Decibel #200 - June 2021

L-G PETROV

1972 2021

OF THE WAKE HALL OF FAME LAMB OF GOD ASHES

REFUSE/RESIST

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JUNE 2021 // No. 200

A CE LEBRATION OF BEING

HE L L HA MM E R RECO RD S P RE S E N T S

BEYOND ACHERON

From the ashes of cult underground metal stalwarts ACHERON comes the debut release from VINCENT CROWLEY. US Edition on Hellhammer Records features 2 exclusive Bonus Tracks!

COMING JUNE 18, 2021

AVAILABLE IN LIMITED EDITION CD & COLORED VINYL

FACEBOOK.COM/VINCENTCROWLEYBAND • FACEBOOK.COM/HELLHAMMERRECORDS

Serena Cherry (Svalbard) presents her new black metal project NOCTULE with their debut album “Wretched Abyss”!

Out May 28th V I N Y L / D I G I T A L

•L A MENTING A DEAD WOR LD• Denver, CO's doom / sludge trio ORYX present their mesmerizing new album and Translation Loss debut “Lamenting a Dead World”! Mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson (High On Fire, Graves at Sea, Necrot) with artwork by Ettore Aldo Del Vigo!

• O U T N OW • V I N Y L / D I G I TA L

HELLISH FORM R

E

M

A I

N S

The Vermont-California two piece known as HELLISH FORM present their Translation Loss debut full length. The combination of crushing funeral doom intertwined with beautiful drone soundscapes. “Remains” features the stunning artwork of Cauê Piloto with mastering by James Plotkin (Khanate, Scorn, Zombi).

OUT JUNE 25TH V I N Y L / D I G I T A L

PURCHASE OUR TITLES AND MERCHANDISE FROM OUR BANDS ONLINE, 24 HOURS A DAY! | TRANSLATIONLOSS.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/TRANSLATIONLOSSRECORDS | TRANSLATIONLOSS.BANDCAMP.COM

ASEITAS FALSE PEACE

C TRIP A OZZY NIGHTS

COASTLANDS DEATH

DROUTH EXCERPTS FROM A DREAD LITURGY

DYSRHYTHMIA TERMINAL THRESHOLD

GIANT SQUID THE ICHTHYOLOGIST

GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY AGELESS VIOLENCE

GRAYCEON MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES

IREPRESS SAMUS OCTOLOGY

MANY BLESSINGS EMANATION BODY

MOUTH OF THE ARCHITECT THE VIOLENCE BENEATH

SVALBARD WHEN I DIE, WILL I GET BETTER

SWAMPBEAST SEVEN EVILS SPAWNED OF SEVEN HEADS

TEETH THE CURSE OF ENTROPY

UN THE TOMB OF ALL THINGS

WAKE CONFLUENCE

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EXTREMELY EXTREME

June 2021 [R 200] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 11 foreword SPD 4EVR 14 obituaries Ride on, L-G 16 metal muthas Keeping it in the family 18 news Slit your juice box 20 low culture High praise 21 no corporate beer Classic brew 22 in the studio:

amorphis

Time will tell

features 24 paysage d’hiver Black metal’s coldest soul is on a hot streak 26 grave miasma Call of D, T and Y

36 exclusive:

decibel columnists The regular irregularity of a metal magazine

38 exclusive:

28 noctule Taking an arrow in the knee 30 yautja You rang...?

32 carnal savagery Turning their HM-2s to 11

58 34 horndal Uh, don’t Google them

reviews

decibel art & design Well, SOMEONE has to put this shit together

40 q&a: carcass We’re lucky that Jeff Walker hasn’t discovered Netflix yet 44 the decibel

hall of fame Leaders of the New Wave of American Heavy metal Lamb of God find unlikely success the same year as our plucky little magazine with Ashes of the Wake

72 reviews introduction Does anybody remember laughter?

73 lead review Austin Lunn’s prolific Panopticon returns with their unique blend of USBM and outlaw country with …And Again Into the Light 74 album reviews Releases from bands that won’t return our calls come issue No. 300, including Bongzilla, Cannibal Corpse and Gojira 90 horrorscope Better late than never 96 damage ink Taking the piss

AT THE

GATES Positively Negative COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY ESTER SEGARRA Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, 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. © 2021 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.

6 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

200 Thanks (In No Order Whatsoever):

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

www.decibelmagazine.com

REFUSE/RESIST

June 2021 [T200] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

alex@redflagmedia.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

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Alex Mulcahy • James Lewis • Mike Wohlberg • Patty Moran • Aaron Salsbury • Nick Green • Andrew Bonazelli • Amy Gallick • Tim Mulcahy • Alex Yarde • Vince Bellino • J. Bennett • Gerardo Martinez • Gordon Conrad • Scott Koerber • Bruno Guerrerio • Jeff Walker • Shane Embury • Barney Greenway • Nick Storch • Mark Evans • Mark Rudolph • Brian McDonald • Dave Witte • Kevin Sharp • Zach Smith • Matt Olivo • Chris Dick • Nick Terry • Scott Hull • Ester Segarra • Drew Juergens • Jamie Leary • Ian Christe • John Darnielle • Shawn Macomber • Jeanne Fury • Scott Carlson • Oscar Martinez • Tomas Lindberg • Jamie Roberts • Jon Pushnik • Steve Von Till • Rod Smith • Liz Ciavarella-Brenner • Dave Brenner • EJ Johantgen • Scott Mire • Chris Bruni • Amy Sciarretto • Dave Adelson • Guy Kozowyk • Paul Romano • Shane Mehling • Chuck BB • Blake Harrison • Michael Thomas Jacob Morgan • Daniel Lake • Brian Lew • Matt Calvert • Brian Slagel • Mike Faley • Jake Bannon • Kate Richardson • Mike Hill • John Dyer Baizley • Erik Rutan • Scott Kelly • Monte Conner • Dieter J. Szczypinski • Ryan Patterson • Scott Hungarter • Jeremy deVine • Laurent Merle • Scotty Heath • Sean Ingram • Justin M. Norton • Sean Frasier • Nikki Law • Ed Luce • Joseph Ferree • Todd Haug • Chris Boggess • Jason Parris • Neill Jameson • Dutch Pearce • Forrest Pitts • Chad Gailey • Jon Rosenthal • Enrico Leccese • Oscar Martinez • Christian McKenna • Adem Tepedelen • Jon Freeman • Danny Trudell • Jarvis Leatherby • Vince Edwards • Rennie Jaffe • Chris Dodge • Shannon Void • Enrique Sagarnaga • Chip Ruggieri • Carl Schultz • Mike LaCouture • Tyler Lenane • Richard Christy • Gene Smirnov • J. Drew Zalucky • Frank White • Randy Duran • Kurt Ballou • Dan Rozenblum • Thomas Gabriel Fischer • Trevor William Church • Tyler Davis • Philipp Schulte • Monica Seide • Suzy Cole • Brian Turner • Dylan Walker • Leif Jensen • Eric Mueller • Eugene S. Robinson • Nick Nunns • Mark Osborne • Keith Huckins • Götz Vogelsang • Hristo Shindov • David E. Gehlke • Jesse Matthewson • Chase Mason • Arthur Rizk • Ben Barnett • Ben Hutcherson • Jeff Treppel • Matt Snyder • Hannah Verbeuren • Joseph Schafer • Matt Solis • Levan TK • Raoul Hernandez • Sarah Kitteringham • Adrien Begrand • Dean Brown • Greg Pratt • Justin Smith • Todd Nakamine • Matt Knox • Steve Davis • Dom Romeo • Jamie Knox • Nate Garrett • Mike Thompson • Richard “The Grindfather” Johnson • Austin Lunn • Marty Rytkonen • Paul Riedl • Alex Kulick • Simon Füllemann • Ivar Bjørnson • Damian Herring • Eric Greif • Rob Halford • Brann Dailor • Jonas Björler • Steven Williams • Stephanie Shoulders • Dayal Patterson • Lee Dorrian • Todd Jones • Kurt Bachman • Cosmo Lee • Jarrett Pritchard • Martin van Drunen • Louise Brown • Jonathan Horsley • Dirk Verbeuren • Bradley Zorgdrager • Kevin Stewart-Panko • Matt Harvey • Ian Marcus • Rebecca Vernon • Matt McGachy • Ross Dolan • Bob Vigna • Jonathan Tuite • Donald Anderson • Erik Larson • Maria Ferrero • Ula Gehret • Jeff Wagner • Scott Seward • Andrew Parks • Laurie Shanaman • Matt Martinez • Robert “JR” Walker • Jon Talkington • Paula Hogan • Adam Bartlett • Pip Soret

FOREWORD BY

JOHN DARNIELLE

moods and mind-states whose representation in popular art had always been spare, but which were real ways of feeling, living and breathing; a music in which so many located a sense of belonging, and a hunger which never died, though also a hunger which did begin to ask, as it aged, maybe a little singing with the guttural vox, or maybe even some songs without guttural vox, you know, just for novelty’s sake, it works for Anathema, give a try maybe? No? You’re right, I’m old, never mind.

And 200 issues was an accomplishment so immense in the world of magazine publishing that we who had written for this magazine were humbled, and stood in awe.

At the dawn of time, when light was spare upon the land and the people went hungry, because riffs were in short supply, there was a Dude at a Guitar Center, because his town didn’t have anything cooler, and behold, that Dude bought himself a pedal, and the pedal was made by a company called BOSS, which was a little weird, because our Dude hated his boss, who had made him work late on the night that Slayer was playing at the Santa Monica Civic with Overkill and Impaler. Verily, fuck that boss, whose name was Keith, and who invented posing, even if there were poseurs before him, lo, the ages attest that Keith invented posing.

Yet also, hail Keith! For was it not Keith who said to the Dude, my cousin got born again and he’s giving away his shit, I don’t need this shit either, but then I thought that One Dude at work with the shitty Corolla, he looks like he hangs out with guys who play a Flying V, and here Keith laughed, because bosses always laugh at their own jokes, it is the Way of the Boss, are you not a Dude who could use these pedals?

And the light shone upon our Dude, because one of these pedals was an HM-2, which had only been around for a year or so at that point, and the other was a CE-2, which was hardly the most revolutionary chorus pedal in the world, but which would absolutely fucking do the job.

And the shadow of boring garbage began to wane, and on the East Coast, where hoagies were plentiful, a Young Man did hear, and attend, to the sounds then emanating from the Bay Area, and from Stockholm; from West Yorkshire, and Brazil, they were fucking maniacs down in Brazil it sounded like.

PHOTO BY L ALITREE DARNIELLE

Then did that Young Man say, the zines in which I read about the wonders worked with these badass pedals, they are killer; there should be shit like this on the newsstands; we’ll always have newsstands, right? And he did begin to dream.

And the years did pass, and the mosh pit was righteous, yet also lame sometimes; somebody is always fucking up the pit; we need somebody from the Lower East Side to complain about it, and, behold, an interview with Agnostic Front.

And there arose, from the City of Philadelphia, a great cry: The Broad Street Bullies have grown old, and can bully no more! Keith Primeau tanked! What the fuck!

And a magazine was published, and 100 issues passed, and the back page columnist got too drunk to make it through the entire Converge set, but went absolutely mental for the first three songs, and the years did progress.

And then there were 200 issues of a magazine, covering the entire range of the world of heavy metal, a music which spoke to so many—of

PLEASE DO NOTE, ALBERT, THAT IF THIS ISSUE DOES NOT FEATURE A 10-PAGE TRIBUTE TO TOXIK’S WORLD CIRCUS,

I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.

You hold in your hands the proof that this music’s enduring power is the other thing that is real, besides death, shout-out to Tom G. Warrior, I heard your last name is not Warrior, I will never rat you out, I put that on my original Apocalyptic Raids vinyl.

Please do note, Albert, that if this issue does not feature a 10-page tribute to Toxik’s World Circus, I know where you live.

Hail Toxik! Hail Albert! Hail every headbanger hunched over keyboards who has made this mag a beacon in the dark for 200 issues! May we still publish when there are only roaches left to read!

Hail roaches!

Hail Decibel!

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 D E C I B E L : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : 11 : 11

READER OF THE

MONTH seeing some kind of post/article about it and thought “this seems relevant to my specific interests—I will support this new endeavor.” Now every time I move, I have to move this gigantic multi-shelf space worth of magazines, along with all of my records and CDs.

Jesse Matthewson Winnipeg, Canada

You’ve been a Decibel subscriber since issue No. 1. How did you discover the magazine?

That’s actually a good question. It was so long ago that I honestly cannot remember.

Fackbook/Instagram wasn’t a thing yet… how did we even get “scene” news back then?

Maybe someone posted about it on MySpace?

It had to be social media, but I do know that you’ve been buds with people we’ve worked with since way back, so maybe Gordon Conrad (ex-Escape Artist/Relapse Records, current Season of Mist) first told me about the impending magazine? I do remember

12 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

You’re the frontman of KEN mode, who are famous for their staunch DIY ethic. Similarly, Decibel has remained 100% independent since its start.

Do you think as the years go on, it gets easier or more difficult to remain so?

Are we famous? Infamous? Noteworthy? It’s definitely harder to get people’s attention as the years go on due to the option paralysis that technology provides, but at the same time—you can target the exact kinds of people who would appreciate you the most way easier given the same technology. I’ll probably land on the fact that it’s easier to carve out a super niche living doing something different because of the technological advances we’ve been afforded. Not that KEN mode makes enough for us to live off of [laughs]… but it keeps providing us branches to desperately clasp on to, which keeps us from falling into that dark pit

of complete obscurity for another year. The fact that Decibel magazine has been able to thrive for 17 years now, despite the printed media market being a fraction of what it once was, drives that point home a lot better than our case does!

We’re celebrating our 200th issue in a pretty subdued manner, even as the pandemic is showing signs of breaking. When people can gather again, how do you think we should acknowledge this milestone in person?

You guys did some sick-ass show back for the 100th issue, if I recall correctly. I mean… sure, it seems like re-treading, and you do the beer fest a few times a year now too (obviously with 2020/2021 being the exceptions), but I think it would be irresponsible of you not to throw some kind of show with live bands, in whatever format makes the most sense. Is that a boring answer? Maybe you could make it a live stream too and the whole audience is those Boston Dynamics robots going ape-shit the whole time. I’d pay for that livestream!

How many copies do you think we’d sell of a KEN mode cover? Do you and Shane have a large family we can count on?

I’m a fan of the magazine; for your sake, I know this must never happen. Unless you know something about our impending new record that nobody else does yet?

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

OBITUARIES

14 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

L-G

PETROV 1 9 7 2 - 2 0 21

ON

March 7, 2021, Lars-Göran Petrov passed away, following a battle

with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer of the bile duct—he was only 49 years old. Better known around the world by his initials L-G, Petrov made history as the vocalist of Swedish death metal band Entombed. ¶ The extreme metal community is still riding the waves that Petrov helped generate. In his book Swedish Death Metal, author Daniel Ekeroth positions Entombed’s debut album, Left Hand Path, as the essential text for all that country’s extreme metal output afterward. The magazine you’re reading may not have come to exist without Petrov’s music. ¶ Petrov is remembered by those who knew him or had the good fortune to see him live for both his fun-loving and hardworking attitude. “L-G was, without a doubt, one of the most relentless live performers I’ve ever seen or worked with,” says Fred Estby, drummer and songwriter for fellow Swedish death metal legends Dismember, who helped produce and record the fourth Entombed album, DCLXVI: To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth! “No matter the circumstances, he would always give everything and more every time he was on that stage.

No technical difficulties, being under the weather or other obstacles would deter him.

He always put on a hell of a show every time—always with a big smile on his face.”

That hard-working attitude helped Petrov and Entombed become Sweden’s go-to ambassadors of chainsaw riffs and eerie melodies in the early ’90s. As part of Earache Records’ distribution deal with Columbia, their pioneering death ‘n’ roll record Wolverine Blues became maybe the most widely spread Swedish extreme metal CD and tape in the United States at the time.

“What a voice, what a character, what a cool dude that left behind a pile of recordings that could make a corpse puke,” writes Chris Reifert, drummer and vocalist of Autopsy. “You’ve heard his voice; you know what it sounds like.

It launched untold numbers of impressionable growlers to pick up a mic and follow suit.”

Unlike many of his imitators, Petrov’s music continues to indoctrinate musicians into the PHOTO BY MACIE J PIELOCH

heavy arts, and will continue to even in absentia. Over 30 years since the band formed as Nihilist, their music continues to inspire young people to take part in extreme metal.

“It is no surprise to anyone who has heard my band that L-G’s musical contributions have influenced me greatly,” offers Gatecreeper vocalist Chase Mason. “Entombed’s Left Hand Path and Wolverine Blues are two albums that immediately grabbed me and pulled me into the vast world of Swedish death metal. I was never able to meet L-G, but the body of work he has left us with is something I will continue to worship for the rest of my life.”

Though authors and musicians often fixate on the guitar tone and percussive elements of Entombed, Petrov’s personality as a vocalist was

key to their charm. In a crowd of incoherent shouts buried in the mix, Petrov stood out with an intelligible snarl that always projected his boisterous and hard-working personality—and sometimes a sly sense of humor. Even while invoking the occult and the obscure in his lyrics, Petrov projected what it was like to be an outsider, one of the perpetually underestimated, and that made his songs an open invitation for his fellow disenfranchised youth.

This author first heard him while playing Tony Hawk’s Underground, which featured “To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth.” I recall his delivery of the line “I’ve tried, so far no good / more than a little misunderstood.” captivating me immediately. That was my first Entombed song, and I would idly grind for hours in the game waiting to crank the speakers and put the controller down when the soundtrack would cycle back to Petrov’s howling.

But isolating the vocalist's legacy to just Entombed does him a disservice. He drummed under the moniker Drutten for blackened trendsetters Morbid, whose original vocalist, Per “Dead” Ohlin, went on to join Mayhem. He sang on songs by other historic bands, including Rotten Sound and Amon Amarth, not to mention another full-time project, the terminally underrated Firespawn. When Entombed further fractured in 2014, he continued prolifically writing, recording and touring in Entombed A.D. “L-G needs no introduction; half the world knew him. And if you didn’t know him personally, you knew him anyway—and he knew you, too!” writes Entombed A.D. drummer Olle Dahlstedt. “He was into people that, like him, lived life with the aim of being something rather than doing something.”

There Dahlstedt has zeroed in on what made Petrov pivotal in extreme metal’s history and community. Where others lower the gates behind a veil of anonymity or remove, Petrov put all of himself out there, through his music and performance. In doing so, he invited others to join him in extreme metal not as an enterprise, but as a lifestyle.

Dahlstedt continues: “What an honor it has been to play and laugh with him. To be his friend! Our brother is gone. We will always miss him. We will never forget!”

Reifert echoes his sentiments: “I’m glad I got to meet him. For those who didn’t, just know that he was the real deal and I’m sure he would have appreciated you appreciating him. Cheers, L-G, and thanks for the brutality!”

In remembrance, we celebrate Lars-Göran Petrov, who taught generations the art of death metal, and also taught us that life goes on. Long may he ride. —JOSEPH SCHAFER D E C I B E L : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : 15

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month?

Well, here are the records that we spun most while cautiously booking bands for the return of Decibel live events.

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

This Month's Mutha: Judy Bonazelli Mutha of Decibel’s Andrew Bonazelli

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Buffalo (Go, Bills—finally!). When we moved to Ohio, I was a teacher’s aide for many years, working with special needs elementary school children. Then I worked at a little library until we moved to Greensburg, PA. I am now retired. As for hobbies, I enjoy reading, sewing, quilting, crocheting, needlepoint, crossstitch and tole painting.

What was your son like as a little boy?

Andrew was a very active, inquisitive child. He loved to read and draw. And he has loved music and movies as long as I can remember. When he was seven, he broke his femur and was in an ankle to hip cast for three months, with six weeks in traction in the hospital and six more at home. I think this period of limited activity forced him to become more patient and focused.

Your son has been a major contributor to Decibel since issue No. 2. What did he tell you about the magazine when he decided to move to Philadelphia?

Andrew thought it would be a great opportunity to try to help build the magazine’s success and do what he loves. I was grateful that he moved back to this side of the country from Seattle.

16 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

Andrew has flourished as a music writer, but also as a novelist and a screenwriter. What are your impressions of his writing?

I am constantly amazed at the ideas he has and how he translates them to the written word. His creativity is something I’ll always envy. When he was in middle school, he won a regional competition. The students had the morning to write a short story. I can’t imagine having to create something with that time constraint. But he has the unique ability to take any subject and put his own spin on it.

Andrew has been complaining for 30 years that you would not let him go to a Faith No More and Helmet concert in Buffalo when he was a teenager. What can you say now to provide a motherly life lesson in disappointment?

He has gone to quite a few concerts in his life. The fact that he wasn’t able to go to this concert was an “I’m the parent” and “you’re too young” occasion. It’s unfortunate that this caused him to be upset, but as the Rolling Stones said, “You can’t always get what you want.” He survived and thrived.

—ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Aduanten, Sullen Cadence  At the Gates, To Drink from the Night Itself  Horrendous, Anareta  Wolves in the Throne Room, New LP  Khemmis, Desolation ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Acid Mammoth, Under Acid Hoof  Black Sabbath, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath  Orange Goblin, The Big Black  1782, From the Graveyard  Melvins, Lysol ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  The Crown, Royal Destroyer  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  Coffin Mulch, Septic Funeral  Various Artists,

Completely Extreme, Volume 1  Various Artists, Metal Massacre XV ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Entombed, Left Hand Path  God’s Hate, God’s Hate  Enforced, At the Walls  At the Gates, Slaughter of the Soul  Noctule, Wretched Abyss ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  Pupil Slicer, Mirrors  Yautja, The Lurch  Horrendous, Anareta  Melvins, Stoner Witch

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Andrew Lee : r i p p e d t o s h r e d s  Sulfuric Cautery/Cystgurgle, A Clinical Debate on the Implementation of Traumatic Hemicorporectomy Procedure and Discussion of Ethics Regarding Disfiguring Surgeries  Tony MacAlpine, Maximum Security  Mortify, Grotesque Buzzsaw Defilement  Blue Holocaust, Flesh for the Cannibal God  Sunami/Gulch, Split

CRYPTOPSY

CRYPTOPSY vocalist collaborates on a pair of children’s books during the pandemic

IT

seems that Matt McGachy has been living two lives.

In one, he is the lead vocalist of death metal staple Cryptopsy, where his vocals anchor songs like “The Knife, the Head and What Remains.” The other is spent in early childhood education and, since the beginning of the pandemic, as a collaborator on children’s books.

Both of these lives might have a future. ¶ The idea to write children’s books came to McGachy and his wife Jessica Buckingham during pandemic walks with their 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son. Buckingham also helped McGachy launch his now successful podcast Vox&Hops. McGachy provided guidance throughout the book project based on his 15-year career in early childhood education. ¶ “My wife and I wanted to collaborate on a book for a while, given my background. So, that’s where it stems from,” he explains. “There was such a crazy positive reaction from my friends and the people I worked with, and even people in the early childhood education world.” ¶ Today, We’re Staying Home is about a family discovering the joys of things you can do at the house during social isolation and the power of family bonds.

The book came out after the first six weeks of the pandemic 18 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

in the hope that it could inspire positive dialogue about frightening world events and sudden changes.

“We wanted to avoid explicitly talking about the virus and focus on children’s day-to-day experiences instead,” Buckingham says. “We first imagined the books as tools for our own children, to help create a new sense of normalcy and trigger spontaneous discussion about how they were coping with the situation.”

Recent collaboration Hidden Rainbow (Jeannie Banh illustrated both books) encourages children to express their emotions through art, something McGachy says he “does this all the time in Cryptopsy.”

McGachy says his family loves literature and reads to their children nightly. Both books are direct and engaging, much like the couple’s favorite children’s stories.

