynical marketing fluff from Napalm Death.” Happily, there are legions across the globe who find empowerment and meaning in uncompromising records such as Throes, which engage with the world in profound and substantial ways even while simultaneously refracting reality and obliterating limiting psychological and aural boundaries. “I do marvel sometimes at the longevity of the band,” Greenway says. “I mean, it’s 40 years down the line, we’re still around, still in the privileged position of having people still actually interested in us and buying our records and coming out [to] see us play live. I have to fucking pinch myself sometimes… I don’t know how to explain something like it, really. I know this is stating it a little bit simply, but we just do what we do, to the best of our ability. The end result is the end result, I suppose.” “Life is dogshit,” Embury says. “Always has been. But there’s beauty amongst the garbage.” For Embury, that beauty is his children, wife, mom and sister, the friends he’s made around the world, and a lifelong obsession with creating music. For many of us this year, it was Throes—a radiant, rousing record from an extraordinary, visionary band. Long may they reign. — SHAW N M AC O M BE R DECIBEL : JAN 2021 :

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All Guns Blazing the making of Judas Priest’s Painkiller

fter nearly a decade filled with

The ascendency of thrash’s Big incredible highs—gold- and Four—Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth platinum-selling albums, arena and Slayer—no doubt illuminated a tours and regular radio play— path into the next era of strikingly Judas Priest’s fortunes were more aggressive metal. Tempos were starting to look a little shaky faster, the musicianship tighter and in October 1988 when longtime drummer the intensity was turned up. It was Dave Holland walked offstage on the last set against this background that date of the Ram It Down tour and abruptly Judas Priest made the wise move to quit. Holland had powered the band hire Virginia native Scott Travis, through its most successful stretch of whose incredible skills would help albums—from British Steel in 1980 to Ram DBHOF193 them navigate forward into the new It Down in 1988—but he wasn’t going to be decade. Painkiller, with its iconic, there to see Priest into the next decade. ear-splitting title track, reaffirmed The Birmingham quintet had replaced its Priest’s metal supremacy, and touched fair share of drummers over the years, but a younger generation of metal fans Painkiller there was much more at stake this time. being raised on more extreme forms Though it was released in September of the genre. COLUM BIA 1990, work began on Painkiller in 1989, well Painkiller was the album Priest SE PT E M BE R 3, 1 9 9 0 before the band would attend to its vacant needed to make in 1990. It showed the Trad titans get speed metal reboot drum seat. Without the services of a drumcreative trio of Halford, Downing and mer, guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton with “all guns blazing”—both Tipton toiled away with a drum machine songwriting- and performance-wise. as they wrote and recorded demos of They brought big hooks and choruses new material for vocalist Rob Halford to fast, complex tunes and the new to put words to. They would inevitably need to find a full-time replacekid, Travis, gave it the necessary jolt of energy with his thundering ment for Holland before recording, and the choice they made would double-bass work. For fans who lost faith when the band glammed up be a game-changer for all parties involved. In the same way that Black for the guitar synth-laden Turbo, or bumbled through the uneven Ram Sabbath added American vocalist Ronnie James Dio to the fold for a It Down, Painkiller left no question that Judas Priest had plenty left in “reboot” and released the classic Heaven and Hell, Priest brought in their the tank. Not bad for the band’s 12th album and now second Decibel own Yank a decade later to shake things up on Painkiller. Hall of Fame induction.

JUDAS PRIEST

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DBHOF193

JUDAS PRIEST painkiller

After longtime drummer Dave Holland left in 1988, were you looking for a particular type of drummer to replace him for the new record?

We were looking for a double-kick drummer. We were looking for someone that had the double-kick technique, but was also very tasteful in his kind of heavy metal aesthetic of just being very precise in choosing what to do, really thinking it through. K.K. DOWNING: We’d played with two of the best drummers with Les Binks and Simon Phillips [in the ’70s]. We went through that. And I think it’s fair to say that when we found ourselves without a drummer [after Binks left in 1979], we wanted someone like Dave Holland who could really lay it down. Then we would write stuff like “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” or “Breaking the Law”—just straight rock songs. So, we turned full circle again when Dave left, because as songwriters, I think we’d run our course with what Dave could deliver up drum-wise. Obviously, drum machines had come around, and Glenn and I wanted somebody who could replicate what we were doing on drum machines when it came to songwriting. IAN HILL: Dave was a great drummer, a good technical hard rock drummer, but he couldn’t do the kind of [double] bass drum work we were sort of looking for. We couldn’t have done the [Painkiller] stuff with Dave Holland, bless him. GLENN TIPTON: We wanted a very energetic drummer with double kicks. ROB HALFORD:

How did you find Scott Travis, who was an American drummer?

I’d heard Scott play with Racer X. So, he was my first kind of suggestion when we came to look for a drummer when Dave retired. DOWNING: Myself and Rob spent a lot of time in Phoenix and we became friends with Jeff [Martin], who was the singer for Racer X. When we needed a drummer, it may have been Rob that advocated that we check out Scott. HILL: Rob suggested that we give him a go. Obviously, when we heard him, we knew we’d got our man. He’s a tremendous drummer. SCOTT TRAVIS: I was living in Los Angeles at the time, playing in Racer X. The singer for Racer X, Jeff Martin, was (and still is to this day) friends with Rob Halford because, at the time, they both lived in Phoenix. Rob must have called him and said Judas Priest is looking for a new drummer. Jeff said, “Hey, you should check out this guy Scott Travis.” Then Jeff calls me to say, “Guess who’s looking for a new drummer?” HALFORD:

“A lot of younger bands were trying to take the crown, so we had to step up to make sure we kept the crown!”

G LE NN T IPTO N I remember that phone call in my little apartment in Sherman Oaks, California. I couldn’t believe it, but at the same time I thought, I don’t have a chance in hell, because there’s 50 drummers who’ve got years of experience touring the world and I didn’t. They flew me over to Spain to audition in November of ’89. I was only in Spain for a total of three days for the audition. After I got back, they told me I had the gig. TIPTON: When Scott joined the band, he brought a lot of energy with him, and that enabled us to go in a direction probably more suited to Judas Priest at that time.

remember that we played some of the new stuff and Scott played along to it at the audition. TRAVIS: At the end of one of the audition sessions, they handed me a cassette and said, “Here’s some of the stuff we’re working on; go have a listen on your headphones for however long you need and let’s jam it out.” I’m pretty sure one of the songs was “Night Crawler,” but these songs weren’t finished. They were just rough demos that maybe just had a verse and a chorus and some scratch vocals. That was part of the audition, too, to see how well someone would adapt to their new material.

Were the songs already written already for Painkiller when you auditioned Scott?

As the first American to join Priest, was Scott’s age and how he’d fit in a consideration when hiring him?

The songs pretty much, if I remember right, were already written. The songwriting process goes, as it has done for some years—Ken [K.K.] and Glenn get together and pool all their musical ideas and try and get coherent songs from their respective efforts. Then they’ll get together with Rob to see what lyrics he’s got and see what will fit. Rob’s always got lyrics lying around; he’s a very prolific writer. They will get a very rough sort of demo together between them, and that’s when myself and now Scott get a copy of that to run through. Then we all get together and we run through them and polish them up before we get to the studio. DOWNING: Probably most of the record was already written by the time we auditioned Scott. I think we actually got Scott to play some of the songs [at the audition]. I don’t know if “Painkiller” was in there or not, but I seem to HILL:

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HALFORD: Yeah, that can make or break a band, can’t it? The actual personalities, the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies. Bands are all that. It’s like a bottle of pop shaken up vigorously, and who’s going to take the lid off. A band has all that potential to explode and disintegrate at any moment, because that’s the way bands are. As far as Scott being an American, that never really crossed my mind [at the time]. As I’ve lived longer, thinking more about what a band is and where you’re from and who you are and what you represent, [choosing Scott] was a little bit of a game-changer. For us, it was all about the right man for the work, and Scott Travis was that guy. You’ve only got to listen to his drumming on Painkiller, from the first song to the last—it’s one of the greatest heavy metal drumming performances ever.

FRAYLE

NATHANIEL SHANNON & The Vanishing Twin

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“Haunting, hypnotic mix of crushing Sleep-style doom and cooing ethereal vocals à la Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser.” –Revolver

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JUDAS PRIEST painkiller drums on it, so it was a good opportunity for someone like myself to make it pop and make it sound aggressive and modern. Clearly, that’s what they were looking for. They were looking for a more modern drummer. Their guitar playing was more aggressive, it had some arpeggio sweeps in there and stuff like that on the solos. Priest never did anything like this before on previous records. So, yeah, I detected a slightly more aggressive songwriting pattern for sure. TIPTON: We all felt the heavier direction was where Judas Priest were at at this time. So much of the material really sounds like the band was pushing itself to new extremes—from the soloing to the drumming to the vocals. Was there a feeling that you had something to prove at this time?