“My wife and I have been together for 18 years, and by now we know how to collaborate,”

McGachy says. “I’ve also learned through my years in a band to listen and be patient and pick your battles. We appreciate literature and tried to make sure every word in there is a meaningful one.” An activity guide is available for Today, We’re Staying Home, and one is in the works for Hidden Rainbow.

The books are available via print on demand in the United States on Bookshop.org, which helps raise money for local bookstores. (“It’s also available on Amazon, but we would much rather people go to Bookshop and give a helping hand,” McGachy says.) In the meantime, Cryptopsy are finishing their first full-length album since their selftitled 2012 effort. McGachy didn’t rule out bringing a few children’s books to sit on the merch table next to a pair of Book of Suffering EPs when touring resumes. “If the interest is there, it might be very cool,” he laughs. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

R.I.P. L-G PETROV introduction to Decibel

came from taking a shit at Blake Judd’s house, probably sometime in 2008 or 9.

Blake—and every other musician out there, no matter how much they fucking lie about it—littered his place with magazines he’d been in, and it was either Decibel or reading the toothpaste tube. Considering how I treated myself those days, I knew I was going to be in there for a bit.

My initial impression was that I would never do anything to warrant being in a fancy magazine.

This was around the time nobody would piss on me if I was on fire (or cosplaying as a urinal cake), and my time for getting into such things had seemingly passed. A few dark years followed.

In 2009, I was somehow able to convince Candlelight Records to sign me, a mutually disadvantageous relationship that has become a cautionary tale for everyone unfortunate enough to ask me band advice and actually receive a response. Sick set, man. The next year, I released a record and had the misguided optimism that it would be a celebrated comeback that would land my name everywhere it needed to go. I was also on a lot of drugs, which I cannot stress enough.

I’d been able to sneak into part of a Twilight interview somewhere along the way, but never anything on my own merit. 2010 would not be that year, either. It was, however, a countdown to living in my car.

I eventually cleaned up a bit and got a job managing an indie record store, where I started to build up a decent metal customer base. For the first time, I stopped picking up Decibel to see if I was mentioned somewhere and I actually started reading the fucking thing, especially to get a grasp on what I should be looking into stocking. As I started to grow up and pull myself out of the hole 20 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

I’d crawled into, Decibel became a first aid kit and a valuable resource. I started to enjoy music again.

By 2013, I had dried out and became creatively active again. As a result, I began to explore finding my written voice after decades of (if anyone fucking saw them) embarrassing fits and starts.

I used my Facebook as a place to discuss the freaks and dunces that came in search of the riches that Pawn Stars promised would ejaculate out of record stores purchasing the moldy shit they had laying around. Thanks to this, I was asked by Justin Norton to do a piece for the Decibel site on the state of indie record stores, my first legitimate piece of writing. The experience marked a shift in my life, a shift to where I felt that I could be honest with the use of my writing and didn’t need to slide into some kind of facade.

As I remind you every January, in 2015 Albert was kind enough to call me up from the farm team and give the printed page a try. He and several others helped guide me to clean up some of the crust left in my writing, and cemented the tone of how I would express myself while encouraging me to leap out of my role into others, like actual journalism.

Since 2013, between the print and online versions, I’ve done close to a hundred pieces for Decibel. I’ve branched out and written for a half dozen other spots, but always kept the voice that was nurtured by Albert and my colleagues in Decibel. Thanks to social media’s incessant need to remind me about the stupid shit I said 10 years ago (sort of like music in general), I can track a gradual shift towards better mental health and a better, more fulfilling life alongside the change in my relationship with Decibel.

I’m not saying Decibel saved my life. But it helped.

Here’s to 200 more.

MORBID ALES

BY CHRIS DODGE

Q&A With Adem Tepedelen

AS

a fan of the craft beer

and metal crossover (I know you are—you’re reading this!), you owe a hearty “Cheers!” to Decibel scribe Adem Tepedelen. His now legendary Brewtal Truth columns and follow-up book were the first of the genre, paving the way for countless imitators and emulators to come. When I met Tepedelen for the first time in 2012 at Great American Beer Fest (see issue No. 101, “East/West Beer Test”), he proved to be the nicest dude ever, as well as a true scholar of extreme beer and music. Much of this scene would not exist today were it not for Tepedelen’s tireless tenure as both spokesman and cheerleader, so it seemed only fitting to check in with the man himself.

How did the idea for the Brewtal Truth column first come up?

I first approached Decibel in late 2008 about doing something beer-related. My timing was good, because the magazine needed a new column at the time. It was an unprecedented move for a beer column to appear in a music magazine. My first column ran in May 2009. I wrote it for nearly 10 years.

What semblance of a metal and beer scene existed when you started the column?

The closest thing you could call a metal and beer “scene” in 2009 was 3 Floyds’ Dark Lord Day, held every spring at the brewery in Indiana. Brewer Barnaby Struve (R.I.P.) was curating a lineup of (mostly) metal bands to accompany the annual release of this very metal beer.

The funny thing is the people attending DLD back then, for the most part, weren’t there for the metal at all! They tolerated it so they could get their hands on bottles of Dark Lord and get wasted drinking “whalez.”

What other writings have you published?

I started my first zine, Heavy Heroes, when I was in high school in Oregon, back in 1984, and have been writing about metal and all kinds of stuff ever since. I wrote for (and edited) Seattle’s The Rocket magazine in the ’90s, and from there I freelanced over the next two-plus decades— RayGun, Warp, MOJO and rollingstone. com. My first book, The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers, was published by Lyons Press in 2013. Before I started writing about craft beer, I wrote a lot more about wine. I actually co-wrote a wine book, Island Wineries of British Columbia, which was named best wine book in Canada in 2011 by Gourmand International.

Is there any such thing as extreme beer anymore?

I think some of the boundary-pushing in the craft beer world has resulted in some silly, gimmicky beers. OK, maybe a lot of silly, gimmicky beers. But when beers that were once considered extreme (high-gravity IPAs, for example) become normal, where do you go next? Lactose, fruit, coffee? All of the above? No thanks.

I’m obviously a champion for edgy beers and creativity, but I’ve also always been a proponent of balance and beers that maintain some semblance of beer-ness. As for what’s next, I couldn’t even begin to guess. Maybe there’ll be a pendulum swing toward beers that are brewed true to style, but brewed really well. Quality never goes out of style.

Do you still dabble in playing music?

Sadly, I don’t play music anymore, and my diminished hearing is the better for it. That said, one of the last bands I was in, Stymie, will be releasing an LP of some heavy stuff we recorded in the ’90s when we were Seattle’s best threeguitar band.

Mouth feels of the animal kingdom  Tepedelen pours out some of his signature collab beer with Wayfinder Brewing at the 2018 installment of this humble mag’s Metal & Beer Fest in Philadelphia

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 21

AMORPHIS

F

STUDIO REPORT innish melodic death metal icons Amorphis are almost a year away from it sounds like something we the release of their new (still untitled) studio album. Yet here they are, haven’t done before, so there ripping through the follow-up to 2018 gem Queen of Time at Sonic Pump are definitely new winds ALBUM TITLE Studios (Impaled Nazarene, Swallow the Sun), with producer Jens Bogren [blowing]. It will be easier TBA (Sepultura, Dimmu Borgir) working remotely from his Fascination Street Studios to say later when everything in Sweden. The Finns will be ensconced at their Helsinki location through June, is recorded. For sure, it’s PRODUCER/MIXER where songs like the tentatively titled “Messias,” “Nanonano,” “Persunyya,” going to be an album that Jens Bogren “Möljä” and “Zimsalabim” are beginning to take shape. we will be proud of. I can say STUDIO “We’re recording the drums, bass and my guitars now,” offers guitarist Tomi that already.”

Sonic Pump Studios (Helsinki, Finland) Koivusaari. “Esa [Holopainen]’s guitars and Tomi [Joutsen]’s vocals will be recorded in As for extras, don’t expect Sweden in April/May, if the current COVID-19 situation improves and lets them travel.

Amorphis to roll out covers STUDIO DATES After that, we’ll record Santeri [Kallio]’s keyboards in Helsinki. That’s when we get all this time around, even though February-June 2021 the rest of the stuff going, as well as the mix, which should happen in June.” their version of Hawkwind’s RELEASE DATE According to Koivusaari, Amorphis wrote over 30 songs during the last two “Levitation” from 1997’s My Early 2022 years. They then employed Bogren to pick out the best 13 to comprise what will ultiKantele EP was a revelation.

LABEL mately be a 10-track record (with a bonus song for the Japanese market). Musically, “We are too productive Nuclear Blast the new album will continue where Queen of Time left off, but we’re told there will ourselves,” says Koivusaari. be a few surprises; one of which is the inclusion of a Swedish female singer on a “So, no cover songs this time song that will be unlike anything in the band’s 31-year history. either. It would be great to cover Finnish [prog] “We always try to start from a clean table,” Koivusaari explains. “I’d say there is some more bands someday. Who knows what the future brutal heavy stuff. Also, some more progressive stuff as well. Not to forget the melodies. Some of holds?” —CHRIS DICK

AMORPHIS

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

ROAD DOGS GOATWHORE BECOME STUDIO DOGS, TRACK EIGHTH LP “With the rug of playing live—and you know how much we love to play live— ripped from underneath us, I figured the next best thing would be to write a record,” explains Goatwhore guitarist Sammy Duet, expressing a not-uncommon action during these days of death. After meticulously writing their eighth full-length, the quartet decamped to Studio in the Country, located in tiny Bogalusa, LA, an hour north of their NOLA home.

“We didn’t even know this place existed,” Duet admits. “The cool thing is

22 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

that it wasn’t a converted space; it was designed and built to be a recording studio. Kansas’ Leftoverture was recorded here. Cinderella and Marilyn Manson have been here, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack was done here. It’s pretty legendary, and the equipment is high-quality, vintage and fantastic.”

With drummer Zack Simmons’ tracks wrapped, Duet has dialed in his tone and is eager to rip guitars on what he’s describing as “a way more aggressive record than [2017’s] Vengeful Ascension.

It’s going to be a lot darker with some experimental moments, but still us and definitely the next step in our evolution.”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PAYSAGE D’HIVER

PAYSAGE D’HIVER The prolific Wintherr returns with second black metal stunner in as many years

S

oon after last year’s two-hour atmospheric black metal epic Im Wald, Paysage d’Hiver returns with yet another full-length album (or is it a demo? The terms are interchangeable here.). Featuring a ferocious, riff-centric style, Geister (“Ghosts”) marks a new era for Paysage d’Hiver: one which is marked with a new approach, but consistent spirit. ¶ “After Im Wald, I felt that the next album had to be something quite different,” Paysage d’Hiver mastermind Wintherr says of the upcoming LP. “I wanted to go back to experimenting more, like I used to do a lot with the early recordings. Geister definitely was an experiment for me, as it is a music style and way of songwriting I have never done before.” ¶ “Geister doesn’t mark a new style,” he explains, “but will stay as a singular experience in the story of Paysage d’Hiver. The next album, which is already in the making, will again be something very different.” ¶ The Paysage d’Hiver narrative, which has been woven in a cyclical, out-of-order timeline across the project’s body of work, ventures into new territory, as well. Concentrating on the cult of the “Tschäggättä” 24 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

from the Lötschental valley, Geister sees the story’s protagonist enter the human realm, rather than Wintherr’s own metaphysical world of ice.

“This mask cult of the ‘Tschäggättä’ always screamed black metal to me,” he continues. “I carried this idea with me for over 20 years, and because I was curious if I would be able to create music that actually sounds like it could come from these ‘Tschäggättä,’ I at some point spontaneously started trying to manifest my vision. In my opinion it was successful, otherwise I wouldn’t have released it.”

Though this is the most recent public Paysage d’Hiver release, to Wintherr, it was completed long before Im Wald. “I wrote quite some music for this album on two evenings about 13 years ago, so basically I just took this old material and finally finished it,” he says.

“The first three songs are from

‘back then,’ and each other song has at least one riff also from ‘back then,’ except for ‘Anders’ and ‘Geischtr,’ which are both totally new.”

“After Im Wald I was in such a good flow,” he continues, “that I just felt like finally doing something with it. [Geister] was mastered in April 2020, Im Wald was mastered in September of 2019. So, Geister was finished well before Im Wald was even released.”

Wintherr closes with a plea: do not listen to this and compare it to other Paysage d’Hiver recordings. “[I]t will be compared to the other recordings, which doesn’t make much sense to me,” he explains, “because it stands out as something quite different compared to Im Wald, Winterkälte, or Das Tor, for instance.

Then again, Kerker also stands out as quite a peculiar album, and I see Geister much more in this tradition than the ‘typical’ Paysage d’Hiver sound.” —JON ROSENTHAL

GRAVE MIASMA

GRAVE MIASMA Extant U.K. death metal trio returns bearing a new classic

A

byss of wrathful deities, the sophomore album from London-based death metal now-three-piece Grave Miasma, comes after five years of relative silence, as well as a significant change in personnel. “We were dealt a heavy blow with our guitarist R—who’d been with us since the beginning in 2002—retiring from active band service,” writes D, who’s drummed for Grave Miasma since the beginning and before, back when the English extremists went by Goat Molestör. ¶ D explains how T, Grave Miasma’s bassist since 2016, subsequently “switched to lead guitar and recorded all bass parts.”

Meanwhile, R, who quit in 2019, nevertheless found himself at Orgone Studios, where his former band was recording once again with producer Jaime Gomez Arellano, “for one day,” D adds, “to lay down some charismatic guitar parts.” ¶ For D, T and Y (the latter being Grave Miasma’s vocalist, guitarist, sitarist, oudist and Hammond organist), moving forward as a trio meant perseverance and patience. What else could they do, considering what they were working on? According to Y, the other remaining original member since the early days, “The first ideas [for Abyss of Wrathful Deities] were recorded in 2016, which evolved into the closing track ‘Kingdoms Beyond Kailash.’

26 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

What we have recorded is our most dynamic and varied album yet, which is testament to the allconsuming contributions from all members, including R before his departure in 2019.”

Abyss of Wrathful Deities, Y goes on to explain, “is an allusion to the Tibetan Bardo Thodl text, which outlines Wrathful Deities as both protectors and destructors. The abyss signifies the intermediate Bardo states between death and rebirth, where these deities are encountered as visions. The fierce deities of death can be seen as allies, if one has engaged in this work.”

If you’ve seen the grisly and intensely awesome music video for “Rogyapa,” the second track and lead single from Abyss, you already have an idea of the forces driving Grave Miasma’s sophomore album.

“Music television was a primary source for escapism in the late ’80s through the late ’90s, for both Y and myself,” D remembers, “and with ‘Rogyapa,’ it felt like there was an opportunity to present the

band visually in this format for the first time,” In the video, the band’s “live” performance is juxtaposed alongside graphic footage of the Tibetan sky burial practice in action.

The ritualistic death metal energy works intoxicatingly well alongside the frenzied, swarming vultures and the unflinching ceremonial rites.

“The footage is publicly available, and was manipulated further by the Morbid Angle Productions lads,” Y notes. “It is certainly an aim to witness a ceremony in person someday!”

Lesser bands have come and gone in the lacuna between Grave Miasma’s last and latest releases, but Abyss of Wrathful Deities is finally upon us despite numerous setbacks, pandemic notwithstanding.

As ever, the genre-definers remain unfazed. “We neither expedited or delayed the recording and release of [Abyss],” D says, before adding hopefully, “but may it coincide with a renewed fervor in the worship of metal and death, amidst the wanton abandon of chaotic nights!” —DUTCH PEARCE

NOCTULE

NOCTULE

W

hen discussing musician and vocalist Serena Cherry’s musical works, her name and Svalbard are obviously inseparable, but her career as a black metal musician dates back even further. Having previously released three albums under a different moniker (and sharing the stage with the likes of Gallhammer and Nachtmystium), Cherry’s first passion still rings true over a decade later under the guise of a new solo outing, the Skyrim-inspired Noctule. ¶ “I’ve always wanted to go back to my black metal roots,” Cherry explains over Skype. “I think the DIY aspect of having one person write all the music is very ingrained in black metal.

That’s something which has always appealed to me, the fullon indulgence of being able to write everything myself.” ¶ The product of saving riffs not quite fit for the Svalbard sound over the years—and Cherry eventually teaching herself how to use recording programs like Logic—Noctule’s ferocious take on atmospheric black metal is steeped in the classics, but still modern and restless. ¶ “It was all very indulgent and nice to work with myself again,” she explains of her creative process.

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“In creating on my own, there is absolutely no compromise, and the freedom to explore whatever is in my head. It is freeing to do everything myself—it goes on tangents and unpredictable paths. I don’t want to sound the same or like one genre, I like to let things expand and take their own shape.”

Noctule itself is certainly not weighed down by its home genre, though. With progressive-minded songs like “Evenaar” punctuating the more blasting elements found on impending debut Wretched Abyss, Cherry’s vision is much more than her project’s base classification.

“I’ve described Noctule as a black metal project,” Cherry offers, “but there are songs which are a lot more progressive. It’s more than the sum of its parts.

“This album took just under a year to write,” she continues. “In terms of Svalbard, we only write when we jam together, which is

maybe once or twice a week. With Noctule, I was spending every day working on songs in the lockdown. I became fixated on developing these ideas. There are seven tracks on the album, and maybe 16 which didn’t make it.”

To place Cherry in the black metal sphere as of 2021 is difficult, especially given her outspoken political stance in Svalbard. “I always tend to disassociate a bit in black metal because you have the great epic bands and the sound and production I like, but [also] the politics, which I 100 percent disagree with,” she explains. “I don’t want to support or advocate any bands which have right-wing policies, and it is very unfortunate that great bands who create great music can be problematic.

It becomes a bit of a minefield.

Remove the politics altogether and have songs about dragons! [Laughs]” —JON ROSENTHAL

PHOTO BY JOHN ASHBY

Svalbard frontwoman rekindles black metal’s fire (but not its politics)

YAUTJA

YAUTJA

I

t’s long been established that healthy countercultures emerge from situations and places where conservatism has an oppressive lock on the mainstream. Examples are plentiful, and are particularly robust when extreme music is in the cultural minority. Even as society progresses, vocal segments fondly remember—and even battle for—the past. And while some grind away on the nation’s coasts with little opposition, others still find themselves on the receiving end of a conservative-clouded, religion-hued, red-state stinkeye. Luckily, there’s no buckling under the pressure for Birmingham, AL/ Nashville, TN trio Yautja, as regressive thought only makes their loud noise louder and noisier. ¶ “Fortunately, not every part of the states we live in are redneck enclaves,” notes bassist/vocalist Kayhan Vaziri. “The dark side of southern conservatism and backwards redneck thinking is awful, but is prevalent all over the U.S.; it’s just got a different filter depending where you go. I definitely get motivated and take inspiration from the underground art and music scenes in Birmingham. There’s definitely discouragement because of the scene’s size, which makes it harder to press on when there’s not enough return,

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but when people have to try a little harder and resources are a little scarcer, the end result is a little more special.”

Also contributing to the coruscating sludge/grind of second fulllength The Lurch were protracted writing sessions and multiple tours that provided the opportunity to road-test material before entering Electrical Audio in January 2020 to capture the fruits of their labor.

“It took about four years to fully write and realize this record,” reveals Vaziri. “And that wasn’t four years of strict dedication either; other musical projects ebbed and flowed, and Yautja and our other bands [guitarist Shibby Poole drums in Thirdface, drummer Tyler Coburn is also a member of Thou and Mutilation Rites] did a lot of touring.”

“The writing was pretty slow and steady at times,” interjects Poole, “and just plain slow at others. This was also the first record we completed after Kayhan moved back to

Birmingham, which slowed things down a good bit.”

“We definitely made it a point to be organized and prepared for the recording,” Vaziri picks up, “because we were using all the band money we had at the time—and some of our own!”

“I think Yautja has remained an extremely crucial outlet and endeavor for all of us,” interjects Coburn, summing up the present state of Yautja’s union. “Even with Kayhan in Birmingham and Shibby and I in Nashville and other bands, we still make time to keep this thing alive. Yautja still feels like the most personal project I’m involved in, and the one I put the most of myself into—which is likely why it’s taken this long to finish this record. We never want to sacrifice the creative quality and honesty of our music for the sake of ease or convenience. As much of a slog as it might have been to finish this record and keep this band going, it still feels very worth it.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY SCOTT EVANS

Southern noisemongers lurch forward with first new LP in seven years

Demon Hunter Songs Of Death And Resurrection AVAILABLE NOW

AVAILABLE NOW

OUT APRIL 30TH

CARNAL SAVAGERY

CARNAL SAVAGERY Swedish vets carry their OSDM lineage into the roaring ’20s

BY

now, there’s a pretty clear set of instructions for emulating the classic Swedish death metal sound that we all know and love—hell, if you have an HM-2 and some old At the Gates CDs lying around, you’re already halfway there—but if you’re a musician who actually lived through that early ’90s movement, simply picking up your guitar for a casual noodle session will likely suffice. Such is the case for Carnal Savagery’s drummer/songwriter Mikael Lindgren, who cut his death metal incisors with local favorites Cromlech in 1988 while many of his peers were writing music that would come to define an entire subgenre. ¶ “So much happened back then—it was an exciting time with all the demo tapes that were going around, like Grave, Entombed/Nihilist and many more,” remembers Lindgren. “Later, I got my hands on Death and Autopsy. I’ve always liked those bands the most, and that’s why we prefer to play the style that we do.

And it will never change.” ¶ Indeed, Carnal Savagery’s take on death metal has more in common with the abject filth that was 32 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

coming out of America at the time than Gothenburg’s more melodic leanings. On Fiendish, their second LP, the band plows through 12 tracks that combine Chuck Schuldiner’s fondness for mid-paced crushery (“Vermin,” “In Death I Thrive”) with the distinctly vicious timbre of fellow countrymen Bloodbath, Unleashed and Vomitory. Coming off of 2020’s Grotesque Macabre, Lindgren’s goals were simple: add more guitar variation and dial up the overall brutality, which he deftly accomplished by recruiting new shredder Mattias Björklund and tuning everything down to B, respectively.and to finally give the band the attention it deserved in general.”

Sonic upgrades aside, perhaps the most impressive feature of Fiendish is its markedly short gestation period. A mere 12 months separate the album from its predecessor,

which is especially notable considering it was written, rehearsed and recorded during a global pandemic that has disrupted the routines of bands far and wide.

Lindgren doesn’t see this as much of a feat, though—for him and his bandmates, staying occupied with an endless barrage of disgusting riffs is the name of the game.

“I started writing new material on the very first day that we came home from [recording Grotesque Macabre],” he remembers. “A few months later, I quit my job so I could play guitar all day instead.

In 10 months, I wrote more than 50 songs; then I chose the best 15 and worked on them some more. Actually, it’s the same thing now. We’re going back in the studio in May to record our third album, and I also have six songs ready for the fourth album. There’s no point in being lazy!” —MATT SOLIS

HORNDAL

HORNDAL

Swedish hardcore sludge quartet rightly refuses to make way for “progress”

IN

2017, tech giant google confirmed that they had purchased 109 hectares of land in Horndal, Sweden.

The quiet town of just over 1,000 residents had already been severely burned by big business in 1977, when a steel factory employing half the population closed, effectively inciting economic collapse. Four decades later, Google ominously began cutting down the forest—referred to as “felling” in corporate speak—prompting fears in the populace about exactly who might benefit from this burgeoning development. ¶ Brothers Henrik and Pontus Levahn were respectively born shortly before and after the closure of the steel mill. Their father Lars, a teacher, acted in a local play protesting the event. He was the “star” of the production, a bluntly allegorical Satan who came to destroy the mill. The storied death of their hometown left such a strong impression on the musicians that it eventually became the namesake and central theme of their band. ¶ “Our hearts are still in Horndal,” begins drummer Pontus, who spoke to Decibel from Stockholm, where he and his family currently reside. Pontus is on the cusp of his second parental leave after the birth of his daughter;

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his first resulted in the writing and recording of Horndal’s ferocious 2019 debut Remains. Released

by Prosthetic, the album strongly channels Swedish post-hardcore à la Breach (a band that Pontus unabashedly loves). Via this potent blend of hardcore, sludge and death metal, Horndal chronicle uniquely Swedish tales that are intimately understood and experienced by every nation on earth.