To a certain degree. We’d already done the faster-heavier stuff throughout our career, but it was always peppered with the more commercial songs, which paid dividends in the past. It got us great radio play and made the band as popular as it was. But times were changing and mainstream radio wasn’t playing a lot of heavy metal at the time, so we didn’t need that commercial edge anymore, really. DOWNING: Yeah, we’re always pushing forward. We were always just trying to. Judas Priest is the one band in [metal] history that’s been really quite diverse with the songs that we wrote. The name of the game in the early days was to broaden the spectrum of heavy metal to gain acceptance and get a bigger audience. I think that’s what Judas Priest did. And when it came to Painkiller, it was time to do something that was a bit different to what we’d done before. It’s one of those things that when you start writing, you just keep coming up with the ideas. We did kind of up the ante with Painkiller. But for Priest fans who liked British Steel and Screaming for Vengeance and Turbo, it had maybe a few too many teeth for their taste. [Laughs] TRAVIS: I didn’t hear them voice those concerns or those agendas. I never heard them talk about it like [they had something to prove], but I also know that not only were they looking for a drummer, like me, who played a lot more double bass, but after they told me that I had the gig, they continued to write stuff. Definitely, there seemed to be a clear indication that they really wanted to speed things up and just be more aggressive and more modern. TIPTON: A lot of younger bands were trying to take the crown, so we had to step up to make sure we kept the crown! HALFORD: Yeah, you can’t let the reins go. You’ve already accumulated a tremendous amount of work under your belt, you’ve done all these tours, you’ve made all these albums, and I think you have to commit to finding out things about yourself as a musician. My vocal performance on “Painkiller,” I’d never done that kind of vocal performance before, not comprehensively HILL:

“My vocal performance on ‘Painkiller,’ I’d never done that kind of vocal performance before, not comprehensively from start to finish. That was a commitment on my part.”

ROB HALFORD After [my] audition in Spain, we went out to dinner. Knowing what I know now, being in a band and knowing how closely-knit bands are and how they become family, that [dinner] was really probably 50 percent of the audition. [It was] just to see how I got along, see if we all shared the same sort of mindset with just general views on life and music and just... stuff.

TRAVIS:

Once Scott was officially asked to join the band, how did you rehearse and prepare to record Painkiller?

We’d rented an old finca, like a chateau, in Spain, in the middle of nowhere, so there were no distractions or whatever. It was a great experience. DOWNING: We spent a lot of time in Spain [over the years], because our manager, Bill Curbishley, suggested we go down there to write. So, we started to do that [beginning] in about ’85. We would rent a house and write. And then Bill suggested we [buy] property there as an investment, and me, Rob and Glenn did that. That was where we hung out, and the Painkiller writing and rehearsal sessions would have predominantly been in Spain. HALFORD: We rented this very nice Spanish villa for the writing [and rehearsal] sessions. There was no TV, obviously no internet in those days, no satellite. There was nothing. Scott likes his HILL:

television, so he called that villa “Death Camp One.” And when we got to making the record in Miraval—in beautiful southern France, near Saint-Tropez—he called that “Death Camp Two” because it was the same kind of thing. We wanted to completely isolate ourselves so we could focus on what was going to be a very, very important record. TRAVIS: Ian was staying [at the house], I stayed there, and we had like one or two guitar techs staying there as well. The other three—Rob, Glenn and K.K.—stayed at their homes that were in the area, so we’d rehearse during the day and they’d go home at night. Those rehearsals lasted for three weeks. Was any one member (or members) pushing for a return to the heavier direction?

I think it came naturally. We had the experimental Turbo album [in 1986], which had a mixed reception. But, having said that, it sold really well, so if we did lose any fans, we certainly made up for it with new ones. [After that] we decided to get back on a harder edge and that showed on Ram It Down. Painkiller was Ram It Down plus a step; we went for a very much harder edge. TRAVIS: When I heard [a demo of] the new material they were writing for Painkiller, it was a breath of fresh air, but it didn’t really have any HILL:

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PRE-ORDER NOW: www.selfmadegod.com indiemerch.com/selfmadegod DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 59

DBHOF193

JUDAS PRIEST painkiller No reason, really. We hadn’t worked with Tom for [a couple years] anyway—he was working with other artists—so we felt a change could be a good thing. Tom has done some amazing work with us, and still is.

TIPTON:

from start to finish. That was a commitment on my part. I remember trying to find different keys to sing it in, and that was the best key vocally to get the message of that song across, the story of the Painkiller, surrounded by the incredible ferocity of the music. Why the switch to working with producer Chris Tsangarides (R.I.P.) after so many albums with Tom Allom? DOWNING: I can’t honestly say. There was no good rhyme or reason for switching, really. I don’t think there was. It was probably a bit unfair to Tom, really, to change. He’d done no wrong; Tom had always done good for us and he was always a good guy. But obviously, we knew Chris; we’d met Chris a long time ago when we were recording Sad Wings of Destiny. HILL: I think Tom had given about everything that he could at the time. We were heading for a harder edge and Chris was known for working with the faster, heavier, grungier bands, and he had a great knowledge of that. And we’d actually worked with him before; Chris was actually a tape operator on Sad Wings of Destiny when we’d recorded that all those years ago. So, we’d known Chris since then.

With their extreme musicinfluenced reboot, JUDAS PRIEST re-established their role as a dominant influence in metal

PHILIP ANSELMO (EX-PANTERA, SUPPORT ON PAINKILLER 1991 EUROPEAN TOUR)

When we heard Painkiller and got to experience it live, it was like they had tripled down on their love of heavy metal. They were just this well-oiled machine of fucking heavy metal, man. They were fucking jaw-dropping stunning every fucking night—all of them, every damn one of them. Every night, all of us were watching Judas Priest from start to finish, from all different perspectives—side of the stage, back of the hall, everywhere. It was just like doing our homework, man.

What do you remember of Studio Miraval in France and the process of working with Chris?

HILL: If I remember rightly, he got the same sort of demo [of the Painkiller songs] as Scott and myself, and [he] took it from there. We wanted him to put his mark on it. HALFORD: We said to Chris, “You really have to understand the magnitude of this record we’re about to make here. We know exactly what we want to make; we can hear the music before we’ve even written it.” And Chris was a very laid-back producer, very easygoing and had the [same] temperament as Tom Allom. But Chris understood what we were setting out to achieve. He was a massive Priest fan. DOWNING: We did have a lot of material going in [the studio]. You can tell that by listening to the record. It’s quite astonishing, really— the variety and the amount of content. There’s quite a lot in that record compared to some records that we’d done, I think. We’d got the songs pretty well mapped out, I reckon. It was just a question of recording them and capturing them.

It was a brilliant atmosphere. It was a chateau with grape vineyards surrounding it. It was originally a [winery], but I think a French classical player had bought it and turned it into a studio and started renting it out. The outbuildings had been converted into living quarters, so we were able to stay onsite. It was just a wonderful place to record. Everything was so beautiful: the scenery, the house, the studio. And there weren’t too many distractions other than the excellent restaurants in the local village. [Laughs] So, we didn’t get into a great deal of mischief, didn’t get sidetracked that much. TRAVIS: We were really out there. Nice was the city you flew into, but then you’d have to drive for an hour out to where this studio was. It was very remote. I figured that when I joined Priest, I’d be recording in the middle of London, or L.A. or New York, in a cool, modern studio with all the modern amenities, and conveniences will be right outside the door. Nope. This was a vineyard in the middle of France in January. It couldn’t have been more remote, put it that way. The drums were in a big sound room that was apart from the living quarters in the house, so I was able to practice and record during the day, and just work on chops and stuff like that.

RICHARD CHRISTY

KERRY KING

Was Chris given any sort of mandate as to what kind of album you wanted to make at that time?

HILL:

(CHARRED WALLS OF THE DAMNED, EX-DEATH)

(SLAYER)

When I first saw the video for “Painkiller” on MTV’s Headbangers Ball, I was absolutely blown away. Being a drummer, I was hooked from the incredible drum intro. They sounded like a whole new band with a renewed energy, and they were heavier than ever. Scott Travis gave Judas Priest a massive shot in the arm and helped them show younger bands that they could still crush! I immediately bought the cassette and loved the whole album. “A Touch of Evil” is still one of my favorite songs, too. When Chuck Schuldiner told me he wanted to do a cover of “Painkiller” on the Death album The Sound of Perseverance in 1998, I was thrilled! I had actually practiced along to that song since it came out, so I was fortunately very prepared. Chuck told me that Painkiller was a huge moment in his life, too; it was one of Chuck’s all-time favorite metal albums.

Painkiller to me was the last great Judas Priest album until the most recent Firepower. It was the introduction of Scott Travis, which definitely streamlined an already solid lineup. And, just to nail it home, that insane drum intro to start the album—bravo! And let’s not forget the greatest metal singer of all time. It sounds like Rob definitely had a chip on his shoulder when he went in to cut the “Painkiller” vocals. It’s still one of my favorite Priest songs today, with some serious vocal ninja shit. Oddly enough, one of my other favorite songs on the album is “A Touch of Evil”— the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the title track. It’s super groovy with that haunting guitar riff that Tipton played in those days. Just a great metal album from my biggest heroes. Long live Priest! —ADEM TEPEDELEN

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Newly remastered 25th anniversary edition, on special color vinyl and 2CD book

paradiselost.co.uk DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 61

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JUDAS PRIEST painkiller

Chris was a good producer, very much into metal. I remember the studio was surrounded by vineyards and wild boar! It was an out-of-the-way place, the kind of setting that Judas Priest always like to work in. HALFORD: Chris Tsangarides did a magnificent job. As I recall, it was some great sessions over in Miraval. It was running smoothly and we were getting the work done. TIPTON:

Thirty years later, what are you most proud of in regard to this album?