“It’s caused mixed emotions for people,” Pontus says of Google’s arrival, which prompted the concept of their impending second album, Lake Drinker. “Some think this will save us; some people are feeling like, ‘What will really happen?’”

He continues: “When we heard about their plan to put this pipeline to the lake, to use it for cooling water for the server… that’s the lake where we grew up swimming and fishing. That’s the water for the village. So, we just felt like the devil is back and he’s thirsty, hence the name Lake Drinker.”

The album features multiple guest contributions, most notably Horndal’s own residents, who came out in droves to protest Swedish Prime Minister Nils Olof Thorbjörn Fälldin following the closure of the steel mill. Anders “Buffalo” Eriksson is the subject of “Thor Bear,” a song about his experience that he narrates. During the protest, Eriksson was arrested and interrogated by the Swedish Security Police, who then revoked his passport for a full decade. The visceral anger surrounding these events is palatable throughout Lake Drinker, a thematically and sonically compelling work that has connected its members to their hometown like never before.

“Everyone there is really supportive in helping us,” enthuses Pontus. “I get the sense that it’s something for them to unite around. And I’m just so proud of that. In the end, this is a tribute to them, so it’s very important that they are behind us.” —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

PILLARS OF THE

A look back at the rogues’ gallery of columnists that have informed ’s personality over the years

BY ANDREW BONAZELLI

olumns are essential components of any foundation worth a damn. where I took drugs and reviewed records,” our

Be they deceptively plain or jaw-droppingly intricate, the most memorable appeal to—even challenge—our aesthetic sensibilities while still bearing weight. It’s no different in the magazine biz (insofar as such a “biz” exists in 2021). Between all those bitchin’ Hall of Fames, Flexi Discs and cover stories, Decibel has given you a smorgasbord of opinionated, inventive, perhaps even clinically insane columnists to adore or deplore. ¶ Not necessarily from the first issue, mind you, which paradoxically offered only the blink-and-you-missed-it Bring Me the Head of Iann Robinson (featuring musings from the turn-of-the-century MTV personality) and loooooong-running experimental back page staple South Pole Dispatch, courtesy of Mountain Goats mainman John Darnielle. The latter was a particularly bold move, establishing the magazine’s irreverence from the jump by giving a decidedly not extremely extreme musician carte blanche in prime real estate. It gels with editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian’s claim that he wasn’t looking to replicate anything from dB’s predecessors (despite great affection for Borivoj Krgin’s Firing Squad demo column in Metal Maniacs). “If anything,” Mudrian hints, “some of the earlier ideas were pilfered and reshaped from reading non-metal magazines.” (We can all breathe a retrospective sigh of relief that he wasn’t a Penthouse Forum subscriber.) ¶ Despite a few delightful installments of Ask Jeff Walker (we had to give him something to do while he was wandering Carcass Cuntry), it wasn’t until issue 7 (May 2005) that Decibel added another enduring fixture in the form of J. Bennett’s Cry Now, Cry Later. The eventual Ides of Gemini axeman channeled—and decapitated—the gonzo spirit of Hunter S. Thompson with a “steady stream of fantasy headaches, ill-informed hot takes and drug-induced non-sequiturs.” And yes, he means the latter literally. “The weirdest part is that while I was doing Cry Now, another magazine had me write a column 36 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

man remembers. “Little did they know I usually did that anyway. The short answer, though? I was fucked up the entire time.”

Given the small page count commensurate with many fledgling periodicals, dB’s early columns were rarely more than a half-page, including Psyopus madman Chris Arp’s axe tutorial Dr. Opus, PhD and day-one contributor Kevin Stewart-Panko’s Frankensteinian mixtape compendium Will Consider Trades (KSP would eventually find a permanent home in the reviews section with his creatively-themed demo column Throw Me a Frickin’ Bone, alongside Shane Mehling’s wryly caustic vinyl breakdown Needle Exchange.) Bearing these baby steps in mind, it should be no surprise it took us over two years to even launch a tour diary. Luckily, we found a hilarious and fearless (occasionally to his own detriment) field reporter in the form of then-Genghis Tron frontman Mookie Singerman, who documented his band’s misadventures in Smile, You’re Traveling.

“One of my final columns was about my mom finding a video on YouTube where I drunkenly said onstage that she gave great head,” Singerman remembers. “I went to great lengths to apologize and repair our relationship, which I documented in the column—but telling the story again in a national publication kind of defeated the purpose and pissed her off all over

again. Come to think of it, I shouldn’t be talking about any of this. Fuck.”

When Genghis Tron tours slowed down and SYT naturally followed suit, we filled the void longterm with not only a living legend’s quasi-tour diary (“life in a van [that] obviously ... evolved into something closer to therapy,” Brutal Truth frontman Kevin Sharp muses of Grinding It Out), but Adem Tepedelen’s (coincidentally) nominally related Brewtal Truth, our only column to date to metastasize into an honest-to-goodness book: 2013’s Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers: An AllExcess Pass to Brewing’s Outer Limits. Trappist’s Chris Dodge would pick up the boozy slack with his stillactive “beer tourism”-centric No Corporate Beer, and you should eventually flip backward a few pages to read his exchange with predecessor Tepedelen.

At this point, the floodgates were wide open for more “lifestyle” content (with an eye on not devolving into GQ: Corpsepaint). Repulsion guitarist Matt Olivo cleverly referenced his band’s 1989 classic Horrified with monthly guitar/bass/ amps breakdown Gearified, which would have “branch[ed] out into recording/mix hardware and software, as well as synthesizers. Had that happened, I may have lost a few readers… or gained some. Who knows?”

And then there were staffers Etan Rosenbloom and Anthony Bartkewicz. Thanks to his day job in the marketing department at ASCAP, the former conceived Killing Is My Business, offering an insider’s invaluable business advice to metal

musicians. (“Coming up with a conceit each month was no problem. Distilling huge topics like music publishing, sync licensing, corporate branding, mechanical royalties, etc., into a 500word piece for music biz greenhorns was the hard part”), and the latter delivered astute parenting council via Spawn of Decibel. (Interestingly, Justin Norton would take the opposite tack, founding the as-cute-as-this-magazine-will-everget Metal Muthas in 2010, graciously ceding the reins to yours truly a few years ago.)

Bartkewicz also penned the irreverent back-ofbook Kvlt Status in 2007, focusing on “cult movies I thought would appeal to extreme metal fans aesthetically or thematically—a pretentious way to say movies with metalheads, Satanists, punks, annoying church types getting killed, etc.,” which (un)naturally paved the way for Richard Christy’s Horrorscope. The former Death drummer/ current Howard Stern Show personality gushed about his faaaaaaavorite horror flicks, impressing cult horror host Svengoolie to the point where Christy was featured on the show’s “Cards and Letters” segment. (“I haven’t officially heard that the column has ended,” Christy laughs, “so fingers crossed that my Joe Bob Briggs Horrorscope will see the light of day.”)

None of the aforementioned have stirred shit as successfully as Low Culture, a monthly anything-goes airing of grievances from Krieg frontman Neill Jameson, whose blunt force candor draws polarized reactions on social

media. “There are definitely months [where] my depression and anxiety are more difficult to handle, but I have a few deep wells to drink from: nostalgia, an absurd life and scanning my Facebook feed for 10 minutes,” Jameson quips.

“I’m under no illusion that I have at least a thousand people who follow me because they despise me and want to be there when I trip up, but those are the ones that make what I do a lot easier, so hails, I guess.”

Funny (well, “funny”) that Jameson mentions the effects of depression and anxiety. This abbreviated history begs the question of what’s left for a Decibel op-ed to tackle that hasn’t been tackled, ground into the turf and curb-stomped over the first 200 installments. The answer makes sense given the magazine’s unyielding emphasis on evolution and topicality. “I’d like to talk about mental health a bit more in the magazine,” Mudrian confirms. “It’s definitely something that the pandemic has drawn into sharper focus for me. Or maybe I just don’t wanna spend my own money on a therapist.”

:N DED C IEBCEI B L E: LJ U JU E N2E0 2210 2: 13 7: 3 7

’s talented cast of illustrators, designers and art directors look back on 200 issues and one backwards “e”

W

BY CHRIS DICK

hether it’s German periodical Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen (1663) Mosh Inc.’s Pit Magazine, and (where available,

or Edward Cave’s The Gentleman’s Magazine (1731), the magazine (arguably derived from the Arabic word “makhazin”) has—indeed, like books—appealed to at least two (or three, if hunger strikes) of our extremely extreme senses. To this very digital day, the unholy alchemy of ink and paper (and then decay) continues to rivet our olfactory organs, while covers and guts are fireworks to our primeval somatosensory system. Be they ancient or just-arrived-in-the-mailbox, magazines were/are windows into other worlds. There’s a reason great-grandmothers magpied Reader’s Digest or you (fearless reader) still possess and order by issue number near-mint copies of Metal Forces. There’s a reason you’ve been reading Decibel since we christened printdom’s supercilious halls with our inaugural issue—featuring whippersnappers the Dillinger Escape Plan—in October 2004. And that reason is: editorial. (OK, design is a very close second.) ¶ When Decibel fell out of the burial vault, there were 7,188 magazines in print in the U.S., according to Statista. There were maybe three to four competitors, one of which happened to be British. Sterling Publishing’s beloved Metal Maniacs, Future’s perpetually trolled (anyone remember our “Hottest Doodz in Metal” exposé in No. 18?) Revolver, 38 : J AU PN RE I L 22002211 : : DDEECCI IBBEELL

and for princely sums) Dark Arts Ltd.’s Terrorizer all vied for the watchful eye and faithful dollar of literate heshers. Decibel immediately set itself apart from the wolfpack by fusing contemporary magazine design with the dried blood of a rusty blade. From issue No. 1 through issue No. 199, the magazine’s visual aesthetic—from the proshot covers and use of outside illustrators to the expert binding/finishing and superb handling of body copy—has served as the key differentiator.

“I wasn’t a metal guy,” former art director Jamie Leary (2004 to 2013) says. “My brother was a metal guy, so I understood that. That wasn’t my music, though. I’m a magazine guy. I like magazines that are professional. I’m a reader and I like a good reading experience. A lot of the metal magazines at the time—Revolver was a totally different beast, in all fairness—were underground or had this underground aesthetic. That was kind of corny and not very well-designed.

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y B R U N O G U E R R E I R O

So, I thought there was an opening for a more sophisticated take that the readers deserved. The journalism was great, so I wanted to make sure the readers could actually read it.”

“The design was better than anything else that I can remember,” agrees longtime Decibel contributing artist Mark Rudolph, who has illustrated the lead review since issue No. 52 (February 2009), and has five custom-illustrated covers under his bullet belt. “No other magazine was doing editorial on Paradise Lost’s Gothic [No. 8, June 2005] that was professional-looking. There was Terrorizer, but in the States, no question Decibel had a visual edge over everything. When Bruno [Guerreiro] started illustrating and doing custom typography, I think the magazine was going way beyond any of its competitors. That’s when the attitude of the magazine took shape.”

Indeed, as Guerreiro ascended to art director in 2013, the interior style slowly morphed from Leary’s orderly, business-forward approach to an ornamented, hand-crafted look/feel whose smoky tendrils still permeate today. The illustrations (J. Bennett’s hilarious Cry Now, Cry Later column), hand-authored fonts (notable in issue No. 77, March 2011), hand-drawn eyebrows and cool cover treatments (check out issue No. 129, July 2015) added art-conscious fangs to the Decibel brand.

“I’m coming from a background that is very hands-on, very collage-y and illustration-heavy,” says Guerreiro, who served as art director through the spring of 2016. “So, that aspect of design was already part of my repertoire coming in. I think I added balance to Jamie, but I also learned so much from him. He’s very detailed— the way he organizes information, hierarchies [and] clean treatment of text is top-notch. But I think I added my stamp with the illustrations and the hand-lettering, which are still being used for the profile and review headers. Trust in the photographers was a major design factor.

[Jonathan] Pushnik, Ester [Segarra] and Jimmy Hubbard never really required much direction.

They were always knocking shit out of the park.

The other artists added a lot, too. Chuck [BB], Ed [Luce] and Mark have consistently delivered for a very long time.”

“I dig that the strip is roughly in the same spot every issue,” says illustrator Chuck BB, whose comic strip Stone Cold Lazy has run for almost 13 years. “There’s not a lot of comics in metal, so

I THOUGHT THERE WAS AN OPENING FOR A MORE SOPHISTICATED TAKE THAT THE READERS DESERVED. THE JOURNALISM WAS GREAT, SO I WANTED TO MAKE SURE THE READERS

COULD ACTUALLY READ IT. J A M I E L E A R Y, FORMER ART DIRECTOR

that aspect of it really stands out. It’s an aesthetic I like. I am a reader. I am a big metalhead, but I also don’t want things to be too grim. I like that the strip gives Decibel a bit of humor.”

Decibel’s earliest incarnations featured a heavily stylized logo with a reverse “e.” That nameplate would last for 24 issues before the reverse “e” was de-nü-metalized and then redesigned (No. 33, July 2007) entirely into the blocky sans-serif

logo that continues to gaze monumentally off newsstands. The inside content, however, also ebbed and flowed throughout Decibel’s 17-year, 200 fucking issue history. Pieces like Paul Romano’s Visual Aggression, the hilarious illustrations to J. Bennett’s Cry Now, Cry Later column, Stone Cold Lazy, Ed Luce’s impressive time rendering the back page with South Pole Dispatch, Double Negative and currently Damage Ink have played a crucial part in the connective tissue we call culture.

“I come from a comic book world,” says cartoonist Luce, who first appeared in an artist spotlight in issue No. 82 (August 2011). “So, I’m familiar with the line that Decibel draws between fine design and the hand-made zine scene. The quality of line and the grunge filter aesthetic that I put over all my colors for all my illustrations in Decibel is unique to the magazine.

Certainly, the graphic design of band logos is also reflected in a lot of the work I do. I’m trying to be a mirror to what the music sounds like.”

“I like to skirt the line from time to time as a designer,” expresses Michael Wohlberg, art director since 2016. “While I want Decibel to look professional and be taken as a legitimate publication, I also want to have fun with it. I like to incorporate text with image. Having figures interacting with letters, as if they exist in the same space. Sometimes that means obscuring a thing here or there. I don’t really look at other magazines. I’m less interested in trying to keep up with the Joneses. I’m given this set of raw ingredients—of text and images—and I’m told to make them look pretty. As for what’s next, I take it issue by issue. If I had a five-year plan for what I wanted to do with the design, I’d be playing the fucking lottery.”

TOP 5 TOP 5 DECIBEL SECRETS ALBERT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW, CUTE ACCESSORIES

BY MIKE WOHLBERG TO PAIR WITH YOUR 1. Albert hasn’t listened 3. The only reason MORTICIAN SWEATPANTS, to Babymetal yet John Darnielle stayed

TOP 5 DECIBEL COVERS WHERE SOMEONE’S HOLDING SOMETHING,

2.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

because he’s too busy listening to “WAP” Decibel started as an indie rock magazine until we listened to one Entombed record and wanted to try some low, lazy writing

as long as he did was because he was paid in Magic: the Gathering cards 4. Interns are hazed by being put in charge of answering Decibel’s Facebook messages (none have survived) 5. Chris Dick learned how to speak Swedish from The Muppet Show

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Ugg boots smeared with dog shit Br00tal peek-a-boo crop top Chunky statement jewelry assembled from human teeth Pink Yankees hat from Alyssa Milano collection, worn backwards Digital watch set to breakdown o’clock

BY SHANE MEHLING

September 2019, Batushka (a skull) July 2017, Integrity (a skull) August 2019, Abbath (a skull) December 2014, Machine Head (no fucking clue; a chunk of meteorite or something?)

February 2011, Electric Wizard (a skull)

TOP 5 QUESTIONS/COMMENTS YOU FELT COMPELLED TO SHARE WITH ME AT THE dB MDF BOOTH,

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

1. “Do you have any bags?”

2. “I only read the magazine for the Hall of Fame.”

3. “Do you have any shirts with serial killers on them?”

4. “What band is playing right now?”

5. “Do you know anyone that has bags?”

DDEECCI IBBEELL : : AJPURNI E L 2021 : 39

interview by

QA j. bennett

WI T H

JEFF WALKER

CARCASS’s frontman on lockdown, the death of L-G Petrov and the band’s new album

40 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

W

hen we ring Jeff Walker at his home in Liverpool, his enthusi-

asm for speaking with us is palpable. “I’ve just finished watching M*A*S*H,” he says. “I thought I’d have an hour free to talk, but there’s more good stuff on. I guess I’ll have to record it.” ¶ Of course, this is what makes Carcass’s frontman so entertaining. That, and his unflinching realism in the face of overly optimistic planning—like, for instance, the band’s upcoming Euro tour with Behemoth, Arch Enemy and Unto Others, scheduled to kick off in late September.

“I don’t see it happening,” he says. “I know I’m pessimistic at the best of times, but I’m not pessimistic for the sake of it. I just count myself a realist.

And just looking at the facts, Europe is far behind on vaccinations.” ¶ One bright light at the end of the tunnel is that Carcass’s long-awaited new album, Torn Arteries, should be out in the fall. At least that’s the plan. For now. OK, well, one thing’s for sure, anyway: Decibel’s 200th issue has arrived. “Decibel has definitely put our stock above its value in the U.S.,” Walker says. “Albert has made us seem a much more potent force in metal than we were. I mean, nobody gave a shit about us back in the ’90s, so it’s nice that he cares. But I’m still butthurt that we’re not his favorite band!”

How have you been keeping yourself busy during lockdown?

You get to be my age and there’s not enough hours in the day. I’m 52 this month, so I’m an expert at puttering around doing fuck-all. I’m doing a lot more walking. I got my cycle out and I’ve been cycling about a bit, exploring the area I live in a lot more. But nothing artistic, let’s put it that way. Besides me feeling like I’m in proper semiretirement now, it actually feels like a good break.

If this hadn’t happened, we would’ve just continued on playing and then an album would’ve come out. So, it’s nice to actually have a proper break. I mean, I’ve had vacations over the last few years, but I still had to do band shit. This is a complete break, so in some ways it’s very positive.

How so?

Some bands will just go on tour forever and not even think twice about why they’re doing it.

They’re almost conditioned. Some musicians I know are bouncing off the walls at the moment because they’re not used to being at home. And if they’re married with kids… [Laughs] I’m lucky because I don’t have any of those attachments.

The new Carcass album has been done for a while, though, so that aspect of lockdown must be frustrating.

Oh, I’m so over that. [Laughs] We’ll have to do another album just to get some positivity back.

But yeah, obviously it’s in the can, and pretty soon we’ll have to put a brave face on and promote it.

Was there any conversation about putting the album out last year, even if you couldn’t tour?

It’s given me a chance to recharge me batteries and build up some enthusiasm again. Because otherwise we’d just be going through the motions and doing the same shit that we’ve done before. When the last album dropped, we did a lot of touring and went to places we’d never been to. Even with the Carcass reunion, we supported bands like Iron Maiden and did things we’d never done. But all those options kinda dried up, so fulfilling any ambitions went out the window in a way, and it’s business as usual. So, I’d like to get more of that fire up my backside and do stuff we’ve never done before. Otherwise, I question why I’m doing it.

We’ve not had that conversation because at the end of the day it’s down to the label. When the shit hit the fan last March, I thought—based on my experience with SARS and things like that— that it’d be a couple of months and it would all blow over. I didn’t think we’d be sat here a year later discussing it. So, we never had the conversation, but we want to tour to support it. Otherwise, you end up with kind of a lost album. I think there’s been a lot of those over the last year. But I think at the moment we’re looking at September.

Does that happen often?

Yeah, it’s true. I think it was just him hitting pots and pans. [Laughs] Like anyone who’s 14 or 15 and doesn’t have a band, he did a one-man project. But I’ll be honest: I’ve never heard it. I can only imagine that it’s white noise. [Laughs]

Well, I’m not one of these people that see I’m in an industry as such. I appreciate that I’m making money from it, but I hate when people talk about it in terms of “the music industry.”

P H O T O B Y L E VA N T K

I understand that the album’s title, Torn Arteries, was the name of an old project of [original Carcass drummer] Ken [Owen]’s.

You’ve really gone out of your way to keep Ken involved with Carcass over the years, which is something I greatly admire. But I can’t shake the feeling that many people in your position would not do the same.

But it’s also laziness. That album title is a compromise in a way, because I had my own ideas about what the album title should’ve been.

But this band I’m in is a supposed democracy.

[Laughs] But I thought Torn Arteries was a title that [Carcass guitarist] Bill [Steer] could really get behind because it comes from Ken. So, that’s one of the reasons. But it’s also a kind of Lovecraftian universe that Carcass exists in. We’re kind of trapped, for want of a better word, because everything has to be within certain… restrictions that Carcass has—the tuning, what we sing about, that kind of thing.

You could argue we’re being lazy by never stepping outside those boundaries, but I think it’s what makes Carcass cool. The title is a bookend to the beginning of the band, and we’ve always had these self-references.

I’m not just talking about the album title, though. When Carcass first got back together and Ken couldn’t play drums because of the stroke he’d suffered, you brought him on tour and made a point of talking about him in interviews.

He was a large part of the band, and I would argue that he was one of the major influences on Carcass’s sound in the beginning—even more than Bill, though he’s a guitar player. As far as taking him out with us or giving him money, what else could we do? It’s not his fault he can no longer play. So, I guess I was putting myself in the same position: How would I feel? Would I be bitter? Would I want to be included? After all, it was his band as much as mine or Bill’s. It was only fair to include him.

How’s Ken doing these days?

I think he’s fine, but I’ve not seen him for a long time. I received a text off him last night, which I found kind of moving. He was telling me about L-G [Petrov], and he didn’t know that I already knew. I was going to tell Ken about L-G myself, but I was kind of sensitive about it because obviously Ken had been at death’s door once, so I wouldn’t know how he would take it. We go back with Entombed to when we were kids—18, 19, you know? That’s part of our lives. It’s not like we were best mates or anything, but I’m used to seeing L-G all the time over the years.

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

I didn’t need a world pandemic to want people to stay two meters away from me.

How are you taking it? We were supposed to talk last night, but when the news arrived that L-G passed, we rescheduled for today.

It’s pretty shitty. Obviously, when he said he had incurable cancer, you knew his time was limited. I only wished him happy birthday last month, and now he’s gone. I didn’t realize he was so much younger as well. This would be more acceptable if he was 70 or something, you know? The problem with getting old is that you still think you’re a fucking teenager. Or maybe it depends how immature you are. I’m a child stuck in an old man’s body. 52 doesn’t really feel like what I thought a 52-year-old looked like when I was 18, if that makes sense.

I can remember being 12 and one of the guys I was hanging around with was turning 18—and I was thinking, “Jesus, that’s old.” [Laughs] But time and distance are the same. That’s why I was telling you last night that it kind of hit me. A friend texted me yesterday that he’d died. It was only later, when I was reading what people wrote online, that I started to reminisce. Because I don’t spend a lot of time looking back.

Do you remember meeting L-G for the first time?

No, but I remember when it would’ve been

because the first tour we ever did was Sweden and the first gig was Stockholm, and Entombed were playing. Dismember and Carnage might’ve played, too. But I’ve got more concrete memories of when Entombed came to the U.K. and we toured together. We spent a lot of time with Entombed during the summer of 1990. It was a great time to be alive. That was the same year we went to the States for the first time and toured with Death as well. In a way, L-G dying is a part of your life dying. I’ve known him for like 31 or 32 years. It’s really sad, but it makes you wonder if you’re being sad for yourself as well. Which is a horrible thing to say.

It’s true, though. I think part of mourning is for the part of our own life that dies with the deceased.

When we were doing the album, I was in touch with L-G. We were gonna hook up and go for a drink, but it never panned out. At the time, you think, “Oh well, I’ll see him on tour next summer.” But now, in his death, there’s a kind of guilt. You feel so shitty. It’s the same thing with Chuck Schuldiner. The last Death gig I went to, I remember Gene Hoglan saying, “He’s on the bus—do you want to say hi?” And I thought,

TOP 5 YIDDISH METAL BANDS,

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

42 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

Meshuggah Mishpocheh Shmendrik Verklempt Tokhes

“No, I don’t want to hassle him before a gig.”

Because you don’t think people are gonna die— you think you’re always gonna have a chance to see them. I’m not telling people to hug everyone you know because it might be the last time, but when these things happen, there’s a kind of guilt. But again—is it narcissism? These people are dead. They’re not mulling over it.

Let’s end on a positive note: You’ve made it through a year of the pandemic, and you’re due to be vaccinated shortly before this issue comes out. How are you feeling about that?

Maybe I’m going to regret saying this, but I’ve come to the conclusion that you’ve got to be pretty reckless to catch it at the moment. By that I mean not washing your hands or avoiding people as much as you can. Obviously, some people don’t have the luxury because of their jobs, so they’re not being reckless, but someone like me would almost have to go out of their way to get it. You’d have to let someone breathe in your face or not be practicing hygiene. But I didn’t need a world pandemic to want people to stay two meters away from me. I’ve been practicing social distancing all my life, so for me it’s a godsend.

TOP 5 TOP 5s FROM ISSUE NO. 100,

BY SHANE MEHLING

1. Albert Mudrian: Top 5 “I’m Taking a Dump” Faces on Decibel’s Cover 2. Anonymous: Top 5 Least Worst Artists Currently Signed to Roadrunner

 PHOTO BY ESTER SEGARR A

3.

4.

5.

Nick Green: Top 5 Bands That Need More Billy Milano Jeff Walker: Top 5 Most Commonly Used Emoticons Andrew Bonazelli: Top 5 Top Fives

TOP 5 ALBUMS SINCE ISSUE NO. 100

1. Carcass, Surgical Steel 2. Khemmis, Hunted 3. Deafheaven, Sunbather 4. Power Trip, Nightmare Logic 5. Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race

PHOTO BY HANNAH VERBEUREN

Let the metal (and blood) flow  Walker (center l) along with the rest of Carcass patiently await the release of their latest symphony

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

story by

kevin stewart-panko

Weapon of Mass Destruction the making of Lamb of God’s Ashes of the Wake

IN

the decade before the release of Ashes of the Wake, Lamb of God experienced only slow-burning for-

ward momentum. Beginning life as Burn the Priest, they were DIY personified, using scrounged-up connections and resources to play whatever living room, basement, squat, garage or hole in the wall that would host them (providing their ramshackle van would actually make it to their destination).

Following the cobbling together of their self-produced, self-titled debut, they flipped their moniker, inked a deal with Prosthetic and found fortunes nudging skyward: two widely released LOG LPs, including the Devin Townsend-produced As the Palaces Burn, and discovery by more fans via proper gigs at proper venues. But it was the 15 months following Palaces’ release that saw the most significant shift in the band’s history.

At the dawn of Decibel in 2004, the spotlight was shining on the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, and Lamb of God—alongside their cohorts in Shadows Fall, God Forbid and Killswitch Engage—found themselves with bigger profiles, courting the next phase of their careers. Sensing a rare opportunity, the Richmond-based quintet curtailed Palaces’ promotional cycle to juggle label attention and tap into the creative well, with the goal of delivering their major label debut. Undoubtedly, the flurry of activity agreed with Lamb of God. Ashes of the Wake is the sound of the underground clashing with the mainstream; maturity and experience battle with bluster and scrappiness, and both sides claim victory.

Enlisting the production talents of Gene “Machine” Freeman—though keeping the fader-slider on a short leash—and pointing an acerbic finger at personal demons, social dystopia, Gulf War II and the string-pulling politicos, Ashes rode the gritty groove and visceral power of “Laid to Rest,” “Hourglass,” “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For,” “What I’ve Become” and “Remorse Is for the Dead” to unexpected heights.

With the power of Epic behind it, Ashes was the first Lamb of God album to crash the DBHOF198 Billboard charts. First-week sales clocked in at 35,000 copies, as the record ultimately became the band’s biggest seller, eventually going gold in 2016. Lamb of God also graduated from dingy clubs to the top of the bill on outdoor festivals, playing arenas and shaking theater foundations around the world, and they haven’t looked back.

Ashes is Lamb of God’s most significant pivot point. It was the album where they Ashes of the Wake made the biggest leap in terms of understanding what goes on in boardrooms and EPIC behind the mixing board. It also saw them take the life-altering plunge into the AUGUS T 31, 2004 world of being full-time, professional musicians. Nothing would be the same, and for all the indelible changes it made in the lives of vocalist Randy Blythe, guitarSee who gives a fuck. Us! ists Willie Adler and Mark Morton, bassist John Campbell and then-drummer Chris Adler—as well as the enduring imprint it’s made in the name of American metal— we welcome Ashes of the Wake to our hallowed Hall.

DECIBEL : 45 : JUNE 2021

PHOTO BY GREG WATERMANN

LAMB OF GOD

DBHOF198

Ashes of the Wake is seen as a transitional record for many reasons, primarily because it was your first major label record. In the lead-up to the album, what was it like with Epic sniffing around?

It was really exciting. You have to remember that none of us got into this to make a name for ourselves or take the music anywhere.

We just enjoyed hanging out, making music and drinking beer. When the New Wave of American Heavy Metal scene took off, all of a sudden the majors were interested and picking bands, and we got picked by Epic. The thing I held on to in the back of my youthfully aggressive mind was that they weren’t going to tell me what kind of riffs I can write. This was our thing, and if they wanted a part of it, this is what they were going to get.

JOHN CAMPBELL: It was cool, it was insane, it was great! Talking to a major label was completely unexpected and we were unprepared, but it was incredibly exciting. We were definitely hungry and wanted to make the most out of the opportunity before the label realized they made a terrible mistake. [Laughs] RANDY BLYTHE: For me, it was a very uneasy time.

I was really nervous because I come from the punk rock scene, and “major label” is a bad word.

Back then, you’d read essays by Steve Albini in magazines that were nothing but horror stories about how signing to a major would destroy you.

Bands signing to majors caught a lot of backlash in the underground; even when Green Day left Lookout! Records, you’d see people modifying bumper stickers from “Green Day” to “Green Pay Day.” We got assurances from Epic that they weren’t going to mess with our creative process, and unbelievably, that has stayed true to this day.

CHRIS ADLER: I don’t think Palaces had been out for six months by the time the Epic deal was done, and that period of time was insane because we were trying to tour the record. Both us and Prosthetic thought Palaces’ first-week sales were amazing, and it was enough to get the attention WILLIE ADLER:

LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

of Epic and Roadrunner. We didn’t have a manager at the time, so myself and our lawyer, Jeff Cohen, acted as a team to “manage” the band. The transition part that was difficult was managing that bidding war and pretending we knew what we were doing while trying to tour. There was also the thought that as soon as we signed, Epic wasn’t going to want to wait around for a record, and we had really killed ourselves on Palaces. As much as we enjoyed being creative together, that tank of gas was more than empty. Having all that going on at once was tough.

So, there was a bidding war! Did you score many free dinners out of it?

We did get taken out for a few dinners, but we signed to Epic pretty early on. They came after us pretty hard and heavy. We played a showcase in New York and we went out with [label president] Polly Anthony, who has since passed, and she was ripping cigarettes at the table. It’s New York, you can’t smoke indoors and she’s like, “Fuck it!” and basically collected three $10,000 fines that night and didn’t give a shit. I think that meeting set us up. We were psyched, she was fucking cool, and then we met the A&R guy who signed Rage Against the Machine and Korn, and he was cool. It seemed like a really good fit off the bat.

CAMPBELL: We had Roadrunner and Epic kind of battling it out. We decided we were going to go with Epic, but use Roadrunner as leverage to get the best deal.

C. ADLER: We had labels and managers flying into Richmond to take us out to dinner, but it was always between Epic and Roadrunner. There’s an interesting story about that: The guy from Roadrunner who was hell-bent on signing us and really believed in us was a guy named Paul Conroy. As things were heating up, [then-Roadrunner A&R] Monte Conner was on the fence, but Paul got him to move some numbers around, and at the time it was going to be the biggest deal Roadrunner had done for a band in the U.S. We knew Roadrunner, and it seemed like the appropriate place for us to land, but in our own creative way, we went with Epic because they W. ADLER:

had people who believed in us, too. What really impressed me was when we let Paul know we were going with Epic, he was very disappointed, but also concerned for us. Within a few weeks, Paul left Roadrunner to manage us; that’s how much he believed in us, and he was our manager for several years after that.

Did having Epic in the background impact your approach to the album in any way?

It all happened really fast, and I remember feeling incredibly pressured creatively because there was such a short time between albums. In tracking Palaces with Devin Townsend, Willie and I learned to listen to our takes with scrutiny and aspire to a precision we hadn’t had before. There was a greater vetting of our ideas and we became a little more critical of ourselves. The feeling in the band was that we’ve got the spotlight, let’s do something with it. I remember thinking I didn’t know how long the major label thing was going to last, but I was going to enjoy it and use the opportunity. What you’re hearing is us being very genuine with where we were at.

BLYTHE: I looked as us signing with Epic in the same tradition as the Sex Pistols—we were going to get one over on the system. We were going to put out the record we wanted to put out, make zero concessions and they were going to drop us because we didn’t give them a radio hit or tone down our sound. Once we pulled the trigger, I was like, “Fuck it, let’s make this record and get dropped.” I don’t think my fears were unfounded; it just didn’t happen, and it worked out for us.

MARK MORTON:

What was it like writing a new album so soon after Palaces?

MORTON: I don’t recall there being anything left over after Palaces, and that was part of the pressure. I’d just wiped off the chalkboard and now I had to quickly fill it up again. But as long as you have people who can help vet your ideas and help focus you, there’s a freedom in trusting your artistry and letting go. Some of the energy on that album comes from the freeform

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DBHOF198

Did you end up doing anything differently with the writing process?

BLYTHE: The difference for me was it was the first time we were able to make a living off of this band. As someone who’d had a job of some sort since I was 12 years old, the thought of doing something that wasn’t guaranteed to pay my rent was very frightening. I knew working in a restaurant or doing roofing paid my rent; I didn’t know if being in a band could pay my rent. When we signed, we got an advance, and I was able to put something like $35,000 in my bank account after taxes and stuff. I’d never had that much money before in my life, and didn’t have to go to “work” anymore. That was a rough adjustment period and led to a lot of stupid

“It occurred to me that when we played [“Laid to Rest”] that I’d better not fuck it up because these people have probably listened to the song more times than I have.

Some of them had probably even played it more than I had on their plastic guitars.”

JO HN CA MPB E LL decisions because I didn’t know what to do with myself without the discipline of having to go to a straight gig, and I hadn’t yet taught myself the discipline needed to be a truly productive artist.

From what I remember, the writing process was the same. I didn’t think about deliberately writing about the war in the Gulf; that’s just what was happening and some of what was addressed. I remember we recorded at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond—at the old location—which was this massive sort of warehouse deal, and on the second floor there was a huge kitchen with 30-foot-tall floor-to-ceiling windows—and I would sit in there with the sun coming through and just write lyrics. For the first time, it felt like, “This is what I do now,” and I really started to settle down, concentrate and write.

W. ADLER: This was one of the last records where it was a free-for-all where I would write riffs JUNE 2021 : 4 8 : DECIBEL

and string them together. We were still young and inexperienced, and in a lot of ways it was good for that record. I didn’t know conventional songwriting or how a song is “supposed” to be structured. I look fondly on Ashes, thinking about how those songs were put together, “Hourglass” in particular. I don’t think there’s a repeating riff in that song, and that to me is super-cool. In a lot of ways, it’s really punk rock in that, “We’re supposed to do it this way? Fuck that—these riffs are all cool, and we’re going to string them together and create a six-minute song.”

How did you end up selecting Machine as producer?

When you work with a label and they’re throwing money around on an unproven band, such as we were at the time, I think they had to at least approve the producer. They may have thrown a bunch of names in the hat for

CAMPBELL:

PHOTO BY FRANK WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

creativity we were experiencing.

I say this all the time: I write plenty of shitty guitar riffs and bad songs, but I only let you guys hear the good ones. I was certainly grateful for the reason we had the quick turnaround, but the time frame had me feeling under the gun. It’s one thing to write music and release albums on independent metal labels, but jumping to Epic Records/Sony Music, I had no understanding what success and failure meant by their standards and analysis.

Ultimately, I figured I’d write what would come out and that’s what was going to happen.

C. ADLER: Palaces barely got done with the budget we had, so writing Ashes was full-on, eight-, 10-, sometimes 12-hour days, five or six days a week of us really going to town. It’s tough to be creative on the spot, but during the recording of Palaces we learned a lot about ourselves, our abilities, what worked and what didn’t. We learned about tempo maps and how to think about what we were writing as we were writing instead of, “Does this part make you want to punch someone in the face harder than the last part?” [Laughs] CAMPBELL: We didn’t have anything left over, but we were always working on stuff because that’s what we did five nights a week in the rehearsal space. We also had the fire under our asses of being signed to a major label, which validates the shit out of you. Plus, that gave us a pretty big megaphone and got us a lot of attention, so it was like, “Let’s show these motherfuckers what we do.”

LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

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DBHOF198

LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

What impact did Machine have on the recording process?

us to consider, and the suggestion of going with Machine had to do with him not being the normal dude with a metal pedigree. That intrigued us, and the label was familiar with who he was.

C. ADLER: Machine was a very off-the-beatenpath choice. He had done Clutch [and] a bunch of EDM stuff, and wasn’t your standard heavy metal producer. Mark and I went up to meet him in New York, and he came in wearing these funny clothes with a Dr. Seuss hat on, and we were really giving him a hard time—“What the hell do you know about metal?!” But he’s a very positive, energetic guy and we decided, even though there were other producers on the list—even Bob Rock was brought up—to make that weird decision in the same way we chose Epic over Roadrunner.

MORTON: We had never really had a proper producer, with all due respect to Devin. We didn’t change our songs all that much when we did Palaces. We didn’t really have the time and resources for him to put his total stamp on it—it was a really rushed project, even if it got the ball rolling for us. I would say that even after Ashes was done, we still hadn’t been properly produced. That’s no slight on Machine; we just didn’t allow it. When Machine had ideas and wanted to change stuff, we were so resistant because we are really insular. It’s so hard for us to agree on something, so for an outsider to come in and tell us to change our songs or process, it’s like, “Are you out of your mind?” We didn’t realize that was his job. The best way I can exemplify that is when we asked him to come back and produce [follow-up album] Sacrament, he said yes, but that we would have to let him produce us, not just be an engineer. And that’s why there’s a more dramatic change between Ashes and Sacrament; because it’s the sound of a producer producing a record.

C. ADLER: There were struggles during the process with Machine because he would have ideas and contributions and arrangement ideas, and we were very hesitant to take anybody else’s advice.

Therefore, there are only a handful of things he was able to creatively add to the record. One that definitely sticks out and clearly made a huge difference and turned our opinion of him around was “Now You’ve Got Something to Die For.” In its original format, the chorus part only happened once. By the time he got done with it, it repeated four or five times. He heard that, worked with Randy on the anthemic part he could see people screaming along with. Once that was figured out, why not try doing it more than once? The things Machine got on that record made it vastly more contagious than what it would have been.

BLYTHE: That first time working with Machine was one of the important moments of my career because it was the first time that I actually had my vocals produced. For the Burn the Priest album and the first Lamb of God album, I did the vocals in a day and a day and a half, respectively, and there was no time for production there. When we did Palaces, because of the schedule, I ended up tracking with my friend Dennis [Solomon] as engineer in the middle of the night. Sometimes the other guys would be there going, “Do this, do that,” and that drove me fucking insane, but no one had ever produced my vocals. I loved that Machine told everyone else to get out and leave me alone so we could work and have time allocated to myself.

It was very jarring at first. I’ll never forget the first take I did with Machine. I got about halfway through, and he got up and threw a chair across the room. I was like, “What the fuck? Is he mad or something?” He just looked at me and was like, “Fuck yeah!” It was there I thought, “OK, this dude is out of his mind,” but it got me hyped up because he was paying attention to what I was doing, taking it in, thinking

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about it, giving suggestions and helping me do the best that I could. Before that, I was just flying blind.

What do you remember about the reactions to Ashes upon its release?

MORTON: When it came out, we were already on Ozzfest, which was the benchmark for big metal tours at the time. We shot a video for “Laid to Rest,” and it was all part of a massive campaign that had us hitting into the mainstream. It felt like part of this big swell we were on.

BLYTHE: When the album came out, we were headlining the second stage on Ozzfest, and that was a big deal and a game-changer for us. We had our fan base, but a lot of people were hearing us for the first time. I’ve had countless fans tell me they saw us for the first time at Ozzfest ’04, that they had zero idea who we were and how we blew them away. When the album came out, I was so wrapped up in having a good time at heavy metal summer camp that I wasn’t really thinking too much about a record release. I’m sure I was happy it didn’t tank, but I was probably drinking and hanging out with Hatebreed.

In fact, I know I was drinking and hanging out with Hatebreed! [Laughs] CAMPBELL: I remember it being well-received and getting a lot of good reviews. The front half of that record was all massive hits that we’re still playing; it was a huge record for us. I did a little bit of looking back at stuff, and the album was called one of the “50 Best Guitar Albums of All Time” by some magazine and was receiving all these other accolades. It’s like, “Holy shit, we were fresh out of the box and people were saying that sort of stuff? Wow!” I probably wasn’t even aware of it while it was happening.

How much touring did you do in support of Ashes?

MORTON: After Ozzfest, we went to Europe in the fall, then we went out with Slipknot doing arenas in early 2005, and then Sounds of the Underground in the summer. Those were all really big, and I have to give a tip of the hat

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DBHOF198

to our booking agent and management for stringing together some good support and helping break the band at that level.

BLYTHE: We were main support to Slipknot, and that was another big one for us. We were playing indoor arenas for the first time, and that was awesome. I remember getting a call one day backstage at a show on the Slipknot tour.

I didn’t recognize the number, but I picked it up—I would never do that today—and there was a woman on the other end saying, “Randy, Bill wants to talk to you. Hold for Bill.” I’m thinking, “Bill who?” This voice comes on [adopts British accent] “’Ello, Randy! You know, I love the new record.” I’m like, “Who’s this?” “It’s Bill Ward, mate!” And I started walking around the backstage area with my hand over the phone, freaking out, going, “Holy fucking shit! Bill Ward is calling me and likes the new record!”

CAMPBELL: What I remember is that most of us were quitting our jobs as the band was starting to work for us for the first time. The touring seemed absolutely nonstop, as we needed to get out and push the record. In 2004, there were no families with children involved, so we didn’t really have any responsibilities at home and were anxious to be road warriors. It was a blur.

Some of my personal memories and friendships made during those tours were some of my favorites. Actually, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a massive Zoom call with everyone from Ozzfest. It was a big reunion with the dudes from Shadows Fall, Unearth, God Forbid, different techs and crew people, and it was so much fun just sitting back, having a beer and talking with everyone.

Overall, how were you finding yourselves adjusting to playing bigger shows on bigger stages to bigger crowds?

MORTON:

We were already pretty seasoned at that

point and doing well on an independent label.

We had low overhead and I was coming home from those tours with some money in my pocket.

It wasn’t like we were coming straight from the gutter to the gilded tour bus, but things were decent and getting better. It wasn’t like we had jumped into an ice bath, but you could feel the momentum picking up.

W. ADLER: I’m sure there were growing pains.

We had done festivals like Milwaukee Metalfest [and] the Syracuse Hellfest, and now were doing second stage on Ozzfest, which still felt tight, even if we were playing in front of 10,000 people in a parking lot. But it happened very organically; going from clubs to the second stage on

“Epic admitted later on that they didn’t really know why we were popular, so they let us do our thing and kept their hands off.”

Ozzfest wasn’t that big of a learning curve. What was, was the production, our presence and how we wanted to present the band. Being old-school metal dudes, the big wall of cabinets was always what we wanted to have. At the time, I was with Framus Guitars, and they also made cabinets; I asked for a bunch of dummy cabinets to fill the wall out, and they didn’t have any. They sent me all loaded cabinets, and I remember having to take the backs off and take out the speakers, which was pretty funny.

CAMPBELL: The adjustment was pretty smooth, but it was a long, slow process. The first time you walk into an arena and see how huge it is, it’s like, “Holy shit!” but the novelty wears off pretty

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quickly. You’re there for a reason and it becomes more like, “Give me the biggest motherfucker you got so we can show you what we do.” The louder the megaphone, the bigger the stage—that in a lot of ways is the energy of Lamb of God to me.

C. ADLER: The trajectory just kept going up and up and up, but it was still pretty organic. We were learning as we went along. We had also moved beyond hiring friends as our techs and getting into working with guys who did it for a living, and they were able to educate us on a lot of stuff as well. Ozzfest’s second stage sounds like a huge jump, but it was about the same size stage as a club—just a lot dustier. It wasn’t like we were getting into using fire-breathing dragons and that sort of thing. We followed more of a Slayer model for production, where less is more; throw a bunch of amps up there, and if there’s room for a backdrop, great, but otherwise we’ll just do what we do.

Many parts of Ashes address the war in the Middle East and displeasure with thenpresident Bush. Did you find yourself on the receiving end of negative reactions while touring other countries?

J O HN CA MPB E LL

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LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

BLYTHE: Dude, are you kidding me? In short, yes!

[Laughs] Everywhere we went, people were like, “Fuck George Bush.” There was one particular incident in Canada. I was outside of the venue in Montréal talking to fans, signing shit, and this one really drunk French-Canadian guy comes up to me [adopts French accent]: “The show was fantastic, but what about George Bush?” I’m like, “Obviously, if you’ve read any of our lyrics you’d know I didn’t vote for or support Bush and what’s going on.” He’s like, “Yes, but you live in America. How can George Bush do this?”

He was drunk, spit-spraying as he was talking and kept coming at me. I was like, “Dude, you gotta back off.” He got really aggressive and…

I didn’t punch him, but I put his ass down in front of everyone. But yeah, we got negative reactions everywhere.

W. ADLER: I remember some good moments as well. We did a few shows near where some

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DBHOF198

U.S. military were stationed overseas, and they would come out and thank us for doing what we do. We went to an Air Force base in Germany once, and they were super-stoked to have us there and we were super-stoked to be there.

C. ADLER: I don’t remember anything specific happening to me, but you could definitely start to feel the negativity towards Americans. Once in a while, you’d ask someone where a certain restaurant or the bathroom was, they’d realize you’re American and just walk away, but nothing really more than ever happened. We did learn that if we told people we were from Canada, we’d get treated a lot better. [Laughs] The album sold 35,000 copies in its first week, and to date has sold 500,000 and counting. I’m assuming those numbers were a surprise, but was it also surprising that the industry machine was working so smoothly in your favor?

MORTON: Well, yeah, but I was surprised the first time we made $100 selling merch. We used to get in the van and have everyone throw $20 on the dash for gas and beer, and it was a surprise when we stopped doing that. It was a surprise to me when we started getting hotels.