Well, we were all getting on toward 40 [at the time], and some of us were over 40, so it showed that we could still mix it up with the young guys, make a good fist of it. [Laughs] DOWNING: It’s incredibly important. First and foremost because, even if I do say so myself, it was pretty close to a perfect record. The flow, the continuity—we made sure that every aspect of it was right before we let it go. We worked hard on it. I can remember driving around Holland— where we mixed it—listening to it in a van. We [listened to it] in vans, everywhere, and I remember being incredibly happy with that record. It was just smoking; it was something really quite special. But the world wasn’t quite ready for it… from Judas Priest. If it had been another band, maybe. HALFORD: I’m just proud of everybody’s work. It’s all just remarkable when I listen to it now. When we played some of those tracks live in recent years, it’s just internally a very substantial feeling of accomplishment. You’re playing a song from Painkiller, as we did on the Firepower tour, and it’s still pushing through, it’s still cutting through. It’s still got all that excitement, energy, drama and ferocity. It just resonates as being something completely utterly different to any other Priest album. People today still talk about it, particularly our friends in other metal bands who cite Painkiller as the album that made their band come together, or the album that made a guitar player pick up a guitar. It has such strong significance. TRAVIS: Well, I’m proud of the whole album, but especially, of course, the first song [“Painkiller”] with the drum intro part. As a drummer, you grow up hearing these great drum tracks like [Aerosmith’s] “Walk This Way,” [Van Halen’s] “Hot for Teacher,” “Over the Mountain” by Ozzy, Priest’s “Exciter,” “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin, and you wish someday that you could come up with your own classic intro to a great song. As a drummer, you can sit and play flurries or fills and then go into a song, but if it doesn’t fit the song or if the song doesn’t become iconic, it doesn’t really work. So, the fact that I was able to incorporate and come up with the drum intro for the song “Painkiller” and then the song itself has become a popular song, is unbelievable. It HILL:

“The world wasn’t quite ready for it… from Judas Priest. If it had been another band, maybe.”

K.K. D OWNING was something I wasn’t sure that I would attain, and I’m blown away that 30 years later [Painkiller] is still considered one of Priest’s top five albums. Unfortunately, after such an impressive album, this would be Rob’s last recording with Priest for 14 years. Was there any tension surrounding the making of this record, or did Rob’s decision to leave come later and was unrelated? DOWNING: I don’t think there was [any tension], but who knows? I’m not able to say what Rob may have been thinking. He may have been thinking for years about some point leaving and trying to do an Ozzy. [Laughs] Who knows? Obviously, we did the album, and the tour went on for a long time, and things happened on the tour. The tour wasn’t great. It was OK, but it wasn’t great. We were playing some arenas and stuff like that, but the tour certainly wasn’t a big money-spinner for us. If anything, it may have broken even. Internationally, [Painkiller] wasn’t a radio album, that’s fair to say. HILL: It came later, and I think if things had been done differently, he wouldn’t have left. It was one of those things that got out of hand, really. We wanted to take some time off. Up until that point, it had been album-tour, album-tour and none of us knew our families. [Laughs] We wanted to take a bit of time and soak up the family atmosphere for a while, and Rob wanted to carry on. He asked if we minded him doing a solo record, which we didn’t, and he went from there. Like I say, if different characters had been involved, it might have been different. JANUARY 2021 : 6 2 : DECIBEL

There was none in making the record. I detected nothing whatsoever. We were all living there at the facility where we were recording, and there was no outside interference or anything. I think it was just later, maybe somewhere on the Painkiller tour, near the end of it, Rob got a bug in his ear from someone else that encouraged him to leave the band and start a solo career. To be honest, I think even the band was surprised when that happened. The only thing I can think of—playing psychologist, which I’m not qualified, by the way—is that after the Painkiller record, I think the band had decided there was going to be a long break. Usually, this is Glenn’s decision, so I think maybe Rob wasn’t comfortable with that and he decided he wanted to pursue his own musical desires and didn’t want to take two or three years to figure that out. That’s just a guess. HALFORD: I was having a blast making the album, one of the best times ever. It was, and still is, the biggest thrill for me to write new Priest material. Making a record is still one of the biggest thrills for me. So, no, my focus was as strong as everyone else’s on the making of Painkiller, from the early writing sessions all the way through to listening to the masters and the cutting of the record in New York. And, equally, the tour; it was a big, big show and the performances were incredibly strong, considering we were going out on the back of the Reno trial. It felt great to be back out on the road, firstly, and to be supporting this strong, important metal album was a vital part of it. TRAVIS:

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INSIDE ≥

66 BRAVE THE COLD Dirk duty 66 CADAVER Double Dirk duty

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

70 FUCK THE FACTS No alternative 70 GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY Tunes of the mutilated 76 SODOM Doin' the butt

Resurrection for the Living

JANUARY

15 11

On their eighth full-length, HATEBREED right a long-listing ship and sail for uncharted corners of the sea of brutality

Faster than a bullet

Terrifying scream(s)

Enraged and full of anger

Half man and half machine

et’s be 100 percent real about it: The likelihood of Hatebreed coming correct with one of the very best albums HATEBREED of their career in the same calendar year that frontman Weight of the Jamey Jasta launched his gourmet Jasta Pasta line via PerseverFalse Self ance Penne—“This pasta, it fuels me. This flavor, excites me. The NUCLEAR BLAST texture is perfect, it makes me rock harder!!!”—appeared exceedingly remote. And, yet, after a decade and a half of albums that teetered between betterthan-average water-treading and serviceable reinterpretations of canon, Weight of the False Self finds Hatebreed al dente as a motherfucker and reconnected to the visionary, incandescent metallic hardcore power source that made the Bridgeport, CO, quintet’s trinity of essential classics—Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire (1997), Perseverance (2002) and Supremacy (2006); sorry, The Rise of Brutality (2003) devotees, “This Is Now” and “Doomsayer” are bangers, but that record is overall seriously undercooked—so unfuckwithable.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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Weight of the False Self is, essentially, an extraordinarily crisp one-two combo. The jab is quintessential Hatebreed, brought to high boil in all its circa Mental Vortex Coroner-meets-Madballmeets-Integrity glory. The ferocious “Dig Your Way Out,” with shades of Perseverance opener “Proven,” may be the fastest song the band has ever written. “The Herd Will Scatter,” “From Gold to Gray” and “Wings of the Vulture” are ebullient, top-shelf thrash-pummel-thrash jams. The title track/first single—which initially felt a bit milquetoast, but rises in estimation within the full album context (if people even still care about shit like that)—smashes a David Gogginsesque self-help swagger bomb and jitterier chugs onto the “I Will Be Heard” template. The ensuing cross is the real stunner here, though—so unexpected in intensity and diversity of attack that the last couple albums could in retrospect be seen as mere feints to get you to drop your guard. Seriously, check that Paradise Lost vibe that sneaks into “Invoking Dominance” and explodes into full homage on standout “Cling to Life.” Or the enlivening post-hardcore-y halftime break in “Let Them All Rot.” Or “A Stroke of Red,” which draws on Megadeth’s “Symphony of Destruction” before reaching apotheosis in a hail of Kreator-esque thrash. Or the Suffocation adjacent breakdown on “This I Earned.” One could be forgiven for assuming that Hatebreed had drifted, a quarter-century into its existence, toward legacy band status. (Full disclosure: I had!) Which, honestly, would have been fine! The scene-reconfiguring impact and influence of Satisfaction and Perseverance is a far stronger peg than many touring the nostalgia circuit hang their hats on. Mirroring its cover art, however, Weight of the False Self is a renaissance moment for Hatebreed, as legit as it is improbable. The fire still burns, it seems, and the hate still breathes. —SHAWN MACOMBER

BLEAKHEART

Dream Griever S A I LO R

A hundred-acre stare

Somebody tagged Dream Griever’s promotional mp3s as “doomgaze.” What a dumbass genre delineation. What is any good doom band doing if not gazing with the gaziest of them? Or do they mean that most of the music is so flimsy-floaty that its lack of heft barely warrants the term “doom”? Maybe. The Denver-based quartet certainly approach crush-fuzz chords with some trepidation, tiptoeing toward them through echoey spaces 66 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

full of Kelly Schilling’s ethereal cooing and the guitarists’ droopy-toned interplay, then landing on them without enough conviction to really obliterate through heaviness. Much of Dream Griever appears to vacillate between arid emotional tundras and damp Eeyore worship. It is by no means a bad record, but I frequently find myself struggling to pay attention. The spare prettiness on display, coupled with the downcast nature of the instrumental timbre and songwriting, point to a few handy comparisons, though such associations don’t always work to BleakHeart’s benefit. Dream Griever has a close tonal cousin in Kentucky outfit Fool’s Ghost, whose Dark Woven Light knit similarly morose sounds into somewhat tighter songs earlier this year. If King Woman and Bohren & der Club of Gore got sloppy together one night and swapped a bit of genetic material, their spectral progeny might sound a lot like BleakHeart. In a live setting, I can imagine these jams transporting an audience to a plane of transcendent sadness. We’ll have to wait a little longer for that experience, though, and in the meantime, the recorded version seems to be a pale representation of BleakHeart’s ambitions. —DANIEL LAKE

BRAVE THE COLD

Scarcity

MISSION TWO E N T E R TA I N M E N T

Extremity retained

Given Yank Mitch Harris’ long and illustrious history as Napalm Death’s odd man out and Belgian Dirk Verbeuren’s demonstrated penchant for Swiss army drumming (his work with Megadeth, Soilwork, Devin Townsend Project, Cadaver and Satyricon serves as a partial range indicator), it’s no less surprising that the two of them would end up in cahoots than it is the first batch of results skew toward magnificence. It’s only when you direct your attention to what actually happens on Scarcity—how ridiculously varied the album’s contents are—that the subtle shocks start rolling in. Thanks mainly to Harris’ detached, yet malevolent shrieks (think Alan Dubin circa Khanate, only nastier), opening circle pit churner “Blind Eye” pays loving tribute to the punk part of grindcore’s origins in a deliriously blackened way. The decidedly more death-inflected “Hallmark of Tyranny” affords Verbeuren an opportunity to deploy his considerable skills at playing hyper-blasts, ultra-blasts and Venusian reverse blasts, along with a few strains of blast beats so prone to not actually

existing that if anyone so much as mentions them, they just up and fucking vanish—in this instance leaving a big hole just before the 1960s stained-glass ecclesiastical section with the fancy vocal harmonies it’s hard to imagine anyone being able to hear coming. As the album’s unpredictable moments pile up without ever leaving more than a faint trace of the arbitrary transition disorder endemic to deathgrind, it becomes clear as lymph fluid that the duo behind it are having nearly as much fun as we are. —ROD SMITH

CADAVER

Edder & Bile NUCLEAR BLAST

Better call Czral

In the 16 years following their last release, Cadaver have undergone a total gutting in the personnel department, stripping the band of all but founding member/guiding blight Anders Odden and new drummer Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth, ect.). In the coroner biz, this degree of degradation is known as “skeletonization” and, in a way, it’s that consequent reliance of these two players upon one another and their flagrant, unbridled zeal for the project that drives Edder & Bile forward. Yet, this echo-chamber does come at a bit of a cost, as Odden’s compositional vocabulary appears to have been slightly muted. The maniacal quirkiness infesting the band’s output ever since 1992’s superb ...In Pains on through the Apollyon/Czral era is lamentably absent. What we’re presented with instead is a palette of good to exceptionally good riffs, and unapologetically conventional patterns that recall the pith of records such as Damned in Black, Surgical Steel and Necrocracy. The Kam Lee-guested “Feed the Pigs,” the Patrick Mameli-esque phrasing of the suitably titled “The Pestilence” and the smoldering Slayer-isms of “Let Me Burn” will easily animate the neck hairs of even the most jaded armchair pathologist. And yet I can’t deny that the album is pestered by a certain, nagging hollowness. Additionally—and at the risk of coming off like an exasperating (im)purist—I always prefer this type of fare to have a grimier and more textured production than what you’ll find here (and yes, that criticism likewise extends to the customarily heralded albums listed above, so take it with a healthy packet of salt). All snobby qualms aside, Cadaver have finally clambered off the table and are as joyfully vile as ever. Recommending this record to the faithful is the very definition of a layup. —FORREST PITTS

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CYNABARE URNE

Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls H E LT E R S K E LT E R PRODUCTIONS

The need for rituals

After an opening drum fill that sounds like a dimensional breach, Obsidian Daggers and Cinnabar Skulls bursts wide open with something like Varathronian Hunger as vocalist/guitarist Jani Koskela shouts an intelligible “evocation” of the Greek goddess of chaos and destruction—bet she hears it, too. By the time the Samaelian hostile.groove.punishment that is “Dauntless They Are” takes over, you begin to wonder if Cynabare Urne intend to carry on so relentlessly the whole album. But as tracks like “Hidden in the Higher Light,” “Escaping Xibalba” and, most of all, the utterly tectonic “De Inferi Chaos” all prove, Cynabare Urne’s default speed is ritualistically mid- to slow-paced. These Finns move their poised aggression like a mysterious doom cult carrying a gleaming onyx bier with a spouting volcano in the background. The ritualizing eventually reaches a head, however briefly, on “Last of the Icons Alive,” when Cynabare Urne don their funeral attire and—clean vocals and all—sound as if their cousins, those Kaddathian ghosts of Thergothon, have momentarily taken over the controls. It’s a startling moment, and unfortunately short-lived. In the landscape of modern death metal, Cynabare Urne’s debut stands like a pillar of heavenly pouring black smoke. Like trying to call Tapping the Vein a thrash album, the genre tag “death metal” seems ill-fitting here. Whatever we want to call it, Cynabare Urne’s debut LP is over 40 minutes of stoic and occult death worship executed by three veterans of the Finnish death and doom metal scene. Your satisfaction is practically guaranteed. —DUTCH PEARCE

DARK PSYCHOSIS

The Edge of Nowhere... MORIBUND

Lunar ellipse

Devotees of the ’90s U.S. black metal scene get all fiery in the britches about Michigan’s underground royalty Masochist and Wind of the Black Mountains, and the mastermind behind Dark Psychosis—Sean “Xaphan” Peters—participated in iterations of both those bands, as well as their successful black/thrash cousin Summon. Given that pedigree, it’s interesting that Dark Psychosis has spent most of its long history (dating back 68 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

to the turn of the millennium) wandering a purgatory of sparse independent releases. Now Moribund lends its greater distribution and name recognition to the project, but all that heft is unlikely to lift it out of its creative and commercial limbo. Most of the performances on The Edge of Nowhere… grunt and huff through a gauze of lethargy, like an emu in chain mail trying to take flight. The myriad elements clash, each working against the others. The guitar tones might hint at depressive grayness, but their overall clarity and the four-on-the-floor rockattitude tempos dash any sense of textural cohesion. The leather ‘n’ steel soul of “Dead as Sheep” has a tough time getting out of the garage, dragged down by weak riff repetition and sedated vocal cadences. Atmospheric bits stymie the momentum built by harderrocking moments, and just as they creep into the vague vicinity of interesting, they’re undermined by undercooked metallic bits. Occasional punk grit (“Ominous Black”) wars with fifth-tier horror cinema flops (“As the Longing Grows”). The album’s deadliest sin is not knowing what it wants to be, alongside Peters’ apparent inability to effectively realize his own vision. —DANIEL LAKE

DAUGHTER CHAOS

Daughter Chaos ABRAMS

Get your jaded ass to Bandcamp!

Out of Armageddon’s intermittent ashes rise not the first incarnation of Daughter Chaos, but the second. Fronted by bassist/vocalist Sara Claudius (ex-Armageddon) and armed with newcomers Yanni Sofianos (drums) and Andrew Pevny (guitars), the updated version is a veritable masterstroke of melodic death metal, the likes of which have root in (but drive beyond) Arch Enemy, Crossing the Rubicon-era Armageddon and lost kids Dimension Zero. Indeed, Daughter Chaos have a recognizable construct—Chris Amott’s fingerprints are still evident—but there’s so much conviction, style and heart on offer. While “The Burning One” may feel like something Arch Enemy wrote in the late ’90s, only to reveal with Black Earth (the band), “The Space Born” is altogether a different beast. Brutal, aggressive, inventive and melodic death metal. There’s nothing candy here. Just cool (and heavy as fuck) refrains, a crushing chorus and a wicked solo (with fadeout!) by a band out of nowhere with fire in their collective eyes. The title track is equally as accomplished as

anything out of Sweden (yes, including recent Soilwork and Dark Tranquillity), with a pounding chorus and riveting transitions. Veterans often don’t do these things this well. To hear Daughter Chaos, at such a yearning age, compose and perform at such a high caliber is, well, frightening. Much of the heft here is in the guitars, but Claudius’ first time as a vocalist is commendable. She’s got this lower, menacing end that provides the perfect foil to Pevny’s rips/skyward solos and Sofianos’ percussive craft. 2020 had a terrible middle, but with Daughter Chaos capping out the end— marvel at “Void of Sacrifice”—there’s muchneeded light. —CHRIS DICK

DÉCEMBRE NOIR

The Renaissance of Hope LIFEFORCE

Somewhat positive doom/ death album you probably didn’t anticipate

Nothing on Décembre Noir’s fourth full-length is anywhere near as revealing as the fact that they live in the city where Martin Luther did much of his early monk-ing. As for the Erfurt-based (Erfurter?) doom/death quintet’s immediate peer group? While it’s not hard to find common ground, they don’t feel all that much like Paradise Lost, Katatonia or My Dying Bride. Theirs is a luminous darkness, suffused with melancholia, sure, but more prominently anchored to the kinds of melodies—mostly via guitarists Martin and Sebastian, and mostly poignant AF—that help justify the album’s title. Not that The Renaissance of Hope wants for darkness, doom and/or death, nor do the album’s lyrics completely lack the sure thing/ bad thing factors that dominate the band’s genre marriage of choice. To wit: The dancer protagonist of opener “A Swan Lake Full of Tears” is definitely headed for The Big Exit— but as limned by singer Lars in rich gutturals, gentle spoken word and the most impeccably enunciated English this side of Mikael Åkerfeldt, she might have a chance to perform in front of an audience one last time. As the remaining five songs unfold, lyrical tunnels sometimes get bigger and darker, but the potential light at their ends just as often gets bigger and brighter until closer “Behind the Scenes” captures the band in the act of waxing downright triumphant. While the album’s victories are a grand touch, in the end, it’s the pervasiveness of chance and the opportunities that uncertainty sometimes provides that matter most. —ROD SMITH