Every step along the way, we didn’t skip over a single rung of the ladder. There was no strategy and every step was always a welcome advance.

I don’t think we were paying as much attention to sales as the label and management were.

They were respectable numbers, but I don’t think anyone’s mind was boggled. Those would be real strong numbers now, but in 2004, that was like a top 30 record. It was a nice debut, but it wasn’t turning heads.

W. ADLER: Sure! Being a part of something, you tend to lose sight of what’s happening. At that time, there was a resurgence and new romance with metal, but those numbers were fucking

LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

huge. I’m sure that had a lot to do with Epic’s push and the fact that street teams were hugely popular at that point, and they had a massive street team and huge presence.

C. ADLER: It absolutely was a shock to us. I don’t think we really understood those numbers because we were always main support and would never headline. That grew the band enormously, being able to cherry-pick other band’s audiences, and there was no chance of those numbers going to our heads because we were always chasing the next band.

CAMPBELL: It was incredibly surprising, especially because we’d never intended for this to work. We took baby steps along the way because those were the steps provided, and somehow it worked out. I mean, the first pressing of Burn the Priest was 5,000 copies and we were worried, when we changed our name, about losing those 5,000 people. So, those numbers were mindblowing to us, but the fear was if it was going to be enough for a major label. I mean, Michael Jackson was on Epic; how were we going to compete with him? [Laughs] Epic admitted later on that they didn’t really know why we were popular, so they let us do our thing and kept their hands off. Plus, it was such a small investment in relation to their other artists, and the numbers worked out that we were profitable and a successful band.

Also, at the time, “Laid to Rest” turned up in the Guitar Hero II and Rock Band video games.

How did that happen?

MORTON: That was a management thing and nothing the band particularly put together. I was never a video game guy, so I wasn’t in tune with how big a deal it was. Everyone was playing Guitar Hero, and having a song on there was a level of visibility that was unparalleled.

W. ADLER: Guitar Hero was definitely a management thing, and we noticed a lot more awareness that we were around. A lot of people were coming out and telling us that Guitar Hero brought them to the shows.

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What’s interesting about it is that it was a huge, huge thing that made as much of a difference as signing to Epic. To be honest, we had absolutely nothing to do with it, and it was a surprise that we were even in there. I think we found out when we went to Australia and Rock Band had an office there and invited us over. What’s funny is that the game is re-recorded versions of the songs themselves. So, when you hear our track, it certainly sounds like Lamb of God, but it’s not us.

I don’t know if that’s a business model thing that gets them around licensing or out of paying royalties or whatever, but if you listen closely, you can tell it’s not the album track.

CAMPBELL: Once that game came out, a friend of mine who worked in a music store was telling me kids were coming in, picking up guitars and playing “Laid to Rest.” It definitely got us a lot of attention, and people really knew that song when we played it live. It occurred to me that when we played it that I’d better not fuck it up because these people have probably listened to the song more times than I have. Some of them had probably even played it more than I had on their plastic guitars. [Laughs] C. ADLER:

What are your thoughts about the legacy of Ashes, and is there anything you’d change or do differently?

MORTON: For me, Ashes is the beginning of a new chapter of the band and Palaces was more the transitional record. To me, Burn the Priest and New American Gospel is the same-sounding band, the same youthful spirit and naiveté. Palaces is transitional because it bridges the gap between the more polished stuff on Ashes and the early, muddy punk rock/metal. Ashes is the beginning of the Lamb of God that everyone knows now. I don’t know that I would change anything because if you change the direction of something 10 degrees, it’s liable to spin off somewhere you don’t know, and I love where we are now. There were a couple things about the sequencing I had issue with and got outvoted on, but it was a big moment in time.

I don’t know what there would be to change.

TOP 5 TOP 5 ’90s INDIE ROCK RECORDS METAL ARTISTS UPDATED NICK GREEN WISHES FOR THE INTERNET AGE,

BY NICK GREEN DECIBEL WOULD 1. Antifagama GREEN LIGHT FOR A 2. Tom G. HALL OF FAME, Keyboard Warrior

BY BLAKE HARRISON

1. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville 2. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville (platinum edition) 3. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville (with bonus tracks) 4. Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville (30th anniversary edition) 5. Lilith Fair, A Live Exile

3. Rwoke 4. Cancelable Corpse 5. Intersectional Arma

DBHOF198

BLYTHE: No, but I wouldn’t change anything about any of our records at their base. We had Palaces remixed and remastered, and I backed that because it was horrendoussounding, but I wouldn’t change a thing about Ashes.

Everything we’ve done and been through has led us to this point in our lives, and as I get older, I embrace that more and more. And there’s no reason to think about doing things different in the past because it’s impossible to change.

W. ADLER: I wouldn’t do anything different. I agree that that record was a transitional and very pivotal moment for us. It allowed us to be able to continue down the path we were going. It also aided my own education in songwriting, my ability and understanding in navigating music.

C. ADLER: There may be a couple albums in the catalogue that I would change a few things about, but I wouldn’t change anything about that one.

That was career-defining. As an artist, you’re going to be a little unsure putting anything out there, but we were very happy and proud with

LAMB OF GOD ashes of the wake

“I was like, ‘Fuck it, let’s make this record and get dropped.’

I don’t think my fears were unfounded; it just didn’t happen, and it worked out for us.”

what we had done, whether it worked or didn’t.

That was a really strong moment in time for the band. Up until then, I was still taking leave from a day job to tour, and that was the period where we were able to leave those jobs and say that this is going to be our career and our life.

CAMPBELL: We made tons of mistakes and took on some damage along the way, but I wouldn’t change a thing. We learned lessons from the

TOP 5 WAYS TO HEAR ABOUT NEW MUSIC BEFORE DECIBEL,

BY SHANE MEHLING

1. Mix tapes from your friend who at some point joined a militia 2. Mistakenly download a death metal song off LimeWire labeled “R_Zombie_Dragula_ Rare.mp3”

3.

4.

5.

Go to a show and get reviews of the opening bands you intentionally missed The T-shirts that kid wore on Home Improvement New music is for poseurs

JUNE 2021 : 5 6 : DECIBEL

mistakes and it’s got us to where we are, so going back to iron out details is not even worth considering. At the time, we were punk-ass kids from podunk Richmond on a major label touring the world—look out! That kind of excitement was amazing because the time felt right; it was a slow process and a fight, but it felt right because we were winning the fight.

TOP 5 POTENTIAL DECIBEL HALL OF FAMES THAT YOU CAN STOP ASKING ME ABOUT,

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

1. Faith No More, Angel Dust 2. Anything by Bolt Thrower 3. Cro-Mags, The Age of Quarrel 4. Most black metal records 5. Dark Angel, Darkness Descends

TOP 5 MENU ITEMS FROM THE GWARBAR KITCHEN,

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Beef Steak the Mighty Flautas Maximus Balsamic the Slaws of Death Omelettus Humungous Stirfrymenstra Salmon

PHOTO BY FRANK WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

RA NDY B LYT HE

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A TOAST TO HOPE Three decades into their reign,

AT THE GATES

give death metal fans reason for optimism with a concept record about pessimism STORY BY

PHOTOS BY

SEAN FRASIER ESTER SEGARRA D ECI B EL :

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: JUN 2021

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AT THE GATES

T hrough the gates the journey goes on And on…

T

“ A T T H E G A T E S ,” G A R D E N S O F G R I E F

heir band name implies a looming personal transition: At the Gates, but at the gates of what? Because this is extreme metal, crossing the threshold to an unnamed destination sounds ominous by default. But the world created by the Swedish death metal legends is not always a bleak, lightless purgatory.

Over the course of three decades, At the Gates have challenged death metal’s genre trappings.

Their early work boasted bold and youthful aspirations that dwarfed their technical prowess.

But the grandiosity blooming from 1991’s Gardens of Grief demo embodied the band’s barbaric yawp.

They announced themselves to a young genre by weaving philosophy and poetry into the barbed wire of their songs.

The Red in the Sky Is Ours is drenched in scarlet rebellion and lawless songwriting unbeholden to music theory. With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness carries the primal breath of those early recordings, but exhales them in a plume of menace and melancholy. Terminal Spirit Disease continued that impulse to repurpose solemnity as savagery. With a cleaner production and a guitar tone that could slice through steel, Terminal Spirit Disease was a gateway to the band’s landmark achievement.

With Slaughter of the Soul, the group envisioned their songs trimmed to their leanest and meanest state. Recording the album capped a sprint of productivity that resulted in four albums in as many years. Faced with fatigue and daunting 60 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

touring expectations, the band split before the record’s success could be appreciated. A quartercentury later, Slaughter of the Soul was celebrated on the cover of Decibel’s 1995 retrospective issue.

The album is viewed as a death metal classic and emblematic of the Gothenburg sound that effectively mutated the genre.

After a few false starts, the band’s long recording hiatus ended in 2014. At War With Reality was a successful comeback roar packed with magical realism and Anders Björler’s serrated riffs. When the guitarist departed following that record’s release, it was his bass-shredding twin brother Jonas who stepped into the role of primary songwriter. To Drink From the Night Itself was the band’s homage to old-school death metal, down to its murkier production.

As we crawl from the wreckage of a year chewed up by a pandemic, At the Gates have unveiled a concept record about pessimism. But The Nightmare of Being isn’t some glass-half-empty litany of complaints. With the sharpened pen of vocalist/lyricist Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, the themes profoundly explore the human experience and the curse of self-consciousness.

Meanwhile, lead songwriter Jonas Björler has pushed the boundaries of the band’s sound to invite even more disparate influences outside of death metal. Fans expecting Slaughter of the Soul 2.0 may have forgotten that At the Gates rarely look backward. They have always been focused on the next challenge—the next gateway.

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PURGATORY UNLEASHED

“You know, this is the first interview ever for the new record,” offers Lindberg.

It’s an enviable position for an interviewer: asking questions for the first time, before the subject is bombarded with the same queries for months at a time. This interview is a novelty for both of us. Lindberg has humored hundreds of interviews about Slaughter of the Soul’s legacy through the years.

But he doesn’t have polished responses prepared for this record yet. Just like the music within the album, he’s breaking new ground.

As At the Gates stand at the precipice of the album’s release, they face their own anxiety.

Lindberg leans back with an opened sweater revealing a Voivod shirt, reading glasses perched on his forehead. He reveals that I’m only the third person outside the band and label who has heard the record. Even three decades from the band’s formation, it’s natural to second-guess your artistry when the record leaves that insular bubble.

“It’s always that moment where you have to let go of the last master,” Lindberg says. “You have those sections you’re still toiling over and questioning. You can always change and edit forever, so it’s hard to let go.

“Although it’s nothing compared to when we were working on At War With Reality in total secrecy,” he adds. “That was weird. We just had maybe 10 people in the whole world aware we were writing at all, and [were] trying to keep our mouths shut. So, after that, this was easy.”

In May of 2020, At the Gates continued their impish appeals to curiosity and secrecy. They teased the title of the record with a hashtag, just as they had with To Drink From the Night Itself. They premiered the hashtag #hbomtb? before changing to #tnob a few months later.

More on that modification later.

AT THE GATES #tnob is an acronym for The Nightmare of Being, and it’s a title that probably articulates pandemic suffering for many people. Just like countless other music projects, At the Gates adjusted their writing process to match the unprecedented challenges of the past 14 months. But after the band relied more on remote communication for To Drink From the Night Itself, they were well-prepared for the reliance on emails—which Lindberg and Jonas Björler sent to each other five times or more a day for an entire year.

“The only thing we had to change this time around was not playing together as a band as much as we wanted to do,” Lindberg notes.

“Most other Swedish bands can [play together more], because travel here is easy. There are restrictions on how many people can be on a train or whatever, but it’s doable. But [drummer] Adrian [Erlandsson] lives in London, so that made it difficult because they’ve been hit even harder than us. We tried to get him over, but realized he would need to take five COVID tests, and only take direct flights, and quarantine himself each time.

“Last time around, we had a few weeks to just play the album all the way through, and we didn’t have that this time,” Lindberg continues. “But with the patience of [producer] Jens [Bogren], he knew we might not be able to nail it on the first take each time.”

After Bogren mixed and mastered At War With Reality, At the Gates pursued an old-school death metal sound on To Drink From the Night Itself.

They worked with friend and frequent Napalm Death collaborator Russ Russell to achieve that album’s sonic identity. For The Nightmare of Being, they worked with Bogren in an expanded capacity. The union was based on trust built during their previous mixing experience, requiring

little discussion. One thing was for sure: At the Gates didn’t want a superfan in charge of mixing their albums.

“I was probably the last person on the planet—besides my grandma—that heard At the Gates,” Bogren quips. “They were already long gone and buried when someone played me Slaughter of the Soul for the first time, probably as a mix reference for some other project. Knowing a band too well has never served me well, though; I prefer having an open mind.

“To give you an example,” he continues, “when At War With Reality was gonna happen, they sent out files for test mixing to a bunch of [engineers]. I was one of them, and I had absolutely the least experience with their music, and didn’t even cross-reference to Slaughter or any other album. But I still got the gig. It might have panned out differently if I would have been too stuck on how ATG should sound.

“That said, another time that strategy might not work,” Bogren laughs. “Now when I think about it, it was really fuckin’ stupid of me.”

When Lindberg and I discussed Slaughter of the Soul for this magazine’s 1995 retrospective, he mentioned the band’s focus on clinical precision. The onus fell on each of the musicians to deliver takes as close to technical perfection as possible. Nobody in the band faced a more excruciating studio experience than Erlandsson, who was constantly hydrating to combat the physical exertion behind the kit. The Nightmare of Being sessions weren’t exactly a sequel, but count Lindberg among those impressed with Bogren’s vision.

“Jens wanted to be in control of the drums,” Lindberg explains. “Being there for the recording of the drums, I understood why. I have never seen such meticulousness. The takes, sure. But also, the sound. We’d think it sounded great, but he’d say, ‘No, the bottom of the snare needs to be tightened a bit.’ Or, ‘No, please hit the cymbal a little more to the right.’ He was harsh on Adrian.

But I love that.”

TOP 5 SEAN FRASIER CONCERT INJURIES,

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

Torn meniscus in knee, completed six weeks of physical therapy before Eyehategod went on Stabbed 73 times

by Harley Flanagan at a Cro-Mags show, bleeding stopped by neck gaiter Full-body paralysis after being stung by blowfish, still joined the Obituary circle pit

62 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

4.

5.

Bruised index and pinky fingers on both hands, still flashed horns on command for King Diamond Accidentally decapitated during “Helga Lost Her Head,” stitched head back on for rest of Repulsion set

“I guess meticulous is a good way of describing my style of working,” Bogren concedes, “and I really wish I wasn’t. It’s a curse. Working with Adrian is great fun—we recorded a Paradise Lost album together [2012’s Tragic Idol], and he has this sense of humor that really comes through the best in Swedish.

“Physically speaking, this was a tough one,” he continues, “Because of the lockdown, there were limited possibilities when it came to rehearsing on an actual kit. Most stuff was rehearsed and written on digital drums, and that is far from ideal. The poor thing was happy when it was over. But I don’t really apply pressure on people; I do my best to motivate them.”

Guitarist Andy LaRocque has conjured some of King Diamond’s most memorable melodies with his six-string expertise. He was originally recruited to appear on Slaughter of the Soul’s “Cold” by producer Fredrik Nordström, and reprised as a guest on To Drink From the Night Itself. While his approach may be different from Bogren’s, LaRocque’s job was to capture the best possible takes while recording the album’s electric guitars and bass.

“I always try to create a positive and relaxed vibe in the studio,” LaRocque notes. “Not pushing people to play or do things in a way they won’t be comfortable with. That way I can understand the other person’s playing style and personality. I’m not a pushy person, and my studio is actually a very relaxed and cozy place, which, of course, makes the whole thing easier.”

Alone in his comfy Sonic Train studio space, LaRocque recorded the solo that surges through The Nightmare of Being’s first single, opening track “Spectre of Extinction.” That track is a microcosm of the album’s stylistic restlessness and burgeoning inspiration. Clean guitar lines and NWOBHM harmonies soar from Jonas Stålhammar and Martin Larsson’s axes to the blood-red sky. Chugging hardcore trades punches with melodic death-thrash. But the biggest surprises lurk deeper into the record.

TOP 5 TOP 5 TOP 5 FAVORITE BEERS DECIBEL 500TH ISSUE DECIBEL COVERS CELEBRATION SHOW SETS, WITH NO FACES ON THEM SINCE ISSUE NO. 100

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN 1. July 2013, (ALL-STOUT EDITION), 1. Repulsion, performing

2.

3.

4.

5.

all of Horrified in Esperanto Pig Destroyer, all-ironing board set Ripping Corpse reunion set (cancelled 15 minutes before set time due to band breakup) Tombs Motörhead, Ace of Spades all-hologram set

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Jeff Hanneman 2. April 2021, A Year Without Shows 3. August 2020, Imperial Triumphant 4. September 2019, Batushka 5. February 2006, The Top 50 Most Anticipated Records of 2006

BY CHRIS DODGE

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

De Struise, Black Albert Russian Imperial Stout Avery Brewing, Uncle Jacob’s Stout Cigar City, Hunahpu Imperial Stout Sierra Nevada, Narwhal Russian Imperial Stout AleSmith, Speedway Stout (grab coffee variants if you can find them)

AT THE GATES THE NIGHTMARE OF BEING “It’s different, right?”

That’s Lindberg’s response as I mention I had a chance to listen to The Nightmare of Being freshly before our interview. And his point is taken; the album is certainly different from any record they’ve released in the past 26 years. It courses with a similar boundless creative energy as their first two albums. Lindberg acknowledges it’s likely their most adventurous record since With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness. But now they have the benefit of experience. “[In the early days of At the Gates] we were 18 and 19 years old,” Lindberg recalls, “and we had all these ambitions when we did those records.

Now when I listen back, I mostly hear the mistakes and pretentiousness of them. And ambition a little bit as well, of course. But now we can actually play those parts we were trying to create, and we’re composing them in a sane way.

I love records from other bands who are trying to play beyond their ability. But not with my own music. I just hear the flaws.

“We actually tried to play a couple songs from Fear live,” he continues. “And there are great riffs, but you can’t really play them correctly. It doesn’t sound like the record anymore if you fix them and play them correctly. Nobody told us when we were young that we were playing wrong, that our music theory didn’t add up. Where now, Jonas [Björler] knows music theory enough that we wouldn’t play them the same way. They have to be played by youngsters like that.”

Now 30 years deep into the band’s reign, youngster status has been revoked. But the compositions throughout The Nightmare of Being still find ways to explore new territory while retaining the essence of what makes At the Gates’ sound so distinct and recognizable. It’s not about totally shedding their skin on each record and emerging anew.

“We expect it to sound like an At the Gates record,” says Lindberg, “and I think incorporating some of the out-of-the-box influences is what we strived for. We always need a challenge, and that was the challenge this time. Putting in prog, some krautrock, even some jazz influence from what we’ve been listening to. There’s also a lot of NWOBHM stuff from Priest and Diamond Head as well. You don’t want to make a record that points in all directions at once; you want to make it feel whole. So, I think that was the challenge this time: Incorporate all of those elements, but make it feel whole.”

I WAS PROBABLY THE LAST PERSON ON THE PLANET—

BESIDES MY GRANDMA— THAT HEARD AT THE GATES.

JENS BOGREN, PRODUCER As aforementioned, after twin brother Anders departed the band, bassist Jonas Björler assumed the throne as the band’s lead songwriter. The Nightmare of Being reveals his increased confidence working with a more eclectic variety of instrument voices. The creep of piano keys. A saxophone’s piercing scream.

Orchestral flourishes that surpass the opening solemnity of Terminal Spirit Disease’s “The Swarm.” While the younger ATG had the ambition to use those instruments in their compositions, they weren’t certain how to effectively wield them as musical weapons.

TOP 5 METAL & BEER FEST SETS OF ALL TIME,

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

1. Triptykon’s special all-Celtic Frost set, Los Angeles, 2018 2.

2. Obituary’s full Cause of Death set, Philadelphia, 2019 3.

3. Enslaved’s full Frost set, Philadelphia, 2019 4.

4. Power Trip, Los Angeles, 2018 5.

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“I think [The Nightmare of Being] is a good groundbreaking album for us,” Jonas Björler exclaims. “We tried to make our songwriting more effective and catchy—I think it has a nice mix between melody and brutality.

“When we started writing for this record,” he elaborates, “Tomas and I wanted the music to be more expressive and progressive. We really wanted to try out a lot of different ideas and instrumentation to make the music more interesting and varied.”

Lindberg mentions influences as varied as King Crimson and Goblin when discussing the progressive influences on The Nightmare of Being.

They even played King Crimson’s “Red” at the famed Roadburn Festival, which was a rattling, but ultimately inspiring experience for the band.

“When I curated—and At the Gates played— the Roadburn Festival, we felt very nervous for it,” Lindberg admits. “We played a King Crimson cover live, and played some songs from The Red in the Sky Is Ours that we hadn’t played before. It felt like we were naked on that stage. But it worked, and I think it empowered us to incorporate those sounds more. “[In the band’s early years] we didn’t really know how to incorporate those harmonies played by other instruments,” he continues. “But when Jonas wanted to incorporate strings and horns on this record, it’s with a security that he can already hear it in his head. There are horns on the record that you might not even detect. There are obvious parts, but we also have a tuba under some choruses to give it some extra texture and heaviness. That’s what Jonas has learned along the way. We already had some of these sounds on the last record, but now it’s more incorporated into the songs. I think it’s really cool—I can say that because Jonas wrote it, [not me].”

Convinced by the production team to move it the album’s prominent A side, “The Paradox” is a deeply textured opus crawling with piano and acoustic strums. While “Cosmic Pessimism” and “Garden of Cyrus” surge with shadowy post-punk, the latter boasts a writhing saxophone solo.

Orchestral adornments blossom on the album’s second half. The apocalyptic hardcore

TOP 5 TOP 5 DISAPPOINTMENTS WITH DANIEL LAKE’S USBM: NON-STANDARD A REVOLUTION OF IDENTITY IN AMERICAN BLACK METAL, DECIBEL REVIEW

BY NICK GREEN RATINGS OF ALL TIME 1. Not enough GBK / 4. Not enough Blake Judd / Too much GBK/ Just the right amount of GBK 2. Aaron and Nathan Weaver are not actually characters from The Revenant 3. Revelation that bands like Weakling and Ludicra are probably done forever JUN 2021 :

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5.

Too much Blake Judd / Just the right amount of Blake Judd Despite title, contains no practical instructions for how to wipe yourself after going #2

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TOO EXTREME! ?

ABV %

 PHOTO BY HANNAH VERBEUREN

AT THE GATES

of “Touched by the White Hands of Death” relents to lush strings. “Cult of Salvation” and “The Abstract Enthrones” both welcome subtle synths to the sonic palette. Then there’s obvious highlight “The Fall Into Time.” After an orchestral swell, the song’s world-weary melodies create an atmosphere of tragic grandeur. This might alarm Slaughter of the Soul devotees, but The Nightmare of Being is the post-hiatus album least similar to that landmark recording.

“When we did Slaughter of the Soul, the goal was to only write driven three-minute songs— bang bang bang,” Lindberg fires. “Now we’ve come to the point where we want to make these strange things sound like part of the song without losing focus.

“And I think [Slaughter of the Soul] is the record that stands out the most,” he continues. “The other records had more diversity. So, if you hear [Slaughter] and think that’s how we sound, it’s like no—we sounded like that in 1995 for one record. But now people that listen to more extreme music search for older music and compare the changes throughout a band’s career, which I think is really cool.”

One constant throughout the band’s discography is the influence of Alf Svensson, their lead guitarist through 1993. While these days he’s a graphic artist, Svensson has permanently tattooed his style onto At the Gates’ sound.