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 69

DÉLUGE

Ægo Templo M E TA L B L A D E

Deflated

If recent years have shown us anything, it’s that the line between post-rock black metal and posthardcore is thin and easily traversed. An Alcest song could sound like something by Funeral Diner, or Will Killingsworth’s Orchid could very well be a black metal version of itself. It’s all very nebulous now, and as a fan of post-hardcore and at least a small portion of post-rock black metal, I embrace this transitivity in sound. But there are bad examples of this, and boy howdy, are Déluge one of those. I hate to outright bash something in a print publication, but Déluge just aren’t very good. Take the most bubblegum form of post-hardcore’s most swoopyhaired, mid-2000s scene madness, add some Friday Night Lights atmospherics and use blast beats liberally. It’s so disjointed and filled with too many ideas that it ultimately deflates like a souffle. I could understand if maybe they took enough time to flesh out any ideas, but it all dashes by without any sense of maturation or intentional songcraft. It’s just… not very good. So, what happened? I can't really tell if Déluge came from a black metal perspective or a post-hardcore one, but what we got is a total misfire on both ends of this strange spectrum. What we ultimately have here is a low-tomiddling, very modern post-hardcore album with blast beats. I think. It could be the other way around. I honestly don’t want to listen to it again and figure it out any more than that. Either way, avoid this. —JON ROSENTHAL

FOLTERKAMMER

Die Lederpredigt GILEAD MEDIA

die unheilige Mutter

You need to head over to Decibel’s website and read the phenomenal interview that singer Andromeda Anarchia gave to our own Vince Bellino. Immediately. Or, maybe push play on this tempestuous cultural mélange first, fill your brain with its feral/refined delights, then go give that interview a read. The classically trained Swiss vocalist is both philosophical and articulate about all facets of Die Lederpredigt, from its twisted religious underpinnings to its linguistic affect to its hyper-intentionally controlled blend of mundane horror and celestial beauty. Anarchia’s words are much more apt companions to the record’s unique perversion than anything I could say. But you paid for it, so here goes. 70 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

The clash of devilish and angelic vocal styles throws me back to a time when The End Records released wacko gems by Unexpect and Stolen Babies, but Die Lederpredigt is far cleaner and more logical in its construction than those whirling oddities. The operatic fantasias coil around familiar black metal cadences, though the black metal being invoked is more melted Bergraven acrimony than the hellfired hate of the second wave’s usual suspects. Rather than feeling inherently weird, everything on the Folterkammer record is rooted in a discernible heritage. Instead of sundering into jaggedly juxtaposed parts, Die Lederpredigt coheres admirably—not surprising, given the artistic pedigree of both Anarchia and collaborator Zachary Ezrin of Imperial Triumphant, who also released one of this year’s great neuronscramblers with Alphaville. In the argument that black metal is a truly unbounded art form, there are fewer examples with this much persuasive potency. —DANIEL LAKE

FUCK THE FACTS

Pleine Noirceur N O I S E S A LV AT I O N

Death to fake fucking facts

Fuck the Facts have always been grindcore’s curved arrow, and Pleine Noirceur, the now-power trio from Gatineau’s 10th full-length, is another warped projectile in their already misshapen quiver. The growth that has accompanied every FTF release since their frazzled ‘n’ fucked early days—and alienated traditionalists along the way—continues to sprout. New avenues are opened, and by the album’s end, everything sounds like (surgically smart) old hat. Prime examples are the post-hardcore shimmy of opener “Doubt, Fear, Neglect” and the shockingly melodic title track, which embraces an armful of ’90s basement screamo via a prominent wiry bass, jagged stops and starts, and choral guitar layers. “A Dying Light” is an epic beast, parts of which summon the woebegone mood and texture of post-metal heroes Isis and Cult of Luna while somehow managing to be simultaneously sparse and harsh, delivering riffs and rhythms that stab you between the shoulder blades while patting you on the back. Granted, Mel Mongeon’s searing throat canal and her slasher-movie-victim vocals keep everything firmly connected to caterwauling performance art as drummer Mathieu Vilandre maintains the blast beat bona fides. There are songs bookended by tectonic

spirals and Dillinger’s irregular heartbeat rhythms (“Aube,” “L’abandon”); some are battle-ready Bolt Thrower-esque axe-slingers (“Dropping Like Flies”); others are as close to “1-2-X-U hardcore” as FTF will ever get (“Sans Lumière,” “Sans Racines”) before penultimate track “An Ending” exhibits peals of stadium rock grandeur. As a totality, Pleine Noirceur is bound to further confuse and confound the many straightand-narrow grind heads who connect better with the band’s name than they do their music. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY

Ageless Violence T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Fine young Cannibals

Now here is something offering sweet succor to those whose favored present-day coping strategy involves curling into the fetal position and shaking in time with Paul Mazurkiewicz’s caveman drum patterns. Since they are so fresh that Metal Archives has yet to catalog them, let’s do some introductions. Glorious Depravity are a death metal supergroup comprising Doug Moore of Pyrrhon on vocals, George Paul of Mutilation Rites and Matt Mewton of Woe on guitars, John McKinney of Cleanteeth on bass/electronics and Chris Grigg (also of Woe) rounding out the lineup on drums. Grigg recorded and mixed the album in Brooklyn, albeit in what sounds like a Tampa state of mind. The compositions, riff styles and aggression—not to mention Moore’s tiger throat—contribute to an early ’90s Sunshine State vibe. But wait! Are we missing the likes of Suffocation and Immolation in the mix? Ageless Violence is chastening, slam-grade brutality, but with enough evil theater as to not make it feel like gym class. Opener “Ocean of Scabs” is proof that not only have Glorious Depravity mastered vintage death metal’s propensity for mixed metaphor, but they share a sound working knowledge of its slice-and-dice vocabulary. “Incel Christ”—great title—starts at pace and finishes in aerobic chaos. “The Stone Hammer Swings”—again, great title— shows some production and performance chops in sustaining a death scream as you would a synth pad as the mix grows more violent. There’s no lack of conviction, no let-up. It’s enough to make those who plow through this the first time get all misty-eyed thinking of bone-breaking pits of yore, white high-tops, jumping off wedge monitors. Y’know, the fun stuff. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 71

ILSA

Preyer RELAPSE

Satanic wrongs

Ripping, burning and pissing on a page out of Church of Misery, equally sludge and doom-drunk Ilsa pull back the tarp on their own harrowing splatter platter in Preyer. Hardcore, queer, anti-fascist, the D.C. death metal six-piece sticks its decade landing of five full-lengths between 2010-’20, as No. 6 delivers the killshot. Consider it a new chapter in seminal 1970s book series Bloodletters and Bad Men. Preyed upon by the only capital punishment since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty for crimes perpetrated under the age of 17, Ilsa martyr Sean Sellers, an Oklahoman who killed his parents as they slept. Like their 2012 demonization of substance abuse on Intoxicantations, an audio sample sets an irredeemable mood as court recordings document a third slaying and the defendant’s Satanism. “Sean’s story is an exploitative intersection of religion, media and state authority, culminating in his 1999 execution for murders committed in a state of self-described ‘demonic possession,’” posted the group. “Poor Devil” draws parallels between Sellers and Judas Iscariot, a dupe of predestination: “Useful idiot played his role / Thirty pieces doomed his soul.” Libretto scorch details humanity’s desecration at every turn. A thick metallic sediment—silt, ooze, mire—layers the subsequent soundtrack, dense and distorted, and capable of feral upticks like equally unforgiving 2018 predecessor Corpse Fortress. Orion Peter’s tortured shriek lays in unmistakable spirit possession. “Moonflower” blooms into a throbbing miasma of lyrical heaven and hell with a palpable Passion of the Christ-like beatdown. Predominantly mid- to mucky tempo, it all gunks together quickly, but “Shibboleth” rampages at a pit BPM and “Widdershins” slam-dances sonic mass approximating a B-52. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

KILLER BE KILLED

Reluctant Hero NUCLEAR BLAST

Slightly better name than the Mastodon-Soulfly Escape Convergence

Honestly, I didn’t give Killer Be Killed’s selftitled 2014 debut much of a chance for two reasons: supergroup wariness and a really dumb name. Max Cavalera (Soulfly/ex-Sepultura), Troy Sanders (Mastodon) and Greg Puciato (exDillinger Escape Plan) come from acts with very 72 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

distinctive approaches. While Killer Be Killed had its moments, it felt disjointed—they hadn’t made all the disparate parts work together. I still can’t get behind their moniker, but something clicked on sophomore release Reluctant Hero. I don’t know whether it was the addition of Ben Koller (Converge/Mutoid Man) on drums that did it, or maybe they just felt more comfortable writing with each other. Killer Be Killed now sound like a proper band. Even though you can recognize the DNA strands from the parent acts, the musicians find a way to blend them together organically. Just listen to the way Koller alone combines the Soulfly tribal drumming with Mastodon progginess on “Left of Center,” for example. There’s a little less DEP in the mix this time around—although there’s a lot less DEP in Puciato’s life now, so that makes sense. The songs also feel a little more melodic on here, but that melody helps tie the extremity of their individual styles together. They don’t lose any of their unique voices. That said, “Dream Gone Bad” and “Filthy Vagabond” just make for kick-ass metal songs, no matter the genesis. Their debut had three great tastes that tasted pretty good together. The four flavors that go into Reluctant Hero make you salivate for more. —JEFF TREPPEL

LOUDBLAST

Manifesto

LISTENABLE

Comme ci, comme ça

France’s Loudblast have been blasting loud for the majority of 35 years, and as much as they’re still refining their way of being, you can’t take old out of the old school. Since the release of 2014’s Burial Ground, vocalist/guitarist/original member Stéphane Buriez and longtime drummer Hervé Coquerel have been joined by guitarist Jérôme Point-Canovas and bassist Frédéric Leclercq (Kreator, Sinsaenum, ex-DragonForce). They have some semblance of stability backing them in the form of Listenable, who we assume are doing a better job than Metal 13, Jungle Hop and other labels the band has previously face-palmed their way through relationships with. Fans will no doubt argue about where Manifesto falls on the career continuum, but casual lookie-loos and newcomers will find plenty to bang their noggins to, and more than enough quirkiness to stoke excitement. On the downside, there are segments that’ll have minds wandering and shoulders shrugging. One song spotlights a bass solo before the guitar leads (“Todestreib”); a couple others illustrate a brilliant collision of tasteful ’80s

riffing and unhinged new-school speed (“Unit 731,” “Erasing Reality”); and “Festering Pyre” buzzes with excitement provided by a flitting, cartoon-chase guitar and blackened speed metal orchestration, though the violin sawing through a goth/doom middle-eight is one of the most questionable songwriting decisions of the year and stands out like a Canadian Tuxedo at a blacktie dinner. Manifesto pulls the emergency brake on its own awesomeness a bit more than anyone would expect or want, but doesn’t do so enough to steer the record into write-off territory. Still, the humdrum hesitancy isn’t exactly a rallying cry. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

‫( רומזמ‬MIZMOR) & 7 ANDREW BLACK Dialetheia

GILEAD MEDIA

Imposing absence

Dialetheia, the dark ambient collaboration between Portland’s Mizmor and his former bandmate in Sorceress, bassist Andrew Black, may come as quite a surprise for supplicants of the black doom apostate’s monolithic sermons, with their spine-seizing hawk screams that never fail to heighten that despairing feeling of approaching canyons of unimaginable depths. But no colossal foot stamps down to interrupt Dialetheia. In fact, there’s very little distorted guitar throughout its 31 minutes. As for that known disciple of Hell, A.L.N., keeper of his own lonely mountain stronghold since Mizmor’s 2012 self-titled debut? Alongside Black (who also plays live for Mizmor), A.L.N. seems to have taken a vow of silence—at least as far as Dialetheia is concerned. Created in isolation during the pandemic, Dialetheia sounds like it’s too late now anyway, so let’s take our time. The opening track “Looking At | Looking Through” hums softly like a sustained chord harmonizing with a gentle breeze. Eventually, a loose and Earthen clean guitar shows itself on the horizon. Closer “Nostalgic Dystopian” gets to know that clean guitar better, again bringing to mind Earth’s seminal Hex album. This track looms far more ominously than its comparatively peaceful counterpart. One moment in particular feels so close to erupting into doomed destruction, yet it passes like breathing through the moment. Those who long for A.L.N.’s stone-fisted obliteration will find some satisfaction here. But not much. Clearly, this collaboration represents something deeper than sonic annihilation. As for what Dialetheia means... here’s a good soundtrack for learning and understanding. —DUTCH PEARCE

OUT

DECEMBER

4TH

Seattle outsiders CITY OF INDUSTRY blaze new trails; for fans of Ceremony, Converge, Dystopia, and more

Limited Edition LP and Digital

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 73

MORS PRINCIPIUM EST

Seven AFM

Not SE7EN, but Seven

While the title isn’t the most creative of Ville Viljanen’s efforts across Mors Principium Est’s, uh, seven-album career, musically it’s the twosome’s—axemaster Andy Gillion serves as music-maker—best album since 2007’s Liberation = Termination. The formula that worked across previous Mors output is at play here, with Gillion’s YouTube-thumbs upworthy melodic death metal providing a deft vehicle for Viljanen’s disgruntled vocal and lyrical heroics. “Lost in a Starless Aeon,” “March to War,” “Rebirth” and “The Everlong Night” play to the duo’s strengths. These songs are tried and true Mors: aggressive, orchestral, melodic and musically adept. Gillion has expressly grown as a musician/composer between 2017’s Embers of a Dying World and now. That he’s a hemisphere and a Finnish lake or two away from Viljanen hasn’t stopped the Brit from digging deep into and advancing on Mors’ heritage. And for the solominded contingent in our readership, Gillion pulls out some impressive stops. “At the Shores of Silver Sand,” “A Day for Redemption” and “Master of the Dead” house an incredible, varied array of rewindable solos. If there’s a knock here, it’s about high time for Mors to break up the formula a bit. After several Seven spins, the songs become slightly indistinguishable from one another. There are ways Mors can keep all things they’re known for—aggression, melody, orchestration—without sacrificing the introduction of new influences, the deployment of new approaches and overall compositional innovation. Seven will appease Mors' core fanbase, but their crackerjack technical and musical prowess will be all for naught without reinvention on the albums to follow. —CHRIS DICK

NECROPHOBIC

Dawn of the Damned CENTURY MEDIA

Serious music for pulling silly faces

Dawn of the Damned could well have been designed by a Wacken Open Air focus group. It’s awash with blasts and inferno riffing, crazy solos and harshness, a record of fantasy and action, horror and theater, and the whiff of Wagnerian ham. No bad thing. Of course, Necrophobic are doing as they have always done, making grand blackened-metal compositions 74 : J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

in service to total evil, and they duly pitch this down the middle with gusto. Having savored 30-plus years of black metal evolution, the cumulative effect of Dawn of the Damned is less diabolical hugger-mugger and more a frosted finger of amphetamine to the gum. But are we to deny ourselves such simple pleasures? In this cursed age, do what thou whilst. Besides, it is uncanny that, after all these years, no matter the personnel, Necrophobic know how to find the sweet spot. “Tartarian Winds” has one of those seesawing, stein-swinger grooves that sets itself down in a comfortable mid-tempo to take in the scenery, which no doubt is epic, populated by wolves, firs and other BM-adjacent flora/fauna. Such moments of grandeur—intermittent, yet ruthlessly effective—are of a piece with the Swedish stalwart’s canon. “The Infernal Depths of Eternity” could have been plucked from a stock library of blackened death metal song titles (or simply could be referring to any one of the last 200-odd days), but give it enough volume on your hi-fi, surrender to the fury and it’ll park you on the right side of exhilarated. There’s more where that came from. Sure, it could’ve been deeper, darker, rawer... but it’s entertaining. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

PÅGÅ

The Evil Year S VA R T

Hidden dangers

It’s been five years since Swedish occult trad metal wunderkinds In Solitude split up. No band with so much potential has quit since. And while most former members of the band have gone on to release music, some of it quite good, none of it has touched In Solitude’s quality or style. Pågå reunites brothers Pelle and Gottfrid Åhman, and debut album The Evil Year is the first full-length to reunite the two. But while it’s interesting, it won’t scratch the In Solitude itch. Psychedelia long lingered in the background of the Åhman brothers’ various projects, but it takes center stage on The Evil Year. The ghost of Syd Barrett haunts these tracks, through there’s almost no Floydian guitar to be heard. Even Gottfrid’s bass doesn’t drive all the proceedings, though it’s engaging when it’s there. Instead, synthesizers and samples hover over looping abstracted drumbeats—of course it’s on Svart, which made international draws out of Oranssi Pazuzu, another band with a taste for kosmische. It’s great to hear Pelle’s warbling moan and cryptic lyrics again, and when he and

his brother lock in, as on “Enter” or “Water Strider,” Pågå show promise. Unsurprisingly, those are the most conventional rock songs on The Evil Year. Other experiments wander without purpose or end abruptly—and seem unfinished. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe die-hard psychedelic adherents will dig The Evil Year. Or maybe some promoter just needs to offer In Solitude a fat reunion check and be done with it. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

PERDITION SECT

End Times SEEING RED

Hearing/seeing/ screaming the apocalypse

If you had to succinctly pitch D-beat newcomers Perdition Sect, you could do a lot worse than “if Discharge were Rust Belt metalheads.” Formed and recorded completely during the pandemic, the Ohiobased supergroup was first conceived by Aaron Dallison (Keelhaul, Brian Tentacles, Axioma) and Matt Sorg (Ringworm, Shed the Skin). After recruiting drummer Kyle Severn (Incantation, Shed the Skin) and bassist Mike Lare (Ringworm), the quartet started reimagining Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing blasting from Cleveland’s lakefront factories. Fittingly titled End Times, Perdition Sect’s debut is a scathing indictment of contemporary societal ills. From the first shrapnel-blasting drumroll of “Plague of Incompetence,” the band metallicizes hardcore punk with gang snarls and a bevy of scabrous solos. All the ingredients of proper D-beat are still present: circle pit speed, palpable fury, venomous condemnations. But End Times runs deeper than a flashback to 1982. “Missed Information” welcomes harmonized leads into the fray. Similar to Discharge classic “The Final Blood Bath,” End Times doesn’t hide the basslines behind a wall of distortion. Lare’s low-end prowls to the surface between frenzied bursts in “Not If, But When” and “Infinite Incarceration.” Like Discharge, the blood surging through Perdition Sect’s riffs first pumped through the veins of proto-punk. Picture the power chords of the Stooges and the Kinks, warped by 50 years of corruption and suffering. Discharge found new ways to weaponize rock as rebellion after the English punk boom. From those seeds, Napalm Death and Anti Cimex enlightened new crowds. Now the spirit of rude awakening roars from the amps of Dallison and Korg to punctuate current unrest. Prep your crusty ears; here’s your soundtrack for a nuclear winter. —SEAN FRASIER