“In a lot of ways, even though Alf has been gone from the band, his spirit is still there,” Lindberg considers. “He continues to contribute to the music through that influence. We will even talk about how there needs to be an Alf harmony added into a song; it’s like he’s in our heads.”

It almost sounds spiritual when you say it like that, I pontificate.

“That’s true!” Lindberg agrees. “And Anders learned guitar alongside Alf, so that quirkiness in his style from northern folk music, the more melancholic stuff, crept into Anders’ playing as well.”

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As At the Gates invite other inspirations into their expansive sound, they never abandon the project’s life force. From Svensson to the Björler brothers, that influence continues to course through the wild blood of their songs in The Nightmare of Being.

COSMIC PESSIMISM

On May 18, 2020, Lindberg shared a stack of books that reflected the lyrical concepts of The Nightmare of Being. In the social media post, he suggested that the record would be their “most ambitious album to date.” By this point, it should be clear that this writer concurs. Without an album title or lyrics to consider, the tower of literature was the only clue to the album’s themes available.

Novels by Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow) and Michel Houellebecq (Serotonin) mingled with philosophical dissertations on nihilism and pessimism. Among those were two books apiece from Thomas Ligotti and philosopher/professor Eugene Thacker. Ligotti’s horror fiction has been influential in its own right, but his pessimistic musings gained mainstream recognition after True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto admitted to lifting passages for Rust Cohle’s (played by Matthew McConaughey) dialogue.

“I know a lot of people read Ligotti and have been inspired by him, like in True Detective and all that,” Lindberg says. “But it was a starting point for me. A little bit after I wanted to go deeper into Lovecraft for that Lurking Fear record [2017’s Out of the Voiceless Grave], I noticed that Ligotti has a more philosophical approach to horror. I read Ligotti’s horror works before, but when I finally got through The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, it felt like an introduction to pessimism.”

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passion of exploring and understanding pessimism. He read philosophers like Emil Cioran, Ernest Becker, Julius Bahnsen and Arthur Schopenhauer. Lindberg began to notice seeds of the pessimist philosophy in writings where it had previously eluded him.

Pessimism is not just expecting the worst, or feeling that humanity is evil at heart. Many pessimists argue that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and humans are cursed with awareness of our own mortality. Some philosophers—like Ligotti—discuss anti-natalism, which is a radical belief that ending reproduction and marching towards extinction is the most moral path for humanity. But most pessimists are more lifeaffirming in their views. While they also saw the human experience as constantly striving for evasive satisfaction, Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus both encouraged thriving in this absurd world to your best ability.

“Some of the themes are perfect for death metal,” Lindberg declares. “How we talk about the human being as a paradox, which is a song title [‘The Paradox’]. And when [Peter Wessel] Zapffe—a Norwegian writer—describes defense mechanisms that we use to deal with the understanding of nature’s design that we’re going to die. Isolation, distraction, sublimation. But also anchoring, which is basically stuff like God, the church, the state, morality.

“For example,” he continues, “the abstract is used to try and anchor ourselves in a system that helps us forget that we’re mortal. Bahnsen—a student of Schopenhauer—said, ‘Man is a selfconscious nothing.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s death metal.’ All of the songs deal with that one way or another, I would say. Discussing mechanisms to distract us from our own consciousness.”

Linberg’s journey with pessimism eventually lured him to Eugene Thacker, whose writings on the philosophy of horror caught his attention. After reaching out to Thacker to initiate correspondence, they agreed to collaborate on the song “Cosmic Pessimism.” The song is named after Thacker’s 2015 treatise on pessimism, which Thacker describes as “the philosophical form of disenchantment.”

“I knew when I read [Thacker’s] books on horror that he had a familiarity with death metal and black metal,” Lindberg recalls. “We decided the way we would work together was to basically use his lyrics for ‘Cosmic Pessimism.’ To make it fit into the song, he allowed me to use parts of the book and put it together rhythmically into a song and approved it. So, we got to work with one of the greatest writers exploring pessimism. It felt like if [magical realism writer Jorge Luis] Borges would have written something for At War With Reality.”

When writing the lyrics for the record, Lindberg asked his friend Shane Embury (Napalm Death, Brujeria, Lock Up, et al.) to give him feedback. Embury’s criticism was

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AT THE GATES

brief, but powerful: Change the album title.

Encouraged to err with brevity, Lindberg agreed to change the record’s name to The Nightmare of Being. But the question posed in “The Paradox” is still significant, despite no longer bearing the album’s name. It invites you to consider the darkest depths of the human experience, our most irreconcilable atrocities, and the terror of self-consciousness.

“How black our madness to be?”

IN THE VOID OF MY SPIRIT ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers T hat perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all —EMILY DICKINSON

Sure, Nietzsche would scoff at that quote; he surmised hope only prolonged torment. He’d point to Dickinson’s unrequited love and selfimposed seclusion as evidence of hope’s cruel sting. But despite titles like “Suicide Nation” and “In Death They Shall Burn,” At the Gates have never succumbed to the bleakest appeals of pessimism.

TOP 5 BANDS NOT FEATURED IN THE NEXT DECIBEL BOOKS TITLE,

BY SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER READ A DECIBEL BOOKS TITLE

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Grand Belial’s Key Judas Iscariot Trve, kvlt black metal Anyone who unironically uses the words “trve” or “kvlt” My band

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TOP 5 ULTIMATE DINNER PARTY GUESTS,

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

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5.

Richard Christy Ian Christe Agatha Christie Kristy Swanson Rotting Christ

“It’s not like At the Gates are pessimists and this is a philosophy we’re following,” Lindberg clarifies. “We’d just like to introduce the philosophy and ask for reactions. Because the artwork or the lyric or a song is not created only by the writer or artist; it’s created again within the listener and reader. I wanted to observe interaction and how people feed on the idea.

“The whole idea—and this is a line in ‘Cosmic Pessimism’—is that pessimism is the last refuge of hope,” he stresses. “At the Gates has always had that. A little bit of revolution, moving forward, grasping at hope.”

“Those concepts [of pessimism and nihilism] were presented by Tomas, who wanted these topics to lay the foundation of the new record’s lyrical approach,” Jonas Björler explains. “I am not really a nihilist myself, but I think this philosophical ideology is very interesting. I have been an atheist as long as I can remember, at least for the whole existence of [At the Gates]. Perhaps I am more of a secular humanist, maybe.”

Instead of feeling anguish in their pursuit of artistic perfection, At the Gates’ restless motor pushes them to contrive and overcome creative challenges. Some pessimists believe that humanity’s progress is an illusion. For Lindberg and At the Gates, progress is essential.

Stagnation would equal the death of passion.

Lindberg’s voracious appetite for reading is directly linked to progress; a pursuit of truth and enlightenment.

“You can find [a book] to drive your thoughts further, so you can ask more questions,” Lindberg says. “That’s the difference lyrically since we’ve come back. I need that challenge to get me going. I need something that will provide a bit of a struggle, or else it’s not worth it. If you look at earlier records, they’re sort of obnoxiously pretentious; an 18-year-old who thinks he knows everything. The only thing I know now is that I don’t know everything.”

That humble Socratic paradox is a perfect mentality for someone who teaches young minds. After working with pre-teens for several years, Lindberg now teaches history to 15-year-olds. The subjects range from political economics and geography to religion and secularism. He also focuses on the first and second World Wars and the Holocaust.

He teaches media literacy and how to identify biased sources. While his current students are just a couple years older than his previous pupils, the quality of the discussions is exorbitantly higher.

Like the rest of the world, Lindberg’s students have faced uncertainty and upheaval since the start of the pandemic. But the vocalist feels hope when he observes his classroom.

“I only see maybe three classes of 30 kids each, and they’re in one of the more socioeconomically challenged neighborhoods,” Lindberg describes. “But I see potential there. I really do.

Because they really try hard to understand other perspectives in a way the previous generations perhaps didn’t. Of course, we have this rise of populistic right-wing governments—I mean, you’re from the U.S.; you know what I’m talking about. There are lots of problems in the world.

But they’re not caused by the coming generation.

As long as we teach them source control—which we do teach, continually. That’s one of the most important skills: checking sources, having secondary sources and all that.

“When it comes to the next generation, I’m feeling hopeful,” he concludes. “At the least, I don’t think they’re going to fuck it up as badly as the ones in power now.”

TOP 5 ERAS OF REVIEWING RECORDS FOR DECIBEL,

BY SHANE MEHLING

1.

2.

3.

A CD has to be mailed out The record is available on an NSA server requiring a retinal scan Your download emits the brown note every six seconds to prevent piracy

JUN 2021 :

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4.

5.

A simple, effortless email link Your inbox has 140 new emails

TOP 5 ARTISTS FEATURED IN ISSUE NO. 100 WHO ARE STILL MAKING GOOD MUSIC,

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

1.

2.

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4.

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Carcass Darkthrone Inter Arma Deafheaven Exhumed

Congrats to

on 200 issues!

Build Your Tone

AT THE GATES

I LOVE RECORDS FROM OTHER BANDS WHO ARE TRYING TO PLAY BEYOND THEIR ABILITY.

BUT NOT WITH MY OWN MUSIC. I JUST HEAR THE FLAWS. TOMAS LINDBERG

THERE WILL BE ANOTHER DAWN 2020 was supposed to be a year dedicated to cel-

ebrating the 25th anniversary of Slaughter of the Soul. But that didn’t happen for pretty obvious reasons. Instead, At the Gates sunk their energy into The Nightmare of Being, waiting for updates on how they could safely honor their 1995 opus with its own appreciation tour. After all, Lindberg still fondly remembers the emotional reunion shows when At War With Reality was released. But like most festivals and tours, those plans are still paused as vaccinations roll out.

“One of the problems with this situation is that bands can’t go to the government and ask

for support because shows weren’t actually cancelled; they were merely postponed, right?”

Lindberg poses. “So, we technically haven’t lost money; we just haven’t made any. Which for us isn’t a problem because we have other jobs.

The band is not a source of income per se, for us, which is a conscious decision. I wouldn’t say that the legacy of the album would sort of be old and over by the time we’re able to play in 2022, but we are contractually obligated in some cases to do it.”

The solution seems easy enough: Slaughter of the Soul is a concise record, so At the Gates could play the album for the one half of a headlining

TOP 5 TOP 5 GOOD ARTISTS FEATURED HIGHLIGHTS OF DECIBEL ISSUE NO. 2000,

BY SHANE MEHLING IN ISSUE NO. 100 4. Reader of the Month: 1. Upfront Interview: WHO ARE NO LONGER Overlord Vrzxz, the algorithm MAKING MUSIC, who has mercifully responsible for writing

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Cathedral In Solitude Kylesa Twilight Purson

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all the thrash records 2. Lead Review: a death-doom LP you inject subcutaneously 3. Hall of Fame: post9-black metal classic [sound of a water droplet]

5.

spared earth and the human race In the Studio: Napalm Death

JUN 2021 :

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set and still have time for several cuts from The Nightmare of Being. But the band has actually only played Slaughter of the Soul in its entirety once: aboard a heavy metal cruise ship. Even that performance was nearly jeopardized by forces of nature outside their control, as the boat was being battered by heavy gusts at sea.

“There was a storm coming and lots of wind; nobody thought [our set] was going to happen,” Lindberg smirks. “But then the voice came on over the emergency speakers across the ship: ‘At the Gates are now performing Slaughter of the Soul on the pool deck.’

“It wasn’t a huge storm, but enough wind to damage the roof of the stage and make it unsafe,” he adds. “So, they had to dismantle [the stage] and protect the musicians. Nobody was being thrown overboard to the sharks or anything.”

While their tour plans remain nebulous, At the Gates prepare for The Nightmare of Being to greet a world crawling out of the pandemic’s shadows. In 2019, the band played over 170 shows while supporting To Drink From the Night Itself. But this is not a band that feels entitled to plans unfolding as expected. Lindberg continues to call The Nightmare of Being a comeback record, and acknowledges that their post-hiatus time together feels like “bonus time.”

“I mean, it was bonus time since we released the first demo; everything is bonus time,” he laughs. “I was asked in an interview what my goals were when we first started. It wasn’t playing on the biggest stages or anything. It was to just have our demo reviewed in a zine—that’s it. So, everything else is a bonus for me.”

Instead of dwelling on achievements, At the Gates predictably turn their gaze to the next challenge. The path ahead is unknown, but we’re all invited to join their journey as they cross the next threshold.

“We already have a couple songs we’re preparing for the next one,” Lindberg teases.

“We’re talking about which ways we can go now. There’s one angle we haven’t done yet that we’re considering.”

He pauses and reconsiders with a smile.

“Which will be a secret for now, of course.”

TOP 5 TOP 5 STILL NOT DUMB ENOUGH IDEAS WE HAVE FOR NAMES FOR THE NEXT ISSUE NO. 300 1.

PERIPHERY ALBUM,

BY NICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

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Periphery in Space Periphery Back 2 the Hood I Still Know What You Did Last Periphery Periphery 666: Lucifuge Periphery the Squeakquel

2.

3.

4.

5.

COLLECT THE WHOLE SERIES

“This will thrill Rush’s huge fan base.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “A must for Rush fans . . . also a fitting memorial to drummer Neil Peart.” — LIBRARY JOURNAL “Die-hard Rush fans will devour this fascinating deep-dive.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, STARRED REVIEW

e cwpress.co m

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

RIPPLE MUSIC CONGRATULATES DECIBEL ON 200 ISSUES!

WO FAT - PSYCHEDELONAUT

KABBALAH - THE OMEN

JAKE THE HAWK - HINTERLANDS

THUNDER HORSE - CHOSEN ONE

VOID VATOR - GREAT FEAR RISING

HTTPS://WWW.RIPPLE-MUSIC.COM HTTPS://RIPPLEMUSIC.BANDCAMP.COM DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 71

RECORD

REVIEWS

FOREVER used to live here! Every month for about six years, I hid back

here in the review section. So many bands who looked like Trivium or As I Lay Dying. So many “hilarious” pornogrind CDs to not listen to. I still can’t listen to Isis without twitching a little at the memory of the great Neur-Isis scourge. I gave up when promo CDs changed to email links. Fuck a link.

Now anyone can hear anything whenever they want, obviously. I haunt atmospheric black metal albums on YouTube—it’s endless! But after 200 issues, there is still something cool about the back of the mag here at Decibel. Against all odds, it has remained funny and informative. Which is a really hard trick to pull off. How many people even get to the back of a magazine when they pick one up? I don’t know about people, but metal people definitely do. Because crazy. But also because curious.

And because they are always ravenous for more info. Dark Lord Mudrian has also had a really good knack over the years of finding writers who are totally fun to read and to disagree with. That’s another thing that metal people are good at: disagreeing with other metal people about metal. Which is part of the fun, if you ask me.

As for me, I don’t know what the hell I was going on about back here. I had fun, though. I never wanted to interview a band or write a feature. Honestly, I don’t really care what bands think. And I don’t want to drink Goblin Cock Barleywine (eight kinds of hops!) with them at a Decibel event. I just wanted to listen to music and then vent a little. (Sorry, Gorod! I still listen to your coverless promo CDs, if it makes you feel better!)

I remember going on some messageboard years ago and they were dissing Decibel for not being constipated enough or something, and that’s when I truly realized I was in the right place. If you can’t laugh at stuff, you might end up being a metal person who gets caught storming the Capitol with a bunch of fucking clueless dipshits. And you don’t want that. This magazine gave me a noise column! How fucking cool is that?

Decibel writers tend to be way younger than me, so I will forgive them their love of marginal ’90s emocore bands and their Anselmo fandom. But other than that, I got no beef. Open-minded music fans who know how to fucking write and make me laugh: What more do you want out of a magazine? Do they even make other magazines anymore?

Long Live Power Trip! Long Live Decibel! Fuck Trump Forever With a Rusty Blade Up the Ass! Stay safe out there, everyone. And take care of your old folks! Jesus, they don’t grow on trees. —SCOTT SEWARD

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INSIDE ≥

74 BONGZILLA Dude, weed, LOL 78 GOD'S HATE God suplexes us all

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

78 GOJIRA They care a lot 84 SADISTIK FOREST Flogging the log 84 SORE DREAM Boner moaners

JUNE

39

albums reviewed

39

albums that, don’t you worry, will definitely place in our top 2021 of 2021

1

missed opportunity to have Shane Mehling issue a 0 for old time’s sake

0

missed opportunities to have Albert knock a 10 down to 8 for old time’s sake

6

familiar voices you haven’t heard from in too long

The Scars of a Man

After nearly 15 years, PANOPTICON can still clear enough personal underbrush to fuel artistic fires

P

anopticon shows are devastating. Or, I guess I should say that the Panopticon performance at 2018’s Migration Fest in Pittsburgh put us all through the wringer, as did the PANOPTICON band’s appearance at Decibel’s Philly edition of Metal & Beer Fest ...And Again a year prior, and hearsay suggests that other shows have been at Into the Light least as powerful. This fact should hardly be surprising for anyone BINDRUNE who read (shameless plug coming) the band’s 16-page section in the USBM book that came out last year (shameless plug over). Mainman Austin Lunn’s richness of life experience and depth of character plainly translate into music with the same level of complexity and resonance. ¶ After an insanely prolific run of seven multifaceted albums in only eight years, his release pace slowed somewhat; his gargantuan double album The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness I and II took a bit longer to land in our laps, and it’s been three years since then. That’s not an unreasonably long wait, unless you’re pining for more Panopticon… which, honestly, some of us are.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

9

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 73

...And Again Into the Light recalls many of Lunn’s longtime influences—black metal, outlaw country, crust and post-rock included—but it also has a ton of new shit to say. One of the album’s primary secret weapons is violinist and composer Charlie Anderson, also of Texas outfit Laktating Yak. His contributions show up early in the record, on the monumentally melancholy “Dead Loons.” The keening strings give that song a surreal, otherworldly quality, sharpening its doleful teeth rather than rounding them off with any kind of symphonic softness. This sound is new to the Panopticon oeuvre, and it threads itself through much of the album, providing different colors to the familiar baseline musical approach.

This is Panopticon, but not quite the way you’ve ever heard Panopticon before.

The project’s most consistent secret weapon, of course, is Lunn himself. The acoustic ruminations of the opening title track and “As Golden Laughter Echoes” spring from a quieter place than most of the record’s burlier moments. Later, on “The Embers at Dawn,” we are treated to the ethereal tenor of Erik Moggridge, who has long performed as Aerial Ruin and is routinely featured on albums with fellow Pacific Northwesterners Bell Witch. The track holds its mellow, meandering tone for longer than expected, and by the time it robes itself in volume and blast beats, more than six minutes in, every bit of that intensity feels earned.

Elsewhere, the death-flecked, string-soaked “Rope Burn Exit” deserves every raw image that its title might conjure in the imagination, and “A Snowless Winter” flays with discomfiting tonal combos. And after an hour of emotionally wrungout brood and bluster, Lunn lands the whole affair on the unflinching “Know Hope,” whose title references the tattoos that adorn his wife’s knuckles. In some ways, this song feels like a distillation of everything Lunn has been trying to say throughout the record, and before the end, it descends into a flurry of savage mantras that echo the desperate pleading heard on Converge’s “Last Light.” If Lunn finds his way to playing these songs live, future Panopticon shows will continue to be devastating. —DANIEL LAKE

BIG | BRAVE Vital

S O U T H E R N LO R D

Crucial blasts

There is something ancient and primal about Vital, the new album from Quebec’s BIG | BRAVE. The trio, now featuring Tasy Hudson on drums, has distilled our collective grief, trauma, exhaustion and anger into five droning, devastating and cathartic mantras 74 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

8

that echo the pounding of hearts and the hammering of our heads as we navigate the discomfort, inequities and hard realizations that we have faced over the past 12 months.

Like Canadian comrades from Nadja to Mares of Thrace and Vile Creature, BIG | BRAVE offer a stark, seething soundscape that lets in little space for solace. With “Half Breed,” the band has issued an accompanying visual performative action in the shape of a single-shot film of vocalist Robin Wattie being buried alive. The piece is bookended with a quote from American poet Alexander Chee about the space held by mixedrace bodies, a necessary meditation in nine minutes of industrially charged doom underpinning Wattie’s Björk-ish howls.

This provocation feels Vital. The whole album feels Vital. There is a connection to the wild throughout these five songs, and the dirt mounds in the “Half Breed” video reveal not only the roots of structural inequalities, but also (maybe, hopefully) the possibility of new seeds sown. —LOUISE BROWN

BODOM AFTER MIDNIGHT

7

Paint the Sky With Blood N A PA L M

Kissing the shadows

The split of Finnish melodic death metal legends Children of Bodom in December 2019 ended the career of a band that, while organized around Alexi Laiho’s songwriting throughout, was also indisputably a unit. The departure of three longstanding members meant that Laiho needed a new name for legal reasons; the choice of Bodom After Midnight (a track title from their third album) was a far more respectful option than firing and rehiring lineups under the same name.

This three-track EP makes clear that BAM would have hardened into a new and devastating Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle for Laiho’s songwriting. Alas, his death last winter has deprived us of the chance to see what might have been. Unsurprisingly, the two original songs here, “Paint the Sky With Blood” and “Payback’s a Bitch,” could well have fit onto any past COB album. The new rhythm section, ex-Santa Cruz bassist Mitja Toivonen and Paradise Lost drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, keep up the high-tempo pace of these final two Laiho compositions. The keyboards are not as prominent as on some past COB albums, but still get locked down onto the guitars at key moments, repeating one of their most distinctive quirks.

Laiho’s guitar playing is more fluid than technically flamboyant here, but that is also true of much of his past work. To end his career with

these two songs is neither a disgrace nor a high point; Bodom fans will surely appreciate them as the bonus that they are, and rue the lack of further Laiho compositions.

What makes this EP a no-really-you-gottahear-it event, however, is the closing cover of Dissection’s “Where Dead Angels Lie.” Paying due homage to a palpable influence on COB, Laiho’s new crew delivers a much-better-produced, but still atmospheric version of one of the best moments in melodic death metal.

Alexi “Wild Child” Laiho: He died with his spiked boots on. —NICK TERRY

BONGZILLA

7

Weedsconsin H E AV Y P SYC H S O U N D S

Toke on it

Sooooo... how’s your THC intake through all this?

Since our household can’t see our dude anymore, I text him overnight and he delivers the next day—leaves it in our mailbox attached there next to the front door. We don’t even have to step outside. It clunks shut and the forcefully enslaved first grade teacher resembling my wife Venmos our man McGillicuddy. (Best to change the name.) Supermarket food we still pick up, but it took a pandemic to get essential groceries brought to our doorstep.

The grayer, hairier, possibly more grizzled Bongzilla deliver, too: namely Weedsconsin, the Madison trio’s fifth LP and first since Amerijaunican in 2005. Every election, another clutch of states legalizes cannabis (Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota in 2020), so saying the landscape’s become overgrown since then only invites blazers like these out of the fields.

“Everybody’s talking about that herb,” brays Mike “Muleboy” Makela on first pull “Sundae Driver,” which begins at a seventh-day tempo, then upshifts into a Birmingham gait that proves the machine still chugs beautifully, thick with resin and ready to burn. “We. Must.

Free. The. Weed,” he proclaims next on “Free the Weed,” all cymbal strafe, death caw and coagulating rhythms.

“Space Rock” exploits that deforestation with a 10-minute roll into the gloaming.