The definitive guide to the magical and morbid Finnish death metal scene! 300 pages of unseen photos and exclusive interviews with multiple members of such legendary Finnish bands as: A MORPHIS, SENTENCED, PHLEGETHON, XYSMA, THERGOTHON, FUNEBRE, DEMILICH, DEMIGOD, PURTENANCE, MORDICUS, DISGRACE, NECROPSY, ROTTEN SOUND, ABHORRENCE, FESTERDAY, MAPLE CROSS, PUTRID, CONVULSE, CARTILAGE, INFERIA, COFFIN, MYTHOS and LUBRICANT. the book also features interviews with members of: AUTOPSY, AT THE GATES, MISERY INDEX, ASPHYX, THE HAUNTED, BLACK CRUCIFIXION, BENEDICTION, TEITANBLOOD, ANATOMIA and many more. --For this and hundreds more underground metal books, fanzines and anthologies, plus CDs, LPs, cassettes, flags and official shirts from the likes of Ulver, Beherit, Mysticum, Vulcano, Yoth Iria, Rotting Christ, Sigh and Bolt Thrower visit:

CultNeverDies.myshopify.com Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation Title of Publication: Decibel Publication Number: 1557-2137 Date of Filing: October 2020 Frequency of Issue: Monthly Number of issues published annually: 12 Annual subscription price: $29.95 Mailing Address of Known Office Publication: Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107 Location of Headquarters or General Business Office of the Publisher: Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107 Publisher: Alex Mulcahy, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107

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Owner: Red Flag Media, Alex Mulcahy, President, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107 Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders: none

Number of Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date

49,892

49,791

181

177

b.) Paid and/or other requested circulation: 1.) Paid/requested outside-country mail subscriptions: 2.) Paid in-country subscriptions: 3.) Sales through dealers, carriers, street vendors, counter sales, and other nonUSPS paid distribution:

6,496

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32,998

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e.) Total Free or Nominal Distribution f.) Total distribution (sum of c & e above): g.) Copies not distributed: h.) Total (sum of f & g): i.) Percent Paid (c divided by f times 100):

1,186

1,180

41,164

41,057

8,728

8,734

49,892

49,791

97%

I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete. Albert Mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2021 : 75

PULCHRA MORTE

Ex Rosa Ceremonia TRANSCENDING

The present day horrors alive

Dense fog rolling across the Yorkshire moors. Spiked arches, rib vaults and fractured light peering through stained glass windows of English Gothic architecture. Flames flickering from a steel candelabra perched upon a mahogany mantelpiece in the living room of a ghostly Georgian manor. All of these evocative images manifest when listening to the regal deathly doom of the Peaceville Three. The magnetic draw towards the likes of Gothic, Turn Loose the Swans or Serenades has endured since the early ’90s. And judging by the timbre of Pulcha Morte’s second LP, Ex Rosa Ceremonia, and the rapturous acclaim afforded to recent Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride albums, worldwide connections to this particular style of extreme metal will continue through this plague and on to the next. In addition to the aforenamed British influences, Pulchra Morte—featuring members of Skeletonwitch, Wolvhammer, Eulogy, Brutality and Leagues Below—also draw upon Scandinavian BM when it comes to bitter atmospherics and the snarl ‘n’ bite of Adam Clemans’ vocals. This plus the analog recording, the understated use of cello and the Serpent’s Choir—a massive vocal collective of musicians from dozens of bands, including 1349, Yakuza, Withered and Nocturnus AD—add welcome distinctions to their sound. There’s an impression after numerous spins, however, that the band is still working out how to balance extremity and memorability through musical and vocal hooks, and further refinement may come. For now, raise your chalice of Malbec and bask in the death-doom ambiance of Pulchra Morte’s latest ode to modern life’s multitude of miseries. —DEAN BROWN

SARCATOR

Sarcator

REDEFINING DARKNESS

Deathrace princes

The “sell sheet” for Sarcator reads like a publicist’s dream. Most of the band is still in high school! The oldest member clocks in at the tender age of 21! One of their members is the son of Marko Tervonen (the Crown)! And sure, they’d be “selling points” if the music didn’t stand up. Thankfully, in Sarcator’s case, this quartet has the burgeoning chops to back up the sell sheet, making the aforementioned facts important for two reasons: First, they pique curiosity for 76 : JA NUA RY 2021 : DECIBEL

the silly masses who think that underground metal = not as good as so-called mainstream metal. Second, bands who work with established industry folks on their debut tend to be propelled much further and faster for obvious reasons, regardless of their age. So, what should we expect? On their debut full-length, Sarcator deliver dryly produced Swedish death metal with diversions into Teutonic thrash, à la early Sodom. The guitar work is strong with ample soloing (just check out “Midnight Witchery”); the ominous organ on album highlight “Deicidal” is haunting and creepy; the piano at the onset of “Circle of Impurity” is tasteful and horror movie-esque. All throughout, the guttural vocals are howled and scratchy. It’s also important to note that Sarcator’s connections were wisely utilized: Dad did the recording, mixing and mastering, meaning all elements are evenly mixed with appropriate emphasis on each individual part, placing the band neatly in line with an established, high-quality tradition. All told, Sarcator clearly worships the death and Teutonic thrash tradition, and their debut reflects that. It’s competent, consistently good, yet does not achieve empyrean heights. Those heights are definitely in Sarcator’s future, providing they don’t implode under the weight of expectation. —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

SÉPULCRE

Ascent Through Morbid Transcendence INVICTUS PRODUCTIONS

On cassette only! Brûle en l’enfer!

French death metal from unspeakable and unholy graves! Brittany-based trio Sépulcre remind us what 1989 was like on this debut EP. Indeed, if the spirits of Autopsy, Nihilist and Death heinously conspired with ancient and evil forces in the putrescent undercroft of La Cathédrale de St. Corentin, the result would be Sépulcre. What the group does well isn’t so much about what they appropriate, but rather the zeitgeist they miraculously capture. Ascent Through Morbid Transcendence is a wondrous transport to the post-dawn of death metal, when But Life Goes On, Slowly We Rot and Resurrection Absurd had slyly leaked out of the world’s most miasmic crypts. Sadly, there are only three songs (plus an intro) here to sink our decayed teeth into, but what a triple threat they are. The first, “Invocation of Plague Ridden Entity,” is everything a death metal vet (who remembers what a SASE is) could ever pound pud to. For real, the wild trem intro, the double bass drum barrage, the Bolt Throwerlike semi-blast and the echo-y, charnel house

growls all happen in the first minute! Afterwards, Sépulcre settle soundly into a massive, rumbling double bass groove, hit upon some chilling atmospherics (no keyboards!) and then end the song with a haunting tritone over yet another semiblast. “Morbid Transcendence” and the tastily titled “Drowned in Impure Semen” continue to the profane politesse, expertly fashioned out of the burning death of old zines, the husks of Loudblast riffs and the sensible songwriting constructs of then-teenage Johnny Hedlund. Ascent Through Morbid Transcendence is only an EP, but it’s fucking absolutely mandatory. —CHRIS DICK

SODOM

Genesis XIX EONE

> PlayStation 5

Who’dathunk that main penetrator Tom Angelripper would sync up with old Sodom friend Frank Blackfire after nearly three decades? Not a single ausgebombt fan worth his/her late-’80s iodized salt, actually. Well, two-thirds of the Persecution Mania lineup—R.I.P., Chris Witchhunter—are grinding it Teutonic style on Sodom’s 16th fulllength, Genesis XIX. While all this tucket is hyperbole on paper, on record, Team Angelripper are firing on all cylinders as if it’s 1988 again. From the brutalizing leadoff track “Sodom & Gomorrha” through the blast/groove of “Nicht Mehr Mein Land” and the Repulsion-esque/thrash treatment of closer “Friendly Fire,” Genesis XIX never relents, rarely bores and should be positively inspiring to the younger, high-topped echelons aching for their chance at headbanging infamy. Perhaps much of this piss-flavored vinegar on display is the result of Blackfire returning to the fold, but that would disservice the addition of drummer and Frank Blackfire band alum Toni Merkel (replacing ex-Despair drummer Markus Freiwald), who absolutely rips every mullet-friendly track on Genesis XIX to shreds. Indeed, newcomer Yorck Segatz pairs nicely as Blackfire’s sideman. If the solo on “Glock ‘n’ Roll” is any indication of the new lineup’s potential, the next phase should be a Sodomite’s, uh, wet dream. Lyrically, things are still very much Angelripper, where the serious and silly collide unashamedly and without regret. But that’s Sodom in a nutshell, and there’s no reason to apply, for example, Mille Petrozza’s staunch anti-establishment diatribes to Angelripper’s semi-accusative aesthetic now. After a few middling records, Sodom have returned on Genesis XIX. Think differently? Leck mich am Arsch! To quote Mozart, of course. —CHRIS DICK

TOMBS

Under Sullen Skies SEASON OF MIST

The night belongs to him

Maybe it’s just the ennui of pandemic purgatory, but it sure feels like more than nine years have passed since Tombs’ Path of Totality was named Decibel’s No. 1 Album of 2011. That record’s balance of austere black metal and nightshade post-punk set the standard for Brooklyn’s idiosyncratic aughtyears metal scene. 2020 has already seen a Tombs EP that cut like a guillotine blade (Monarchy of Shadows). But who are we to spurn an embarrassment of riches? Under Sullen Skies is the fifth LP from band founder Mike Hill’s post-Anodyne project, and the best since Path of Totality. Like 2017’s The Grand Annihilation, Under Sullen Skies blasts from the album’s first urgent breath. In many ways, Under Sullen Skies uses its predecessor to cast the band’s shadow deeper into new sonic territories. The gothic leanings of “November Wolves” and “Underneath” would feel even more at home on the new Tombs album. While the foundation of black metal remains, it’s just that: a resilient slab to support Tombs’ edifice of shadow-seeking riffs. The scorched sludge of “Void Constellation” counts the stars in utter darkness. “Secrets of the Black Sun” continues Hill’s themes of lightlessness with gothic poetry and haunted reverb. Later, “Sombre Ruin” embodies the trust-krushing minimalism of Godflesh with a flesh ‘n’ blood percussionist. That’s not to say Tombs have abandoned blast beats. The droning hypnosis of “Angel of Darkness” even overcommits to its blurred tempo, feeling lifeless when surrounded by such inventive compositions. But drummer and electronic texturer Justin Spaeth lends more rhythmic variety to blackened tracks like “Barren” and “Lex Talionos.” There’s never much sunlight in the worlds created by Mike Hill’s riffs, but Under Sullen Skies offers a new shade of darkness. —SEAN FRASIER

WARFECT

Spectre of Devastation N A PA L M

16-pt. thrashing

The creators of thrash metal are rightly lauded for the invention of not only an entire subgenre of metal, but also an image and uniform that has been approved in every corner of the universe. One area that thrash bands don’t get enough credit for is their innovation in the fields of typography and font creation. Leaf through a random bunch of old 78 : JANUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

thrash albums and the number of bands that devised their own lettering style for their logos is remarkable, predating today’s endless digital selection. You can tell a lot by looking at a logo, and for this Swedish trio that comes barrelling straight outta Uddevalla, their visual representation is stylized linearly, neatly symmetrical and consisting of block-ish lettering that lands somewhere between Kreator, Heathen, Destruction and a mid-’80s action movie poster. Perfect! Unsurprisingly, Warfect sound exactly how their logo looks. The comparisons aren’t difficult to figure out: “Pestilence,” “Left to Rot” and “Witch Burner” could have been bonus tracks off of Coma of Souls, Breaking the Silence and Eternal Devastation, respectively, if it weren’t for the airtight, nitro-boost drumming of Manne Flood pushing land speed limits. Of course, there is the obligatory nod to Reign in Blood (“Rat King”) because what would a five-alarm thrash album paying homage to the ’80s be without one? The question here is whether the thrashing connoisseurs amongst us who already own everything worth owning from Abattoir to Zoetrope need (or want) to add another spoke to a wheel that never seems to get reinvented? The trio owns all the right shirts and patches, and in Spectre of Devastation, have created an incisively competent and sharp-sounding album. But it’s hardly essential listening. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

WHITE MAGICIAN

Dealers of Divinity CRUZ DEL SUR

Don’t listen to this on shuffle

Upon learning that the new album by White Magician is not only partially influenced by Blue Öyster Cult, but boasts a cover eerily similar to BÖC’s classic Agents of Fortune album, I have to admit to hearing more than a few alarm bells going off in my head. Oh really, I thought. It seems these guys have overplayed their, erm... hand. Cue CSI: Miami credits. Sure, the specter (sorry, Cultists) of Messrs. Roeser and Bloom looms over this record, but the Detroit band deserves credit for going all-in (I’ll try to stop) as far as the concept goes. With a plot involving, as per the press release, “three blind card dealers who are employed by an entity who controls the universe’s behind-the-scenes gaming facility,” Dealers of Divinity packs in a lot, but no matter how deeply the listener wants to delve into the story, they will nevertheless be entranced by the record’s lavish hybrid of classic 1970s heavy metal and the more progressive side of heavy music.

It’s a quirky mixture at times, as you can hear unmistakable nods to everything from Mercyful Fate to Comus and Manilla Road, and there are times where the segues get slightly bumpy, but when the band gels on such highlights as the glorious “Magia Nostra” and the delightfully titled “Mad Magic II: In the Absence of Gods (Bad Magic),” any tiny glitch can be forgiven. And when you boast a pair of prog-loving hesher guitarists in the form of the Great Kaiser and Mars Mysterio (LOVE IT), you know there'll be plenty of geeky fun to leave the listener... flushed. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

WITHIN THE RUINS 6 Black Heart EONE

Wait, is this mall metal?

Few of us will ever know the ecstasy and freedom of being as amazing at something—anything!—as the players of Within the Ruins are at locking down twisty riffs, odd time signatures and jittery, tight-as-fuck riffage. It’s a real marvel of human potential and achievement that should not be discounted. And yet, once one moves onto a more objective consideration of creation outside of creator, Black Heart is, alas, less inspiring. Approximately half of the sixth full-length from the Westfield, MA quartet sounds like an attempt to bridge the divide between highly processed, big-chorus modern radio metal, bedroom djent and prog metal. It’s all extraordinarily well-constructed, nary a note out of place—to the point that the antiseptic and anodyne undertow grows pretty strong. The other half is more original, but—whether this is blessing or curse, I leave to you, dear reader—carries the vibe of the world’s biggest Meshuggah fan landing a gig scoring retro eight-bit video games... or a heavier reimagining of the Mozart-led musical mall mayhem montage toward the end of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. There is very little doubt in my mind that younger metal fans, simultaneously less anchored to an organic traditionalist mindset and steeped in a much more digitized aural and social culture, will find Black Heart easier to osmose and integrate than your humble correspondent. I absolutely respect the hell out of the whole enterprise. To me, however, it’s sort of akin to a book agent hearing “Motormouth” John Moschitta do one of those speed-talking Micro Machines commercials and saying, “That guy should write a novel!” Sometimes impressive feats and talents do not translate. —SHAWN MACOMBER

new album out now fuckthefacts.com

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EUGENE S. ROBINSON

HOME IS WHERE

THE HATE IS I was at some hippie house back when such a thing was a thing. Through my leather jacket and sporting of a mohawk, I attracted a hippie. “I guess punk is all right,” he said, like anyone had asked him. “The only type of music I have a problem with, though, is heavy metal. It’s fascistic.” He explained that he had gone to see AC/DC perform and the sight of an entire audience chanting in unison and raising hand signals together reminded him of rallies at Nuremberg. Nazi rallies. I considered this, explained that any mass gathering might remind him of any other mass gathering, and that maybe what he was tied into was the fact that metal, in its ideal form, is the Music of Not OK. Which is how an ex-girlfriend who was a Jehovah’s Witness had once described us being together: “If my life wasn’t fucked up, I’d never have met you.” So, the music—like my relationship—was a critique of things as they are; and if the Nazis co-opted this sentiment, it’s because the

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sentiment was larger than they were and has informed and fueled art as long as there were artists around to register that things are very much not OK. Sure, you have metal that extols the virtues of a certain type of good living, like Mötley Crüe from one side of the fence and Stryper from another, but for the most part, when I hear metal, I hear the beautiful sounds of real existential dread. A dread that people who listen to it are drawn to because it mirrors the very real anxiety of lives lived in perpetual imbalance. “I keep the bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies will affect me,” Tom Araya sang during Slayer’s final show in the Bay Area. From “New Faith” on God Hates Us All, it is nothing if not emblematic of a world in collapse; and being in the audience the night they came to Oakland, it was a glorious celebration of that collapse. Of getting punched in the face by your father too many times. Of going to jail too many times. Of never not getting fucked over.

So, standing at the foot of a stage in a widening pool of blood at the Misfits’ second show in San Francisco almost 30 years earlier, it felt very much like standing in the middle of that collapse. The story is old, but the Misfits came in hot and surly, and San Fran audiences back then hazed them. Bottles and shit were thrown. Doyle took off his guitar and used that axe like an axe and split this kid Timmy’s head open. It was Timmy’s blood I was standing in. Three-quarters of my band Whipping Boy were there, and we hit the stage and started hitting everyone we could see. Googy, who later became a friend, was first. Tearing down their banner and punching everyone else was next. Timmy went to the hospital. The Misfits went into the history books. I wrote about it back then. First, I called them assholes. Timmy was almost murdered. He was 130 pounds, about 5 feet, 7 inches, looked like some skate kid. Then years passed and something hit me, and I wrote Danzig a letter. I have no idea if he got it. But I apologized.

Why? Because how could I have missed that what happened that night was the rightest of all possible things given all of the signs that drew us to this music in the first place? That suggests an excuse. But that’s a reason. So, years later, when Danzig got laid low by Danny Marianino, knocked out on video, to quote Hyman Roth from The Godfather, I didn’t ask who gave the order. Because, to paraphrase, “this is the music we have chosen.” And when a reader writes this magazine’s editor to say the following... [A]fter… your hatchet piece on Buzz Osborne (Eugene Robinson is a hack), I will not be re-subscribing… Maybe if someone in ANTIFA ever kicks heroin and gets a job, they can subscribe to Decibel. I was born and raised in Philly. Left a long time ago. Where did all of the sissies come from? —William Kennedy, Colorado, USA … I have to laugh and ask, Mr. Kennedy, why you mad, bro? ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

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