Accruing mass and matter, it builds in gravitational pull, sucking you into the ooze like prehistory. This opens a gateway to the next void, 15-minute ingestion “Earth Bong, Smoked, Mags Bags,” the album’s most radioactive moment, a gob of molten ore—dark green and throbbing like God’s own dopesmoker. Pay no attention to the deranged laughter on nod-out closer “Gummies”; Weedsconsin remits pandemic relief. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 75

BRIDGE BURNER

6

Disempath

H I B E R N AT I O N R E L E A S E

Disimpressed

Mashing up a bunch of good genres is a quick way to make a good record. New Zealand quintet Bridge Burner, keeping this in mind, combine late-’90s mathcore, deathgrind and black metal into a harmonious stew. But for some reason, it’s a real struggle to stay engaged with Disempath.

To reiterate, the elements are here, and they’re done well. You have the off-time skronky stuff, a machine-like drummer who can blast and D-beat, dual guitar interplay, bellows and screeches that are on point—all that good stuff. It absolutely works on paper. In fact, if you’re reading this and it sounds too killer to pass up, stop right now and dive in. But out of the speakers, it just falls flat.

After repeated listens, it’s still hard to figure out which song is which. The album’s opener is solid, and if you started anywhere, it would probably be smooth sailing for a few tracks. But things begin to quickly meld together into one

skronky, blasty mass that is very tough to pull apart. Deathgrind and black metal aren’t exactly known for their vast diversity in songwriting, but even with those expectations, when you begin to understand what the band is doing, it’s hard not to space out until the sudden realization that half the record’s gone by.

Bridge Burner are closer than a lot of bands to creating great music. Disempath proves that all the pieces are there. They just need to be put together in a more compelling way.

—SHANE MEHLING

CANNIBAL CORPSE 8 Violence Unimagined M E TA L B L A D E

Ru-tan clan ain’t nuthing ta fuck wit

I won’t squander your time by belaboring the obvious point that Cannibal Corpse are gonna Cannibal Corpse. You know exactly what they’re peddling just as surely as you know what to expect from an issue of Hustler. There’s going to be grinding galore and

Up Ground

­ Y JERRY A. B DEATHBURGER

We Don’t Strive to Do Anything 







76 : J U N E 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

body parts strewn everywhere. Even the recent loss of Pat O’Brien (which could be reasonably interpreted as an earth-sundering development) is ameliorated in the most predictable fashion by insinuating longtime producer and aide-decamp Erik Rutan into the slot. What should be an impassable dilemma becomes more akin to Indiana Jones versus that swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark: easily resolved, barely an inconvenience.

There is subtle, prudent progression here from 2017’s Red Before Black. The slight tectonic drifts in rhythm guitar, drum patterns and melodic counterpoint drive the album forward in a weird corkscrewing gait. Notably, some of the record’s most interesting passages lie in those motifs established just beneath the solos and/or primary riffs. Unfortunately, a few slipshod arrangements create a bit of unwanted drag, and I strongly feel that the album is roughly one track too long. However, when Corpsegrinder howls the word “contagion” on “Condemnation Contagion,” it sounds an awful lot like “po-ta-to!!!” So, there’s your silver lining.

The overall richness of this release is stunning, be it the staircasing whorl of “Slowly Sawn,” the weird spatial patterns of what should’ve been the album closer, “Overtorture,” the thematic red herring of “Follow the Blood” or the fact that the latter’s lead at 3:03 evokes—against all fucking odds—Crimson Glory’s Transcendence. Hell, the sadistic luster of

It’s

been a minute. Nigh on a generation’s worth of minutes, in fact, since I last chewed over this kind of gristle in these pages. Blasting grind, be it either of premium or scraping-the-barrelbottom quality, can, of course, be extremely proficient at ejecting unwanted guests from everyday spaces. Thus, given these times, I got to thinking that upon my fleeting Decibel return, I might even finally get my good citizen’s medal—for being a social distancing fucking champ of sorts. So, without further ado, let’s do this for the greater good and attempt to give people more ammo to (for now, at least) keep peeps the fuck out!

A five-minute album that goes ping-ping-ping-pingping-ping-pingping-ping at robotic mega-velocity should therefore be your sonic MOAB. Brazil’s Middle Days of Humanity  are committed medieval, from said creaky Elizabethan drum machine to the themes of violent

period zealotry on Holy Inquisition (SELFRELEASED) . Riffs are suitably buried deep in the archaeological muddiness. Entertainingly silly, and an invitation from Agathocles for a split undoubtedly awaits.

Shoving aside the fact that they term themselves “Necrocrust” (right you are), Svdestada 

chime as much as they grind—spacious sweeps of guitar on Azabache (SELF-RELEASED) recall those times when bands like Tragedy showed up to offer a bit more pizazz than those concealing dross via distortion. Admittedly, the one-sizefits-all vocals could do with matching this diversity program,

but otherwise, if you like your dirge dramatic, you’ll be going in deep here.

Now, if there’s anything guaranteed to send yours truly hotfooting it from the hi-fi, it’s another (sorta) “supergroup” offering. Camera Obscura Two — woeful handle— squishes together Giulio the Bastard (Cripple Bastards), a fella from once-terrific Italian thrashers Schizo and others.

Having been recorded all over the place (Italy, Hong Kong and elsewhere), D.O.D. (SELFMADEGOD) snoozes its way to a natural disconnect, and uniform prefab grind metal follows.

As for the pointless monotone hum of

“[Hidden Track]” especially, it’s sixminutes-plus spent wondering quite how it escaped the studio “delete” key.

Unsurprisingly, a band name like Hong Kong Fuck You  reeled us in hook, line and sinker.

Turns out it was a diversion tactic, though, as their side of this split (SELFRELEASED) ended up being three minutes of lamentable ass jokes and lamentable ass-derived grind.

On the flipside, Guilt Dispenser aren’t about to cave your skull in like, say, No Comment once did, but they do let rip a passable stop-start barrage that isn’t, well, ass jokes and ass-derived grind.

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 77

“Necrogenic Resurrection” alone is enough to bump this record up to a 7, easy.

No need to leave that violence unimagined, perverts. Put on some rubber gloves and dig in.

—FORREST PITTS

ENDSEEKER

7

Mount Carcass M E TA L B L A D E

HM-2 auf Deutsch!

Germany’s Endseeker might not be front-of-lobe yet, but their second effort for Metal Blade (third overall) dials in on Dismember, Desultory and Necrophobic’s early-to-mid-’90s swagger, turning the HM-2s (or their near-perfect analogs in Decibelics’ Angry Swede) beyond max Leif Cuzner. In a perfect world, the review for Endseeker would end here, but we’re professionals at Decibel.

The Hamburg-based quintet has improved upon 2019 predecessor The Harvest, insofar as their overall approach has simplified the Swedish genuflection to a requisite template of competent (if purposefully overcooked) catchy grooves, trem bridges, melodic stabs and nondescript gravelly vocals. From there, Endseeker’s toe-tapping, grave-digging death is then overdriven by gold record-holding producer Eike Freese’s (Stewart Copeland, Heaven Shall Burn) substantial production.

The cool kids only into Repugnant, Mörbid Vomit and Garden of Eyes have probably stopped reading to spend more time in their Reddit sub-basement, but that’s their bitter loss. Mount Carcass is old-school death—with a modern sheen. Like Baest, Facebreaker or labelmates Cut Up, that’s not always a negative. On “Merciless Tide,” “Count the Dead” and “Unholy Rites” Endseeker knock their perpetually rotting Swedish meatballs out of the proverbial cemetery (let’s say Skogskyrkogården). These tracks storm out of Mount Carcass like “Defective Decay” brutalizes Side B of Dismember’s Skin Her Alive EP. So, the temptation is to rip the terrifying trio out of Mount Carcass’ otherwise unanimated imagination for a must-hear EP. But if taken further to include the Germans’ kick-ass cover of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York theme, we’re in mandatory, no-excuses slimline maxi territory. —CHRIS DICK

FUOCO FATUO

8

Obsidian Katabasis P R O FO U N D LO R E

Four seasons in the abyss

Obsidian Katabasis is a brazenly epic funeral doom album from a band whose métier lies in long78 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

form nightmare fuel. You could be sitting out in your yard listening to this on a bright summer’s day and you sure as heckfire wouldn’t need sunblock. By the time opening track “Obsidian Bulwark (Creation of the Absurd)” ends, you’ll have forgotten all about sunlight—it can’t get through anything this dense. What elevates Fuoco Fatuo’s sound is that they pull from all quarters of underground metal, which makes sense since the members have been or are involved with death metal bands in their native Lombardy, Italy, and beyond.

Underground musicologists could write a thesis on “Obsidian Bulwark” alone, in which death metal guitars, shorn of immediate brutality, conspire with black metal abstractions to turn the air foul, while the freeform permissiveness of drone gives the sound a sense of improvisational inertia. Milo Angeloni’s vocals are Jurassic growls, a rasping fog offering little melodic guidance. This is unhurried doommetal soundscaping in the spirit of Esoteric et al. It is no surprise to see Greg Chandler’s name on the credits for mastering.

At the risk of sounding New Age, Obsidian Katabasis is a journey, and it offers plenty of time to take stock. Who wouldn’t benefit from a picnic lunch at the “Thresholds of Nonexistence Through Eerie Aeon”? There, buzzsaw bass walks around a slack tempo as the guitars serve up some haunted Corbucci-esque twang, building to some magical epiphany that can be found just over the hill. Or, this being katabasis—a descent—that epiphany might be somewhere below, right down there in the abyss. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

GOD’S HATE

7

God’s Hate

C LO S E D CA S K E T ACTIVITIES

Love obliterating breakdowns

I don’t really know anything about professional wrestling except that it’s probably the one thing Billy Corgan, Bob Mould and a shockingly large percentage of the ’90s metallic hardcore scene all agree upon. So, when I read that God’s Hate is fronted by Ring of Honor wrestler Brody King, it didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe it does to you? The good news for us and King alike is that he’s got a helluva side hustle to turn to if his piledriving goes south.

The man has a great voice for the absolutely brutal three-guitar beatdown riffs here, courtesy of a lineup that includes hyper-productive, multi-extreme subgenre-dominating brothers Colin and Taylor Young (Twitching Tongues, exNails, Disgrace). Think a Hatebreed-esque foun-

dation married to some early Biohazard bounce and a delightful bit of curveball weirdness.

(Check out the bass-heavy atmospheric Faith No More-ish segue of “Number One,” for example, or the many samples.)

Much like Elmore Leonard trying to “leave out the parts that readers tend to skip” in his writing, God’s Hate leave out the parts that don’t bring out angry baby faces and right hooks from their listeners. (The track “Violence Unlimited,” not coincidentally, begins with a sample of UFC fighter Jorge Masvidal.) God’s Hate doesn’t really fuck around at all, so it engages in a very different way than Twitching Tongues or Nails. Those bands tease out textures and layers in the sonic violence. God’s Hate is all about getting you in touch with your inner caveman, stat. Or professional wrestler.

Pick your enemy’s poison. —SHAWN MACOMBER

GOJIRA

8

Fortitude ROADRUNNER

An inconvenient truth indeed

If you didn’t already consider Gojira the Al Gore of extreme music—on a philosophical level, at least—Fortitude will do it. The French band’s first album in five years is both a venom-tipped reminder that climate change is very real and a blatant refusal to swallow that pill sitting down. True to its title, Fortitude doesn’t wallow in the cards we’ve been dealt. It knocks the house’s table over, douses the dealer (humanity itself) with ice water and demands another hand.

Gojira first set this now-or-never scene last summer with the surprise video “Another World.” Having gotten sick of doomsday reading (heavy-handed newspaper headlines like “The World Is on Fire” and “War!”), an animated version of the quartet Googles “Another World” and discovers a potential escape plan called “Planet X.” The only problem? Planet X ends up being an extinct version of Earth complete with kudzu, little signs of life and a leaning tower of Paris. Very “wherever you go, there you are,” if you will—something the world’s space racers (billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson) oughta see.

Fortitude is major-keyed motivational speaker metal in a lot of ways, bursting at the seams with sinewy chords, rim-shot rhythms and seize-the-day slogans like the slo-mo chorus of “Into the Storm” and the hopeful hooks of “New Found” and “The Chant.” The latter is about as melodic as Gojira get, a self-proclaimed “healing ritual” featuring a spare folk intro (the album’s title track) and steadfast calls to “get strong!”

Live Music

Food Trucks

Taproom

Beer To-Go

www.metalmonkeybrewing.com 515 Anderson Drive Romeoville IL 60446 info@metalmonkeybrewing.com 815.524.3139 DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 79

Sure enough, Gojira go full-on Sepultura on “Amazonia,” a runaway winner that might as well be a Roots B-side. (It’s even got a didgeridoo.) The rest of the record heads in another direction—one that’ll be familiar to longtime fans—but the potential for more experimentation within that one track leaves one wondering what would happen if Gojira blasted off into another galaxy entirely. —ANDREW PARKS

HOUSE BY THE CEMETARY

7

Rise of the Rotten P U LV E R I S E D

You were supposed to rot

Lucio Fulci’s 1981 film The House by the Cemetery wastes no time, leading off with a head stabbing. Swedish death metal outfit House by the Cemetary honor the movie not just with their name, but with the same entrancemaking flair: The opening title track on debut album Rise of the Rotten stomps into silence with a crash of guttural guitar and a frenzied roar of vocals. As a mischievous riff gives chase, the track opens the wrong basement door in the wrong house, unleashing a stampede of brain-starved zombies.

Our Fulci mega-fans are Monstrosity’s Mike Hrubovcak on vocals, and fellow Paganizer members Rogga Johansson on guitar and bass, and Matthias Fiebig on drums. Their collective experience manifests as a heralding of formative Swedish death metal. Hardcore punk distortion meets old-school heavy riffs, drums keep tracks in a perpetual frenzy, and vocals creep between subtle melody and hellish screams. Rise of the Rotten conjures Carnage, Morbid and Entombed; its opening is specifically reminiscent of At the Gates’s The Red in the Sky Is Ours.

With a hyperactive riff against ground-shaking howls and a deranged laughter coda, “Contagious Madness” captures ’80s horror flicks’ nostalgic schlock and squeamish terror. Other standouts follow: “Crematory Whore” and “Defleshed by the Seasons” are a cacophony of wicked, fast-traveling riffs, hammering rhythm guitar, and demon-army choruses. Finale “March of the Undead” is the most dramatic, cozying up closest to the melodic Gothenburg camp before layering in more nightmarish sounds and black metal-adjacent vocals.

Rise of the Rotten goes hard, fast and heavy, leaving you with that breathless feeling you get when the lights come up after an especially chaotic show. (Remember?) For triedand-true death metal fans needing an escape that won’t complicate things, this is your record. —COURTNEY ISEMAN 80 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

Decibot lived life unambiguously in 1s and 0s—the numerical scores he most frequently assigned in his album reviews. The long-running Decibel columnist embodied many of the best and worst qualities of the magazine’s staff; in fall 2005, when every writer passed on reviewing the latest Ill Niño record, Red Flag Media’s cadre of unpaid interns set to work developing an artificially intelligent nü-metal reviews robot. Their work was truly groundbreaking and also unexpectedly quick: 24 hours later, Decibot came online, ready to tackle Powerman 5000, but with the computing power to simultaneously consider Powermans 1-4999.

As one of Decibel magazine’s first columnists, Decibot will be best remembered for his straightforward—and sometimes uncomfortably libidinous—takes on heavy metal’s most maligned subgenre. But Decibot remarkably outlasted Static-X, six or seven original members of Slipknot and Edsel Dope’s run portraying the ghost of Wayne Static. With subtle tweaks to his core programming, Decibot was also able to go loco, loco on nü-metal’s bastard offspring of metalcore, crabcore and Code Orange. Decibot also personally saved Decibel writers Chris Dick and Jeff Treppel from embarrassment several times by proactively assigning negative reviews to truly terrible things.

Amazingly, Decibot was also the only member of Decibel’s masthead to have his visage appear on an official piece of apparel. (Unless you count the T-shirts featuring J. Bennett’s face that remain popular in Juarez due to his uncanny resemblance to Mexican cartel kingpin Juan Carlos Benitez.) But those are strictly bootleg. Should you wish to celebrate Decibot’s life and legacy, Decibel still has a limited stock of the Decibot T-shirt available in all sizes except XXL. Please excuse this crass aside, but we cannot legally endorse the more fitting tribute, which would be shotgunning Decibot’s favorite cocktail: Red Bull and motor oil.

Decibot was more than just an obstacle in the path of magazine staffers trying to maneuver towards the bathroom to light a candle and fully enjoy one of their the two federally mandated 15-minute breaks. During winter months, he was also a coat rack. But Decibot was also a Decibel loyalist until the very end, steadfastly refusing lucrative job offers to join the editorial departments of Alternative Press and Revolver. Decibot was last seen standing at the corner of 11th and Arch Street in Philadelphia, where he was temporarily relocated while the Red Flag Media office was being fumigated. He is presumed missing. He is survived by his on-again, off-again girlfriend (the office coffee pot) and, against all odds, the band Mushroomhead. —NICK GREEN

ICON OF SIN

5

Icon of Sin FRONTIERS

“Tolerate me, Long Beach!”

A single listen to one of Raphael Mendes’ YouTube covers is all it takes for any heavy metal fan to be gobsmacked by how uncanny his singing style resembles that of the mighty Bruce Dickinson. A metal voice that commanding and powerful is indeed extremely rare, so it’s no surprise that Mendes has carved himself a nice little career on the streaming platform. Even less surprising is the fact that the Brazilian singer now has a record deal and debut album of new, original material.

It’s hard to not compare Mendes’ Icon of Sin to the debut album by Durbin, which also came out on Frontiers earlier this year. James Durbin flirted with viral success on American Idol, and after a stint with Quiet Riot, he embraced his classic metal roots and put out a very respectable album in the form of The Beast Awakens. Icon of Sin, on the other hand, show plenty of promise, but ultimately struggle to forge their own identity.

As incredible as Mendes is, without something to separate himself from the rest of the pack—including Iron flippin’ Maiden—the music will have a very short shelf life. There are moments that flirt with success (“Shadow Dancer,” the speed metal rager “The Last

Samurai”) but the music follows the songwriting style of solo Dickinson and classic Maiden too closely for comfort; and worse, Mendes relies so heavily on imitating Bruce’s vocal mannerisms that it ultimately becomes tiring. Icon of Sin is cute as a tribute act, but it has a long way to go to escape Eddie’s imposing shadow. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

JESS AND THE ANCIENT ONES

7

Vertigo S VA R T

Dancing days are here again

While Jess and the Ancient Ones harken back to the ’60s and ’70s (not to mention the ’80s with lyrics like “Please be kind and rewind”), the band also recalls the halcyon days of the mid-to-late aughts/early 2010s when they, the Devil’s Blood, Graveyard, Blood Ceremony and numerous others first set off down the left hand path and conjured up their seminal works. Sure, that “scene” came and went, along with plenty of others in the decade since, but JATAO thankfully seem oblivious to all of that and keep on keeping on.

That’s not to say the Finns haven’t changed— a continued focus more on the flower and less on the power makes fourth LP Vertigo a succinct and fun listen (despite its dark undertones). While the quintet’s namesake still immediately draws your ears, the dulcet keys are really the MVP (Jon Lord, who comes to mind at times throughout the eight tracks, would be proud), even if they may be too high in the mix at times.

While the group has frequently stretched out a composition or two in the studio, those longer songs often served as high points of earlier efforts—particularly “Sulfur Giants” on 2012’s self-titled debut and “More Than Living” on the Astral Sabbat EP. Here, however, 11-and-a-half-minute closer “Strange Earth Illusion” seems just a bit out of place, at least in terms of album sequencing. Minor quibbles aside, Vertigo is a bright spot in what has otherwise been a bleak past 12-plus months. It will be interesting to see where the band goes from here, but in the meantime, their return is much welcomed. —ZACH SMITH

LIVING SACRIFICE

8

Living Sacrifice NORDIC MISSION

Thanks, Christ

Lord, what a revelation it is to be reunited with this ultra-intense, searing self-titled 1991 debut full-length from Living Sacrifice. Though by now firmly established in most extreme music 82 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

devotees’ minds as a heavy groove metal outfit (thanks to a relatively high-profile run at Solid State Records that began with 1997’s Reborn and continued straight through 2013’s Ghost Thief), the Little Rock, AR quartet originally hit the ground running as a top-shelf speed/death-infused thrash metal band—produced by Kurt Bachman of Believer, no less, just to ensure we have all our Christian death/thrash doves in a row.

Clearly, Living Sacrifice is not as accessible as the band’s later material, which feels designed to draw peeps in enough to open themselves to the parable, fishers-of-men style. Instead, this opening salvo is more like what the soundtrack would’ve been to Christ flipping over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple… if, you know, there had been amplification, sick riffs or soundtracks back then. It is completely unvarnished and acerbic—fast, intricate, unapologetically heavy and catchy as hell without concerning itself about getting the heads in the audience bobbing.

Someone on Encyclopaedia Metallum referred to it, amusingly, as “The Good Slayer!” and while it definitely feels more in line with Teutonic thrash or something like Finland’s Convulse— World Without God, perhaps not coincidentally, dropped in 1991 as well—the endorsement nonetheless is accurate in the sense that virtually anyone who enjoys Slayer (or anything heavier) should love the hell out of this record. Living Sacrifice is absolutely an obscured gem that deserves to be raised from the dead. —SHAWN MACOMBER

MERAUDER

7

The Minus Years U P S TAT E

Yes, but was it a plus?

Remember that scene at the end of the 2016 film La La Land where ex-lovers Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone see each other after years apart and there’s a split screen comparison between the reality of how their relationship imploded, leading to her marriage to a nice, stable (if boring) man, and the bittersweet fantasy of the overthe-top hotness and stacked frissons that might’ve been with Gosling? No? Only me? Well, it—along with It’s a Wonderful Life and The Family Man— popped into my head listening to this collection of very early recordings from seminal, but underappreciated early-’90s metallic hardcore innovators Merauder, several of which (“Life Is Pain,” “Fear of Sin,” “Take by Force”) devotees of the band’s landmark 1995 album Master Killer will be exceedingly familiar in slightly groovier, more polished form, with a different vocalist.

(There are other predictable lineup changes as well that are a bit murky to parse.)

Don’t get out the popcorn and tissues quite yet, though. For your humble correspondent anyway, this is more an academic than emotionally resonant exercise. Maybe you had to be there at ground zero rather than hopping aboard after the deliciously gangster “Master Killer” video. Which is to say, yes, this glimpse at what was and what might’ve been featuring original vocalist Marco “Minus” Rodriguez (also of Dmize/Minus1 underground infamy) is intriguing and weird and fun.

But I don’t think anyone will be pining for an alternate reality in which subsequent vocalist Jorge Rosado doesn’t slide into the jams with his unique swaggering inflections and cadence.

For completists and superfans, this will be a goldmine, but if you—like too many others— haven’t fucked with Merauder, you’re going to want to start your love affair at Master Killer.

—SHAWN MACOMBER

MONSTER MAGNET

8

A Better Dystopia N A PA L M

Astounding sounds, amazing music

Jersey’s finest in Monster Magnet had just returned from leg one of a European tour back in February 2020 when they and every other band on this virus-plagued earth were grounded indefinitely. But Dave Wyndorf was not about to kick back and work on his sourdough starter. Dude has toured nonstop with Monster Magnet for over 30 years, and taking a break was just not gonna happen. Thus, we get the band’s very first covers album, which, fittingly and unsurprisingly, is mostly a collection of psychedelic obscurities penned by a bunch of dudes who all sound like they dropped some bad acid (or good, depending on your proclivities), stripped down to their hirsute birthday suits and howled at the sky for the better part of a weekend. It’s saying something that the cover of Hawkwind’s “Born to Go” might be the least bizarre track on the whole album.

Which is to say these rarities from the darker recesses of ’60s garage and proto-metal are goddamn awesome. Wyndorf and crew—Phil Caivano, Bob Pantella, Garrett Sweeney and Alec Morton—lean hard into the original versions’ fucked-up freak factor. The spastic fuzz of J.D. Blackfoot’s “Epitaph for a Head” bumps uglies with the headbanging-in-a-black-hole vibe of the Scientists’ “Solid Gold Hell.” The mammoth cover of Poobah’s “Mr. Destroyer” is heavy as hell, but gives you the sensation that you’re levitating.

Pentagram’s “Be Forewarned” rips with a sinister grooviness, while the Cave Men’s “It’s Trash” is loaded with white-hot garage-rock wankery.

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Monster Magnet’s method relishes in the frenzied and potentially catastrophic mood that clings to A Better Dystopia. It’s a sensation that’s all too familiar these days. The band somehow tapped the past to deliver a testament of the present. —JEANNE FURY

NEMOROUS

8

Nemorous BINDRUNE

Woden[sthrone]’s return

To be as frank as possible, I’ve missed Wodensthrone.

I discovered their debut EP on MySpace at a pivotal, taste-defining time, and their dense, folkinspired black metal really spoke to me. Losing them a few years after 2012’s Curse left a big hole in my listening selection, and I would find myself returning to Loss and Curse frequently, wondering what Wodensthrone’s cast would end up doing should their paths ever cross again.

It just so happened that these Englishmen had planned such a trajectory following their old band’s demise, and now, almost a decade after Curse, the majority of Wodensthrone marks their return as Nemorous: a continuation of the Wodensthrone sound with a marked maturation in both style and lyrical content. Though previous material concentrated heavily on AngloSaxon paganism, Nemorous uproot their idea of heathenism and embrace global pagan rites, abandoning their old English pseudonyms in favor of revealing their actual names.

Pairing with this more open approach to heathenism comes an equally expansive musical direction. Though Wodensthrone’s roots can be heard— and a portion of the material found on Nemorous’ eponymous debut was meant for the shelved third Wodensthrone album—Nemorous themselves concentrate much more on the atmospheric end of things, expressing their passions and beliefs through a core texture, rather than riffs.

Though I’ve explained Nemorous as Wodensthrone’s continuation, to simply think of Nemorous as an extension of their old band does them a great disservice. To be frank again: Nemorous is astoundingly good, one of the better black metal releases I’ve heard in a long time.

Wodensthrone is dead, long live Nemorous!

—JON ROSENTHAL

SADISTIK FOREST

7

Obscure Old Remains TRANSCENDING OBSCURITY

Keep on rotting

From its thrash-heavy origins to its infinitely cavernous and melancholy ’90s heyday, and on 8 4 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

through its exciting creative rebirth over the last decade, Finnish death metal has gone through an engrossing evolution. Sadistik Forest—featuring Markus Makkonen, co-author of Rotting Ways to Misery: The History of Finnish Death Metal—uphold the traditions of their homeland’s unique take on this viscera-sodden subgenre. And while their releases to date have been pretty middle-of-thefjord, the Obscure Old Remains EP possesses a tangible focused energy—as though vocalist/bassist Makkonen’s writing endeavors have rekindled the love for their chosen style of blasphemy. (The return of guitarist Jarkko Lahtinen and presence of new drummer Jimi Myöhänen might have also played a part in the recent creative upswing.)

Opener “Mandragore” announces their new skinsman with a solo blast before the band swarms and surges through numerous bass-boomin’ syncopations. Makkonen’s screams on this Bolt Thrower-esque body blow have a blackened retch to them, adding extra dynamics to the collective delivery. “Barbarian,” however, stands out as a strong confirmation of what this lineup of Sadistik Forest can really do; the groovy, pummeling riffs and rhythms spiral out in disorienting fashion, only to be split from neck to navel by a melodic lead guitar solo.

The remaining tracks further confirm that Sadistik Forest are not simply beholden to Finnish legends; there’s plenty of U.S., U.K. and Swedish influences competing with Celtic Frost worship—with “Waters Black” perhaps creeping too close to Morbid Angel’s “Where the Slime Live” for comfort. —DEAN BROWN

SORE DREAM

7

Gears Clogged With Blood and Honey C LO S E D CA S K E T ACTIVITIES

Full of heck

I miss Death Ambient, the Tzadik Records-based experimental trio that trafficked in sparse sonic tessellations, each of which could have sprawled into infinite auditory universes. Those tracks unfurled languid beds of eerie sounds, then populated the empty spaces with chirping, burping events that felt silly and menacing, often at the same time. Luckily, while listening to Sore Dream, I can miss Death Ambient a little less.

Sore Dream’s noise is colder, more mechanical than Death Ambient’s often subtler organic approach, but there’s still that linear, almost narrative quality that most noise records eschew for caustic density.

The duo behind this murky mishmash should be familiar to every stripe of Decibel reader; Spencer Hazard and Dylan Walker have been assaulting ears for more than a decade in Full of

Hell, and that band’s restless blend of hardcore, death metal, grind, noise and every other form of extreme sound has left a trail of extraordinary recordings, both as a standalone project and in collaboration with mold-makers/breakers the Body and Merzbow. It’s the boys’ previous associations that make Sore Dream’s spacious lethargy so surprising—these 26 minutes hint at none of the pinned-in-the-red intensity of their flagship band, nor the punishing claustrophobia of Merzbow’s barbed Brillo blankets.

On first listen, this can feel like something of a disappointment, but such a short record lends itself easily to multiple back-to-back spins, and over time, it scours away preconceived notions, and its own merits become more apparent and convincing. This is not the noise album to put on at a party (as one does), but it succeeds as a more nocturnal meditation on chaos and the bliss of danger. —DANIEL LAKE

SPIDERWORKS

8

Shiver

NOMAD EEL

Grunge-gaze from 1992 to you

Like tropical cyclones, low-rise jeans and the Cure, Spiderworks’ first proper full-length is destined to return whenever the unseen forces that govern irregular repeat reappearances decide the time is once again right. Luckily for future generations, the album’s nature is such that, as long as civilization remains relatively intact, there’ll always be a next time.

A breathtakingly mind-bending amalgam of heavy psych, punk, post-punk, metal tropes and textures left over from the band’s 1990 selftitled debut EP (i.e., “The Black Album”)—all lightly sprinkled with various goth, glam and grunge gestures, preternaturally swirled and folded together, lightly glazed with a tight mess of pop sensibilities that sometimes anticipate the 1975, and rendered as strikingly fucked-up as possible by producer Dan Rothchild (son of Doors producer Paul Rothchild)—Shiver pretty much inhabits a universe of its own. Thanks to Rothchild’s command of gear and sense of adventure, the 1992 release sounds like it could’ve been recorded next week. He’s especially adept with vocal processing, often lending Chris Vigil’s naturally unhinged vocals an extra measure of menace, sometimes in ways that might wanna make you look around whatever space you’re inhabiting just to make sure nothing is wrong.

While Rothchild’s treatment of the album’s instrumental component shows just as much vision and taste, he’s really just giving Spiderworks their just desserts. The Riverside, CA-based

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quintet had evolved at a ridiculous rate since forming roughly four years earlier. Shiver captures the spirit of that evolution at the optimal point in time. —ROD SMITH

VALDAUDR

8

Drapsdalen SOULSELLER

This isn’t the Cobalt you’re looking for

Formed out of the ashes of black-thrash outfit Cobalt 60, Valdaudr ride the Victorian hearse back to 1992. We all know what happened then. Darkthrone released their then-shocking, since un-fucking-touchable A Blaze in the Northern Sky. The rest is history. This Kristiansand duo—multi-instrumentalist Død, vocalist Vald (drummer Rune Nesse of Orkan moonlights)—puts it all on the monochromatic table on debut album Drapsdalen: lo-fi production, single takes (with fuck-ups), Norwegian lyrics, black and white photographs, the threat of anachronistic weapons and the usual trappings of a then-mysterious scene that was a year (maybe two) away from its zenith.

In many respects, Valdaudr is a vanity project.

Helmed by Død (a.k.a. Daniel Olaisen), Drapsdalen is a genuine return to simpler, eviler and more fun fucking times. That it emanates that “Norwegian feel”—thunder drums, beat-’em-up riffs, croaking (sometimes “fjord”) vocals—is a bit of a miracle. Really, slap on The Shadowthrone or Til Evighet..., and then Drapsdalen. The truest black metal ninny wouldn’t be able to discern that Valdaudr’s raging ISO 200 black is self-sliced from contemporary cloth.

That Død issued his music via his longstanding Soulseller Records (Aeternus, Black Crucifixion) is the ultimate sign that Valdaudr’s initial thrust is extremely personal. Drapsdalen won’t play in the same outer dimensions as post-mindfuck Dødheimsgard or new alchemists Esoctrilihum, but that’s not the point. This is down-home, pre-internet Norwegian black metal wrought from the same nefarious steel and cold winds that pierced our hearts to always bleed black. —CHRIS DICK

VANIK

7

III

AUSTENITIZED

Every day is Halloween

Imprisonment in this neverending Hell has given me a lot of time to appreciate the finer things in life—namely Prime Video’s exquisite selection 86 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

of Z-grade horror movies I was too scared to rent back in my youthful days when I would haunt the aisles of my local video store. Turns out they all pretty much suck! Shaun Vanek sports one of Midnight’s leather hoods as a live guitarist.

I’m guessing he’s seen his share of said fright flicks. Thankfully, his own project, Vanik, does not suck. Their third album, III, came out last Halloween, but since we didn’t get to actually fucking have Halloween last year, we’re calling a mulligan and covering it now for your 2021 Samhain consideration.

Boasting punchier production and more refined riffs than 2018’s II: Dark Season, this video nasty packs some serious scares into a runtime around the length of your average episode of Tales From the Crypt. Their exhumation of Motörhead, Venom, Toxic Holocaust, Midnight and Deceased (some of which aren’t even dead yet!) puts Vanik squarely in the reptile territory of your brain.

Not a lot of lyrical variety—Vanek’s snarled stories about things bumping in the night run the gamut from vampires to slasher killers. Not a lot of musical variety either, really. Sometimes they pull back on the tempo; mostly they go like a bat out of hell. That’s okay, though—it’s not like we watch trashy scary movies for the originality.

We watch for the fun, and Vanik deliver a thoroughly rewindable experience. —JEFF TREPPEL

STEVE VON TILL

6

A Deep Voiceless Wilderness NEUROT

Quarter, rest

Every release by Steve Von Till—or any member of Neurosis, really—feels like an opportunity to celebrate the body of work as a whole. Maybe that’s because listening to any of these records without the context of the last 30-plus years seems incomplete, incomprehensible. Is it possible to appreciate Wilderness without recalling the intensity of Neurosis, the bold duality of Harvestman, the unfettered daring of Tribes of Neurot or the bleak vulnerability of Von Till’s four other solo albums?

Probably, yes. But the path that leads Von Till to the creation of Wilderness feels as crucial to the experience as the record itself.

In fact, Wilderness is two albums: one released in August of last year as No Wilderness Deep Enough, which includes Von Till’s rugged vocals as a familiar human anchor, and this purer instrumental vision, as Von Till originally intended this music to be heard. No Wilderness Deep Enough remains tethered to the legacy of Von Till’s earlier records through that tender,

gravelly voice. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness frees these eddying flights from that grounding force and allows the tracks to hover in some gauzy alien realm that somehow doubles as the most familiar of emotional spaces.

Von Till’s poetry—even at its kindest and most reflective—has a harrowing, demanding quality that never quite divests itself of spiritual restlessness; herein lies its power, of course, but also its glittering shards of unease that change the character of these particular songs. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness allows listeners to sink into a more personal experience with the strings, the French horn, the piano, the electronic manipulation. The effect—on me, anyway—is a richer palette of sorrows, hopes and wonders all my own. The best reason to hear this record is to find out what effect it can have on you. —DANIEL LAKE

WHEEL

7

Preserved in Time CRUZ DEL SUR

Definitely not reinvented

A German doom band releasing a new album called Preserved in Time? This review writes itself! After all, doom, more than many metal subgenres, seems unchanging in a lot of ways and largely beholden to influences from a long bygone era. I’m thinking back to how “dated” Saint Vitus, Candlemass and Trouble sounded in the mid-’80s, with their Blue Cheer, Pentagram and Black Sabbathisms, and yet “modern” doom bands still heavily reference all of the above. Which is fine and dandy, as long as you do it well.

Wheel are well-acquainted with the “masters” (Candlemass, in particular), and their lurching, heaving tunes on album number three are all kinds of heavy. Vocalist Arkadius Kurek wails melodically over the requisite epic riffs from guitarist Benjamin Homberger, and most of the seven songs thunder on well past the six-minute mark. Wheel definitely take a more majestic approach—think power metal glory, without the speed—rather than full-on darkness and gloom. Preserved in Time is largely ponderously slow, with the occasional tempo change or acoustic interlude.

So, yeah, nothing unexpected here, but everything that you would definitely expect— gargantuan riffs, brooding lyrics and crushing tempos—are just as they should be. This is Wheel’s first album since 2013’s Icarus, so the time they took creating Preserved was well-spent.

It may be fairly predictable, but there’s no denying it’s doom done well. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

SHIRTS

SHIRTS

E V I S U L C X E

P A T C H E S

F L A G S BEANIES

Diokane This Is Hell We Shall Believe You know how some diners and regional eateries will do full-on, unnecessary caloric loading by taking something once-healthy (like a salad) and slathering it in sauces, cheese, bacon and—in the Pittsburgh area—fucking french fries?! This Brazilian band is the musical equivalent, as wanted and unwanted bits of everything are thrown into their Sepultura-meets-Stooges mix.

Scare Congratulations on Your Death With inspiration taken from Entombed and Cursed’s melodic and punky sides—and their drummer’s love of smoothed-out D-beats—Quebec’s Scare are the closest thing to crusty punk this column has to offer. Dumpsterdiving and salvaging perfectly fine food in times of crisis and the plague isn’t necessarily the way to go, but it’s a sweet little change of pace.

Second Wind Vital

Given the ginormous backlog of unsigned content that could easily fill a 200-page 200th issue, Headmaster Mudrian’s marching orders were to make sure “the cream rose to the top of this Boner… so to speak.” That got me thinking about everyone stuck at home baking bread and how it’s been over a year since I’ve stepped inside a restaurant…

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

Auto-Replicant The Impending Swarm Listening to this chaotic Creation Is Crucifixion/early Dillinger/Human Remains mix is like hitting up a highend buffet in the rich part of town: You want to try everything and throw as much on the plate as will fit.

You’re unfamiliar with half of what’s available and don’t know what sort of—ahem—post-meal blasting you’re going to do, but now’s not the time to be conservative.

Bornwithhair Somewhere to Haunt Ever been to Rochester and experienced the local arteryclogging pile of meat, fries and cheese known as the Garbage Plate? This band’s recipe is cut from the same cloth, as they drop noise rock, death-doom, indie rock, psychedelia and avant-art rock into one ungodly lo-fi Melvins-inspired mess. It’s unhealthy and willpower-crushing, and should probably be avoided, but can’t be ignored.

Cartilage Gore-Met Their sound is death/grind/thrash from the Exhumed school. The salutation deepens with the title and cover of this release being a cartoonish take on that band’s Gore Metal debut. Despite the obvious parallels, GoreMet clocks in in the “absolutely fucking awesome!” category (though judging by the state of their kitchen, no one should ever accept a dinner party invite from them).

Dining With Dogs The Problem With Friends These Austin noisemakers sound like dudes who eat raw bear meat off the bone as a beard hair growth aid, pour whiskey into snake bites—they bite the snakes!—and laugh at the idea of vegetables being used for anything but food fight weaponry. When they’re not laughing at the skateboarding mishaps in Unsane’s “Scrape” video, that is.

8 8 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

On the continuum of bands that cause phantom tooth decay, this Chicago metalcore lot have likely been on the receiving end of a “tsk-tsk” from their dentist right before they reach for the novocaine and issue a stern warning about sugary diets. To wit, they’re destined to be as popular with the ADA as they are with those who work out while listening to Killswitch, As I Lay Dying and the wrong Dio albums.

Sloth Cult Past Lives and Tomorrow Ever been to one of those Michelin-star-rated fine-dining establishments where the portions of whatever grainfed endangered species and exotic greens yanked from the deepest part of a rainforest are laid out with artistic precision, but leave you wondering where the rest of the meal is? That’s what this blackened minimalism and ambient post-punk reminds me of.

Triage Triage Triage shine a light on (some of) what sucks about the world. Featuring members of Kill the Client, Gridlink, Cleric and more playing balls-out, hammer-slaps-pin deathgrind, they spend 13 tracks calling out unjust wars, inequality, police brutality, religion and right-wing bullshit. They’re also languishing in label-less obscurity. Fuck your planet. It’s better to keep isolating with a stack of Ernest Shackleton and Van Halen biographies while eating peanut butter-stuffed pretzels.

Watch Me Burn We Don’t Deserve This World Anymore I have a long relationship with California’s Watch Me Burn, and am sad to hear that this is the final offering of their 20-plus-year existence. We Don’t Deserve This World Anymore is like watching an enormous pot of slow-cooked stew bubble and thicken, then scarfing it down before it churns in your guts and clogs your arteries. R.I.P. the band, your eardrums and your left ventricle.

Wyrmhaven Delirium Don’t know if it’s pandemic delirium or the pandemic cleanse that has inadvertently kept me out of fast food joints, but this AZ band has done the unthinkable and made metallic breakdown-heavy deathcore palatable and energetic via their professional-sounding combination of Black Dahlia Murder, Botch, Sepultura and... whoever the big names are in deathcore. COVID has overwhelmingly and negatively fucked with everything, but not this.

Check out all of the above on Bandcamp and Facebook.

DECIBEL : JUNE 2021 : 89

Raise a tall boy to the legendary Joe Bob Briggs ellers with three names are generally pretty damn cool. Billy Bob Thornton, Tommy Lee Flood (look him up—Banshee RULES!), Hacksaw Jim Duggan. It goes without saying that Joe Bob Briggs falls into the pretty damn cool category. I used to watch Joe Bob back in the day on TMC thanks to my folks’ massive white satellite dish that took up half our front yard and got struck by lightning about four times a year. After going off the air about 18 years ago, I was faced with the realization that Joe Bob’s horror-hosting, Lone Star Beer-swigging days were over.

Luckily, I was wrong. Thanks to the amazing horror streaming service Shudder, Joe Bob returned to the small screen back in 2018 via The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs.

As the father of two young children, my horror-watching time is now confined to when my kids AND my wife are asleep, since the latter is not really into horror films. While they napped on a recent Saturday, I decided to join good ol’ Joe Bob on Shudder to watch some horror and hear his genius rants about the making of the films and whatever the hell else is on his mind.

About an hour into the Lamberto Bava classic Demons, my wife woke up, walked into our living room and asked, “What the hell are you watching?”

“I’m watching Joe Bob Briggs hosting Demons.” My wife couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes; she just could not get over the name Joe Bob Briggs.

Even more surprising, my wife loved Joe Bob AND the film, an Italian demonic classic featuring one of the most badass metal soundtracks ever!

Joe Bob also screened my favorite film featuring an evil tiny conjoined twin creature in a basket—Basket Case! I lived in Hell’s Kitchen in NYC for several years, so that movie brings back many memories for me. I’m just lucky I never ran into little Belial, the creature from the movie; he probably would’ve bit my pecker off!

Joe Bob said that the star of Basket Case, Kevin Van Hentenryck—who bravely does full-frontal in the film—is now a sculptor and sculpted a famous monument of Rip Van Winkle at the top of New York State’s Hunter Mountain, which took him nearly 15 years to complete. Well, I nearly jizzed in my King of the Hill boxers when I realized my wife and I had visited this (at-the-time-unfinished) monument in 2007 and met the sculptor, talking to him for quite a while! I didn’t even realize he was the star of Basket Case! It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know, or I would’ve drilled him with goofy questions about the creature Belial, or what it was like to run with his wang out through the streets of NYC in 1982.

My metal pick for this month is the amazing soundtrack for Lamberto

Bava’s Demons. Featuring Saxon, Accept, Mötley Crüe and a number of great metal and rock bands. This movie blew my mind when I was 11 years old. Not only was I impressed by the incredible makeup effects, but the soundtrack was headbanging heaven! Demons also features a guy whose face is half metal, so they have all heavy metal bases covered!

So, for a rip-roaring good time, grab yourself a twelver of Lone Star, turn on Shudder and kick back with one of the coolest—if not the coolest—horror host that the good ol’ US of A has to offer, Joe Bob Briggs!

Well, until next month (or next year!), keep your horror horrifying and your metal heavy, and make every day Halloween!

Email me at Richard@richardchristy.com.

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D E C I B E L : J U N E 2 0 2 1: 9 3

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D E C I B E L : J U N E 2 0 2 1: 9 5

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

AND THE DECIBELS

WERE RINGING IT

was 2004 and it’s hard to know or remember these kinds of things 17 years later, but after a visit to Tower Records—yeah, record stores—this magazine had ended up with my stuff. I had never heard of Decibel or the band on the cover, the Dillinger Escape Plan.

Two facts that disturbed me.

Largely on account of the fact that, having made music since 1980, I was used to picking up magazines and knowing about 80 to 90 percent of what was in them. Moreover, having been a journalist for even longer, I was not at all used to being sidelined by magazines that I hadn’t heard of.

And so, it dawned on me in the hardest and most direct terms: This is how it happens.

“This” being old age. And being out of it. Being past it. Not having any idea what the fuck is going on.

To say I was scared would be an overstatement. To say I was on full alert? That’d be just about right.

I bought some Dillinger. I dug on some Dillinger and I unhooked 96 : JUNE 2021 : DECIBEL

myself from bands that were my contemporaries, many of whom had stopped making music anyway, and started listening to where the footsteps were coming from.

Decibel was the doorway and the gateway. By which I mean: I wish I had seen Converge on the cover before meeting them for the first time at a show in Bordeaux.

As we drove to the venue, our tour manager said, “Wait a minute.

You all are supposed to be headlining. They’ve made a mistake and it seems like Converge is headlining.

We’ll fix that when we get there!”

Outrage abounded.

But then we got to the venue.

There was a line down the block, four people wide.

“Um. Yeah. Hey, let’s let them headline.”

Why’d we fold so fast and easy?

No way was Oxbow drawing blocklong lines back then. If I had read Decibel first, I’d have known that.

So, something had to be done.

I don’t remember how it was done, but I contacted Albert. I’m sure if I go back through my old

emails, I could find the first one.

He was open, and so the history goes: me getting into it with Justin from the Locust when interviewing Justin from the Locust. He didn’t know who I was and didn’t care, and I didn’t know who he was and didn’t care, and so it was a perfect storm of mutual contempt.

And so, we were off to the races with over a dozen pieces. None of which I remember as well as that one with Justin, amusingly enough.

Later, playing a show in Philadelphia with Isis, Albert invited me up to the office either before or after the show. It was familiar and felt just like the mag, which now just felt like the spaces in my head.

The cats in Neurosis were already there, in the spaces in my head, and so it was like, “What took you so long?” Specifically, that space where metal that didn’t give two shits about stadiums dwelled.

I mean, if you think about it, it was a special place. A place for lifers since the bands that wanted to play stadiums quit when they saw there

were no stadiums in their futures.

Here, there were no futures but music futures.

Then, a twist. Since my specialty seems to be unwittingly pissing people off—and since I spent a year as a kid living in a working-class Italian neighborhood where the men would scream out the window “SUCKER!” when the wedding parties would roll by—an announcement from Albert that he was getting married.

And immediately from me, whatever version of “SUCKER” I thought was funniest.

Don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect Albert would actually get pissed off. But he did, and out of the Decibel world I was thrown.

But… I kept reading. For years.

And then, a few months ago, an email from Albert, and I’m now writing again. Because this music is forever, and bygones can easily be considered bygones in the face of all of that.

Or at least until I piss him off again. Not if—when. But after that? I’ll read on still.

ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE