Decibel #245 - March 2025

TIMES PENTAGRAM METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2024 PARADISE LOST DRACONIAN HALL OF FAME SHOCK ME

BEER US THE STRENGTH FOR THIS REVIEW

REFUSE/RESIST

MARCH 2025 // No. 245

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March 2025 [R 245] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 8

metal muthas Christmas in March

10 exclusive:

metal & beer fest denver 2024 reviewed Survival of the fittest

14 low culture The sound of silence 15 kill screen:

living gate

PlayStation does what Nintendon’t

16 gaytheist Seriously funny 18 century They came, they played, they conquered 20 savage lands Still no word on Sir David Attenborough’s album of the year 22 saber Never a dull moment 24 phrenelith Black and dead all over 26 year of the cobra Family matters

features

reviews

28 obscura The space between

57 lead review SoCal sludge pillars 16 live life to the slowest on career peak Guides for the Misguided

30 sacrifice No pain, no gain 32 q&a: pentagram Main man Bobby Liebling can’t stay bottled up forever 36 the decibel

hall of fame U.K. doom troupe Paradise Lost find massive success in Europe while losing interest in their sound on Draconian Times

44

58 album reviews Records from bands that spam “Come to Brazil” in our social media comments, including Killswitch Engage, Mantar and Scour 64 damage ink Love conquers all

Tour Eternal COVER STORY COVER PHOTO BY BECKY DEGIGLIO, SEBASTIAN LUDVIGSEN, NECROHORNS AND ROB MENZER CONTENTS PHOTO BY NECROHORNS ADDITIONAL PHOTO EDITING BY ESTER SEGARRA

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $34.95. 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, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. © 2025 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.

2 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

This year marks the 12th edition of

the Decibel Magazine Tour, but my personal memories go to 11:

www.decibelmagazine.com

2013: At the behest of Shane Embury,

I provided guest vocals for Napalm Death’s “The Kill” at two shows.

I couldn’t rehearse in my house, so I drove to a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and did it in my car.

2014: I passed out in one of Carcass’s hotel rooms at the NYC date.

Dicks were not drawn on my face, but pictures were documented.

At the Maryland show, I had to remove the car seat from my family vehicle to drive Jeff Walker and Bill Steer to record an episode of the short-lived Decibel Extremely Extreme podcast at Scott Hull’s house.

2015: Vallenfyre’s driver had to leave the tour in Philly, so I drove

the band’s van from Philly to Manhattan. Since we programmed the wrong address in the world’s oldest GPS, the drive was actually Philly to Brooklyn to Manhattan.

2016: Old pal Ian Christe and I agreed to interview Tour headliner

Abbath to help a mutual friend’s documentary project. I couldn’t think of any good questions, but my daughter—who was 4 at the time— came up with this: “Are you a person or a band?” This must have rattled around our man’s head a bit, since this was his introduction to the crowd that evening: “I am Abbath! [Pause for applause.] WE are Abbath!”

PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

alex@redflagmedia.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

albert@decibelmagazine.com SALES DIRECTOR

James Lewis

james@decibelmagazine.com ART DIRECTOR

Michael Wohlberg

michael@decibelmagazine.com CUSTOMER SERVICE

Patty Moran

COPY EDITOR

Andrew Bonazelli

BOOKCREEPER

Tim Mulcahy

patty@decibelmagazine.com

tim@redflagmedia.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

Albert Mudrian

DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

James Lewis

albert@decibelmagazine.com james@decibelmagazine.com

2017: After another sold-out Irving Plaza show, two extremely inebriated (but polite) gentlemen offered me oral sex in exchange for booking Sodom on the following year’s tour.

2018: A lot of disparate memories here: helped Khemmis load in; had a long, enlightening conversation with Amalie Bruun about what it’s like to be a woman in the metal underground; planted the seeds for Enslaved’s full-album performance of their Frost record, which would occur at the following year’s Metal & Beer Fest in Philly.

2019: I’m still not over the fact that I accidentally left a pair of satin Blood Incantation shorts at a Baltimore hotel.

– COVID BREAK – 2022: I took my Municipal Waste-loving, then 7-year-old son to his first show at Baltimore Soundstage. The band added his favorite song, “Wolves of Chernobyl,” to their set, sent the song out to him, gave him guitar picks, drumsticks and the set list. With his live experience bar set impossibly high, I explained to him that not every show he attends will be like this.

2023: I spent half the night telling disappointed people, “No, my son

is not coming this year.”

2024: I abandoned Decibel sales director James Lewis to endure a punisher alone in the hotel lobby the morning after the show. James engaged him, so don’t be too sympathetic. Plus, I had to drive two hours back home to take my son to his drum lesson. Never know when you’ll need a fill-in!

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

Kills and thrills  Editor-in-Commandant Mudrian with Mark “Barney” Greenway and Napalm Death at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, PA, June 6, 2013

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anthony Bartkewicz Emily Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez John Hill Jonathan Horsley Neill Jameson Kim Kelly Greg Kennelty Sarah Kitteringham Daniel Lake Cosmo Lee Jamie Ludwig Shane Mehling Tim Mudd Justin M. Norton Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Brad Sanders José Carlos Santos Joseph Schafer Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

MAIN OFFICE

P.O. Box 36818 Philadelphia, PA 19107 Tel: 215.625.9850 / Fax: 215.625.9967 www.decibelmagazine.com

Jason Blake Shane Gardner Hillarie Jason Shimon Karmel Scott Kinkade Katja Ogrin Ester Segarra Hristo Shindov Gene Smirnov Hannah Verbeuren Frank White

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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $34.95.

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, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia PA 19107.

Copyright ©2025 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.

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ISSN 1557-2137

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PHOTO BY JOSHUA T. COHEN

New York’s Irving Plaza, which was the site of the first-ever NYC show I attended as a teenager (Rollins Band on May 11, 1994). Good start.

REFUSE/RESIST

March 2025 [T245]

2012: The first year of the tour sells out

READER OF THE

MONTH Wayfarer, Kelly Schilling from Dreadnought and Paul Riedl from Blood Incantation.

You annually attend the Sundance Film Festival.

What were your three favorite films from 2024, and do you see metal crossing over more into mainstream films?

My three favorite films from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival were:

William Reigeluth Venice, FL

You own every issue of Decibel. I’m not certain I even have every issue of Decibel. When did you make it your mission to complete your collection, and were there any issues particularly hard to track down?

It hasn’t been so much of a mission to own every issue of Decibel, but more like supporting something I believe is done the right way. As a passionate fan of metal, once I started learning about all the bands featured and reviewed in Decibel way back in 2004, I had the fear of missing out, and thus, made sure to always renew my subscription. Plus, I love stuff like the late [columns] Cry Now, Cry Later and South Pole Dispatch that are a fun read.

6 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

You’ve attended the past two Metal & Beer Fests in Denver, the most recent of which is reviewed in this issue. What were your highlights of that weekend?

Well, that’s easy: My biggest highlight was you telling me I was in [editorial notes] Just Words in the February 2024 issue, which I embarrassingly missed somehow. Subsequently, I was then able to brag to my superstar fashion designer/stylist cousin Micaela Erlanger, who has been featured in tons of publications, that I was in Decibel, and she was not. Other highlights of that weekend are hanging out with my friend Doro for two days and hiking with her at Red Rocks, plus getting chances to talk with Shane McCarthy from

1. Porcelain War 2. Black Box Diaries 3. Will & Harper I hope more metal songs are featured in future Hollywood films, but it depends on how the studio feels about the application of the song in the film. For songs in Hollywood films, it’s all about what is socially acceptable and will make people want to see the film again. It’s great hearing Kverlertak in a film like Trolljegeren, but I don’t foresee it happening a lot.

Since you own every issue, who would you like to see on the cover? Note: This doesn’t mean we’re going to do it; just curious who you think we’ve missed.

I would like to see Between the Buried and Me on the cover of Decibel. Everything they have done, especially Colors, has been pretty amazing.

ChuckBB.com / Instagram: @chuckbb_art

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while we beat the shit outta Jay Leno.

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

This Month’s Mutha: Julie Christmas Mutha of two children!

From Battle of Mice and Made Out of Babies to Cult of Luna and your solo work, your tastes clearly lean toward the avant-garde. Are your kids there yet?

My son is eight. Eight-year-old boys like any songs with fart noises in them. Does that count as avant-garde? He’s in a band with two other eightyear-olds called M.E.N. They don’t practice and aren’t sure who’s on guitar. They wrote a very cruel song called “You’re So Lonely.” It’s dark.

My daughter is old enough to be moving away from stupid pop songs. She is starting to like St. Vincent; she liked Aurora when we played the same festival. I think she could be headed for an emo phase. She defends her choices. “Don’t YUCK my YUM” is a phrase I’ve heard.

The pictures above appear to be from Hellfest 2024. How did they take to the festival scene?

My girl went RIGHT to work. She’s loud and was hawking merch like a warrior. She loved being able to make up her face in crazy ways every night, and our amazing merch guy taught her how to use the square to take payments. She did cartwheels all over the place. Johannes [Persson] also brought his daughter, so she had a partner in crime. My son was bored by the long car rides, but he was great at go time! He got into helping with gear and playing practical jokes on unsuspecting band members.

A young woman in a band wants to have a child and continue to tour. What’s the number-one

piece of advice you can offer?

You can do it, get planning early. This is a chance for your kids to see more of the world, and you don’t have to go far to do it. Find the local supermarket or park, and take them in each town.

They can see what other people eat, different words and packages, and handle different kinds of money. Their eyes open to the fact that their world is not the center of the universe in a very cool way. Teach them to say please and thank you in every language. Be grateful to managers, promoters and venues; this is hard for them to do and we need more people like them so moms and dads can go FUCK IT UP on stage.

Your kids are too old for this now, but where do you stand on band onesies?

Are they too old? Don’t box in my kids with your filthy ageism. Also, have you seen ANY runway show? Onesie casual is the new athleisure.

What are you most proud of for each of them?

Before you have kids, you see younger people and think they have been molded into what they are.

That’s partially true, but kids actually come with their own personalities, interests and skills. My kids are grounded, smart, cool and kind. They can make a joke and take a joke. They adapt quickly.

They are learning how to fight when they have to. They make mistakes and deal with it. They are always busy learning something new and looking for fun. I want to hang out with older them, and so would you. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Phrenelith, Ashen Womb  16, Guides for the Misguided  Mortiis, Keiser av en dimensjon ukjent  Imperial Triumphant, Goldstar  Paradise Lost, Draconian Times ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Sepultura, Arise  Extreme Noise Terror, In It for Life  The KLF, Chill Out  Massive Attack, 100th Window  Bailter Space, Wammo ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  New Skeletal Faces, Until the Night  Unto Others, Never, Neverland  Living Gate, Suffer as One  Master Boot Record, Hardwarez  Original Game Soundtrack, Contra: Hard Corps ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Tzompantli, Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force  Imperial Triumphant, Goldstar  Living Gate, Suffer as One  Unto Others, Never, Neverland  Tomb Mold, Planetary Clairvoyance

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Steve Jansson : CRY P T S ERMON/ DA EVA

 Ruïm, Black Royal Spiritualism – I.O Sino da Igreja  Katharsis, VVorldVVithoutEnd  Dio, The Last in Line  Klaus Schulze, Silhouettes  Savatage, Hall of the Mountain King

PHOTO BY

8 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

SCOTT KINKADE

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2024

 Back to the front Thanks to help from pinch (heavy) hitter Chad Gailey, Autopsy relegate Reifert to vocal-only duties and save their perfect attendance record

AS

decibel steamed into the Mile High City for the third installment VENUES: Summit of the West’s loudest, heaviest and WHEN: December 6-7, 2024 most extreme craft beer festival, PHOTOS BY HILLARIE JASON there were a couple extra flavors mixed in with the hops: resilience and reverence. Up and down the bill, bands overcame adversity to avoid fan disappointment. Not a beat was missed, proving once more that extreme music’s finest are as dedicated to the fans as the fans are to them. Thirteen breweries from eight states also descended on a wave of ales, slinging drafts that honored the bitter and sweet alike. —TIM MUDD WHERE:

DAEVA

Denver, CO

F R I D AY

Listen, I get it: someone has to open the fest,

but come on. If you’re still sleeping on black thrash maniacs Daeva, you are seriously fucking up. Featuring half of doom lords Crypt Sermon—drummer Enrique Sagarnaga, bassist Frank Chin and unstoppable riff machine Steve Jansson—Philly’s finest blazed through their first of two weekend sets flexing choice cuts from 2022’s Through Sheer Will and Black Magic. Vocalist Edward Gonet fronted the spectacle with rasps and shrieks that came across like the second coming of Per “Dead” Ohlin. What Denver witnessed was truly something sinister. The devil is real and it’s time you knew his name. —MICHAEL WOHLBERG 10 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

SUGGESTED PAIRING: Nepenthe Brewing’s Polluted Sanctuary (Daeva/Empress Rising collab) / American Pale Ale / 6%

UPON STONE

Bathed in ominous lighting and draped in sonic

darkness, Upon Stone delivered a suffocating wave of melodic (if not slightly blackened) death metal. Oppressive yet majestic, their set blurred the lines between desolation and grandeur. Haunting melodies crashed into blast beats and cavernous growls, each song an invocation of grief, rage and the cold, vast unknown. By the time they unleashed a blistering cover of the At the Gates genre anchor “Blinded By Fear,” the crowd was pulled into

their somber vision like a black hole swallowing light. —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: Incantation Brewing’s Paradise Failed (Upon Stone collab) / Saison / 5.5%

NECROPANTHER

Fast, feral and razor-sharp, Necropanther tore

into the crowd with thrash-infused melodeath fury. Precision riffing. Relentless energy. And despite counting themselves among the weekend’s walking wounded (guitarist Joe Johnson was clearly hobbling offstage through the Summit from a recent leg injury), their attack was lethal and immediate, igniting a shred-banging spectacle that left no head unthrashed. The longtime independent hometown heroes didn’t perform—they attacked. —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: Black Sky Brewery’s Black Thrash Stout (Necropanther collab) / Dry Stout / 5%

DREADNOUGHT

With banks of keyboards dwarfing Emily Shreve

and delightfully airy dual vocals sharing the pendulum swing with heartfelt metalgazing— not to mention the occasional slithery sway dancing of guitarist/vocalist Kelly Schilling— Dreadnought presented as the sort of band that would take time out to ask how you were doing while compressing your ribcage with a concrete

From lasts to firsts  Baker (l) and Cirith Ungol make their Denver debut quite possibly their finale, while Wagner (r) and Earthburner set the stage ablaze at one of their first-ever performances

slab and solving for x. Kill ’em with kindness, as they say. Kill ’em with kindness and smarts, we say! Brutality was tempered with delicacy as the post-rock progressiveness of new material from The Endless juggled fiery fierceness and coquettish intelligence, the wealth of dynamics and intricacy of layers aided greatly by a pristine P.A. mix. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO SUGGESTED PAIRING: Black Sky Brewery’s The Paradigm Pilsner (Dreadnought collab) / Pilsner / 5.5%

UNDERGANG

With Spectral Voice’s Eli Wendler filling in on

drums, the joke rustling through the crowd was how a substantial number of attendees have never actually seen Wendler play his instrument! A week of clandestine rehearsals helped to wash away any spotlight nervousness the band and their temporary backstop might have been encountering—while the bright white Undergang hoodies made sure anyone wearing one could be seen from space! As they bulldozed through their set, it became evident that 50 minutes was asking a lot of the death metal Danes as they sprinkled in bits of crossover and slices of grind to teeter on the redline as everyone held on for dear life. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO SUGGESTED PAIRING: Black Sky Brewery’s Brusk (Undergang collab) / Dark Porter / 8%

FROZEN SOUL

Cold, crushing and utterly relentless, Frozen

Soul turned the stage into an icebound battlefield. Singer Chad Green’s glacial growls shook the room, while the set featured a surprise guest appearance from Skinless vocalist Sherwood Webber as well as Green’s brother, Josh. Midway through, Green paused for a sobering moment: “Mental health is not a joke. We’ve lost a lot of good people. Check in on your friends and family, and—most importantly—check in on yourselves.” It was a heartfelt interlude amidst the storm, proof that Frozen Soul’s mission runs far deeper than riffs alone. —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: 3 Floyds Brewing’s Berried in Ice (Frozen Soul collab) / Sour Ale / 7.2%

AUTOPSY

As if a Severed Survival full-album set wasn’t rare enough, Autopsy took the stage as a fivepiece for the first time ever on Friday night, linking up with Necrot drummer Chad Gailey while usual drummer/vocalist Chris Reifert was sidelined with a shoulder injury. Gailey, who was announced for the performance just days in advance, nailed his parts like he’d been playing with the band for years. Reifert kept the crowd energy high despite the late hour, performing with his shoulder in a sling. Autopsy showed

their appreciation for the audience with crowd pleaser “Fuck You!!!” to end the night, asserting their place as the kings of filthy death metal.

—EMILY BELLINO SUGGESTED PAIRING: Adroit Theory Brewing Company’s Severed Survival (Autopsy collab) / Hazy Triple IPA / 10%

S A T U R D AY

OAK, ASH & THORN

Stepping straight from the mists of an ancient

realm, Denver’s own—and recent Season of Mist signees—Oak, Ash & Thorn opened night two with a medieval blackened doom invocation. Folk-infused melodies intertwined with thunderous riffs, while evocative storytelling transported the crowd to shadowed glades and forgotten legends. Charismatic frontman Adam Armstrong led an inspired set that unfolded like a dark folktale, whispering of something eternal. —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: Incantation Brewing’s Auras (Oak, Ash & Thorn collab) / Belgian Blonde / 4.5%

GLACIAL TOMB

The hometown death squad’s return to the

Summit stage marked a milestone in Metal & Beer Fest history. Guitarist and vocalist Ben Hutcherson, also of Khemmis fame, is the DECIBEL : M A RCH 2 0 25 : 11

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2024

 Skinned alive Sherwood Webber of Skinless joins Frozen Soul on stage to provide guest vocals during “Morbid Effigy”

only person to perform at all three of our Colorado-based fests. And with riffs like these, who could be surprised? New drummer Joey Spates, however, got his chance to prove his rhythmic worth during his live debut with the trio. Though fresh material from this year’s Lightless Expanse LP was eagerly anticipated—and absolutely delivered—their cover of Sepultura classic “Territory” couldn’t help but get the blood and fists pumping. Are we looking for a four-peat, Albert? —MICHAEL WOHLBERG SUGGESTED PAIRING: Black Sky Brewery’s Lightless Expanse (Glacial Tomb collab) / Black Lager/ 6.5%

EARTHBURNER

If you blinked, you missed a riff; if you stood still, you became the pit. The extreme metal supergroup Earthburner (featuring members of old-school and new-school heroes Broken Hope and Sanguisugabogg) unleashed pure grindcore annihilation fused with death metal savagery.

The tempo was breakneck, the energy chaotic, the impact immediate—a relentless barrage that left bodies whiplashed and grins plastered across sweat-soaked faces. So powerful was the onslaught that even bassist Tyler Affinito was compelled to drop his instrument and jump into the moshing fray for set closer “Slaves to the Screen.” —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: WarPigs Brewing’s Night Grinder (Earthburner collab) / Schwartzbier / 6%

CRYPT SERMON

When Crypt Sermon hit the stage, heavy metal

salvation arrived. Soaring vocals, galloping riffs 12 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

and epic melodies called to the faithful like a trumpet blast. Brooks Wilson’s impassioned delivery and the band’s sweeping arrangements from their 2024 Decibel Album of the Year, The Stygian Rose, felt both timeless and alive. Despite performing without keyboardist Tanner Anderson, who suffered a broken leg just days earlier, this was a sermon in triumph, righteous and unmistakably metal. —TIM MUDD SUGGESTED PAIRING: Attic Brewing’s Saturnine Feline (Crypt Sermon collab) / Schwarzbier Dark Lager / 5%

PALLBEARER

Despite owning everything bearing Pallbearer’s

name, the band is one I rarely ever put on at home. Invariably, after each time I’ve witnessed them live, I say to myself, “This band fucking rules! I should listen to them more often,” but rarely do. After the masterful guitar contrasts and arrangement crescendos caressed by Brett Campbell’s ever-improving vocals, this night was one of those where I made a pact with myself to spend more time with Pallbearer in exchange for them totally blowing me away. The woman twerking in front of me to selections from Foundations of Burden and Mind Burns Alive agreed.

Twerking?! To doom metal?! Denver, you never fail to make me love you. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO SUGGESTED PAIRING: Incantation Brewing’s Signals (Pallbearer collab) / Mixed Culture Sour / 5.5%

CIRITH UNGOL

band’s live lineup. My internal chronological battles did nothing, however, to subtract from the performance delivered by this classic force on what is supposed to be their farewell lap around the globe. If they are still pulling off “Frost and Fire” and “I’m Alive” this explosively a year from now—and frontman Tim Baker’s twirling stage presence can still be as captivating as Robert Garven’s drum solo—both my pre-teen and middle-aged selves will have serious sit-down discussions with them about forging onward. Ignore the finality of their tour shirts!

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO SUGGESTED PAIRING: Brimming Horn Meadery’s Black Machine (Cirith Ungol collab) / Buckwheat honey mead / 12%

YOB

It’s hard to think of a trio that sounds more massive than YOB. The Oregon doom crushers performed a career-spanning set as they closed out the weekend, going as far back as their 2002 debut, Elaborations of Carbon and hitting staple tracks along the way. Frontman Mike Scheidt remains a captivating figure, his voice equal parts commanding and gentle. The audience made its love for YOB known, so much so that they never had to leave the stage before diving into encore “Nothing to Win.” On a day packed to the gills with epic doom and heavy metal performances, YOB showcased why they’ve been a singular band in the genre for nearly two decades.

Both my 1981 and 2024 selves spent the first

—EMILY BELLINO

portion of Cirith Ungol’s set grappling with the realization that I am older than half of the

SUGGESTED PAIRING: Magnanimous Brewing’s Aeons Ale (YOB collab) / Pale Ale / 6%

seale, wa

march 28/29/30

Dead Space [MOTIVE STUDIO/ELECTRONIC ARTS]

WIM COPPERS OF

LIVING GATE Old Man Yells at Reader here is an odd constant about the

human condition, but lately I’m noticing it a lot more. And that’s our inability to shut the fuck up and attempt to allow others to live their own lives. I’m not talking about keeping quiet about abusers or other shitbag examples of humanity, even though it seems like a lot of people are fine with silence there as long as the band or label releasing it is seen as either “cool” or “morally sound.” The latter especially; if you’ve done your part to alert everyone you know that something is “sketch,” it’s somehow OK to sweep the skeletons you might have under the rug, or whatever the saying is.

This idea of giving a shit about what everyone else is into is at an all-time high—like tours or fests that don’t align with whatever underground sensibility you think you have. And again, I’m not talking about a fest that might have a band that had a member who once shared an Uber with someone who had a Graveland album—you guys can keep getting those shut down, don’t let me ruin your fun. But the larger, more well-known bands and fests. Thinking you’re into those kinds of bands somehow makes you cooler to everyone unfortunate enough to hear you ranks below sending a “like” request for your band to someone you just friended on Facebook 40 seconds ago.

We all came up from somewhere. Some grew up with Slipknot when, at the time they were starting to get big, I was way out of the kind of thing. Doesn’t mean I begrudge anyone for being nostalgic for it. And I don’t really fucking care if someone is middle-aged and never got deeper into the underground than when they started.

Why? Because it just doesn’t fucking affect my life in the slightest.

14 : M A RCH 2025 : DECIBEL

This is just a small example of a larger issue: Everyone is so fucking nosy and concerned with what everyone else is doing. It’s 2025 and you’re still basing your enjoyment of something around what other people may think? The fucking internet ruined any mystique of, well, anything over decade ago. We have an overwhelming inability to just ignore things, which is fucking maddening when you consider all the possible things out there to distract us long enough until we’re put in a box in the ground.

Some label released a record you didn’t like?

Who fucking cares. Some band you think sucks is getting attention? Still, who fucking cares. Go listen to something you do like, if you like anything at all. All this grandstanding accomplishes is letting others know you’re an asshole. Think about it for a moment: Do you know someone like this? What is your opinion of them? Others’ opinions on them? Real cool people, right? About as cool as farting blood on a first date. Those are the same people who put different causes on their social media, not because they necessarily are doing anything about them, but so that you know they care.

“Care” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

All this noise just sounds like people wishing for bigger dicks without realizing no one wants to fuck them regardless. I wish we could plow into this year learning to concentrate on ourselves and cultivating the gentle art of shutting the fuck up, but I’m pretty sure that it’s only going to get worse. In fact, I’m pretty sure I made this argument here once or twice in the last 10 years, and yet I feel more exhausted by people now than ever before. Please don’t be the straw that breaks someone’s back. For once, just keep it to yourself.

DOESN’T HAVE TIME FOR NINTENDO

T

his has been, and always will be, a

column focused on just two things: heavy music and video games.

Though the boundaries of what is considered “metal” are constantly being pushed—consider bands like Babymetal and Mac Sabbath (or don’t)—the core of the genre will forever have an association with macabre, darker aspects of the human experience. It can be a lot for some musicians to absorb on a near-constant basis, and the colorful, childlike franchises typically affiliated with industry behemoth Nintendo have become a welcome temporary escape from the void. In the case of Wim Coppers, the prolific Belgian drummer currently representing international death metal unit Living Gate, the appeal of gaming is more about its shades of gray.

Coppers is far from the stereotypical edgelord commonly associated with the digital playground. A dedicated player since the ’80s, his enthusiasm for the medium and genuine curiosity for the latest titles is as infectious as it is endearing. Sony consoles and their library of games have claimed a big part of this self-described “hardcore casual gamer’s” history for the past 30 years. While our extended online interview covers his lifelong interest in much greater detail, the following excerpt focuses on the glaringly obvious point: We’re metalheads, and sometimes we’re the ones who stare back into the void.

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Nintendo is just a great umbrella for me to describe games that I’m not into and I just can’t get into it…

I play death metal, I play black metal, I look like I look.

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IT’S NOT FOR ME.

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[Prior to this interview, we were given] the list of games that you were playing, and it is everything under the sun. You typically play pretty grim music, and you also mentioned that you’re not much of a Nintendo player. Do you find yourself gravitating more towards grimdark fantasy storytelling or are video games more of an escape for you?

I think it can be both. I am attracted to the more grim, dark games, but I can still easily lose myself in it. It’s not because it’s not fluorescent pink that I’m not all of a sudden transported into a different world, but I do game to forget where I’m at for a bit. A good game is a game that I start playing, and then all of a sudden it’s four hours later and I forgot that I had laundry in the machine going. That’s why I game.

But I definitely am more attracted to postapocalyptic The Last of Us kind of storytelling.

Dead Space is so nuts. Every door I open, I’m [aiming down sights], and I’m just like, Ohhh, here we go, here we go! Even though I played it many years ago, obviously, I forgot everything.

That’s great! Everything is so tense and the sound design, all that whispering going on and

the whole 7.2 [surround sound] audio thing, it’s just great.

My girlfriend at some point started playing The Sims 4. She was playing it on my PlayStation 4 because I still have that set up at her place. I somehow was lured in. I kept on watching. I was like, “Oh, how do you make money? What’s the point? How big is your house?” And then I built a character and I played The Sims 4 for, I don’t know, a month? I invested a lot of time in it. I can definitely play quirky games and still have a great time. Fall Guys is a great example.

When that hit during the pandemic and when we needed an hour break from Call of Duty, we started Fall Guys and we had a blast. It’s fun.

But in general, Nintendo is just a great umbrella for me to describe games that I’m not into and I just can’t get into it. It’s not catered towards me, especially if it’s packaged in this Nintendo kind of packaging where everything is colorful and cute. I play death metal, I play black metal, I look like I look. It’s not for me.

Story-driven games are definitely high on my preference list: something immersive with great gameplay mechanics.

CONTINUE AT DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM

Beware the sign of the storm!

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DECIBEL : M A RCH 2025 : 15

GAYTHEIST Take a ride (not for free) with Portland noisemongers’ latest

I

do consider the name a double-edged sword. The side that really cuts is where all the money is, though.” ¶ The name Gaytheist sticks out to a lot of people, and as guitarist/vocalist Jason Rivera admits, much of that attention has not led to fame or fortune. But aside from Rivera being both gay and an atheist, the name also represents how the Portland power trio has spent the last 13 years focused on what they want to do. And that’s no different with their newest mutation of poppunk, metal and noise rock, The Mustache Stays. ¶ “I think I’m always trying to be original,” Rivera says of writing their sixth full-length. “The impossible goal is to work within these genres that have walls around them. It’s just trying to refine it and make this particular thing that we’re doing more interesting.” ¶ This was helped by a schedule that Rivera says involved a lot more preparation. “Traditionally, when an album gets recorded,

16 : M A RCH 2025 : DECIBEL

half of it we’re writing as we’re getting ready for the studio. And with this, some of these songs we started playing in like 2021. I had a ton of time to figure out vocals, and the songs, I feel, are super extra tight.”

Super extra tight or not, it may be the band’s strongest album yet, with the meticulous whirlwind rhythm section of Nickolis Parks (drums) and Timothy Hoff (bass) underpinning an endless stream of guitar hooks and Rivera’s disarmingly soaring vocal style delivering some quite grim lyrics. And this leads to a question Rivera was once asked: whether the band is serious or tongue-in-cheek. His answer was, and is, “Yes.” “I’m just trying to express my rage and anger at the human race and at myself,” he says of his lyrical themes. “And trying to make it more honest—or I should say sincere. I

mean, we have shows where I’m just silly the whole night, and then we have shows where I’m almost on the verge of tears and we get through it, and they’re both the same. You might get one or the other, but, you know, it’s just all there.”

Despite the potential of The Mustache Stays, Rivera doesn’t mind if the Gaytheist moniker (among other things) continues to prevent the band from achieving rock stardom.

“It’s just not what I’m interested in doing,” he shrugs. “I always feel like I just want to present this vision. Like I’m trying to craft these albums that I want to listen to and it’s something that makes me happy. And at shows we always have our own little crowd. It may be smaller than the rest of the crowd, but they showed up for us.”

—SHANE MEHLING

PHOTO BY JAMES REXROAD

GAYTHEIST

CENTURY

CENTURY

Swedish trad-metal duo storms the big screen for inspiration

W

hen we last caught up with the lads from Century, it was early 2023. The Swedish trad metal duo was just about to release their full-length debut, The Conquest of Time. Guitarist/vocalist Staffan Tengnér and drummer/bassist Leo Sollenmo were already riding high on the endorsement of black metal OG and tastemaker Fenriz—not to mention a looming appearance at the Hell’s Heroes festival in Houston. “I’ve only been to New York City before, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing many of these other cities I’ve only seen in movies,” Tengnér told us at the time. ¶ Fast forward to right about now, and Century have conquered America. Or at least Houston. “It was fucking wild!” our man says. “The whole tour was a lot of fun, but Hell’s Heroes was definitely a highlight for us. It felt unreal to travel so far away from home and be welcomed by the crowd in that packed venue, with people singing the songs back to us, especially considering the full album wasn’t even officially released yet.”

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And now album two is here. Sign of the Storm is a throwback to classic NWOBHM, early-’80s Scandi-metal (think 220 Volt, Torch, the first two Europe albums), sharp as steel and infectious to the hilt. “Heavy metal from the early ’80s is always our main source of inspiration, as many of our favorite bands either formed or found their sound around that time,” Tengnér offers. “Music production also changed a lot during the mid-to-late ’80s, and I think most of the best-sounding metal albums came out right before that change.”

Lyrically, Tengnér continues to cull inspiration from his widescreen favorites. Whereas The Conquest of Time cited John Carpenter, French arthouse sci-fi and the highbrow drama of fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman, Sign of the Storm takes its title from a line in Conquest’s closing track, which was inspired by

Lucio Fulci’s 1983 fantasy headache Conquest. Meanwhile, the fiery inflections and surging chorus of “The Chains of Hell” were activated by a very specific double feature.

“It was definitely Hellraiser!”

Tengnér says with a laugh when we suggest Clive Barker’s flesh-peeling franchise. “I watched both the second and third films one evening back in 2021 and recorded a rough demo of the track that same night.”

Even songs that don’t have a specific movie reference, like killer opener “Sacrifice,” sound like a swords ‘n’ sorcery flick from the ’80s. “Lyrically, it was inspired by the mythological symbol of the golden bough,” our man explains.

“It’s about a warrior who challenges a powerful sorcerer in order to assume his power. Basically, succession by the sword and a passing of the torch.” —J. BENNETT

SAVAGE LANDS

SAVAGE LANDS

Extreme metal royalty helps plant seeds of hope

S

ylvain demercastel and dirk verbeuren work with a wide array of collaborators in Savage Lands, the metal project/environmental nonprofit they founded together in 2022. On their debut album, Army of the Trees, Demercastel plays guitar, Verbeuren drums on three songs (his day job in Megadeth kept him from doing more), and close to 25 additional musicians fill in the blanks. Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz, Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser and Obituary’s John Tardy are just a few of the heavy hitters who appear on the record, but Savage Lands’ most famous collaborator is undoubtedly Dr. Jane Goodall. The 90-year-old primatologist appears on the band’s website, standing next to Demercastel and flashing the devil horns. ¶ “She’s a hardcore death metal fan,” Demercastel jokes. ¶ “Listening to Obituary all day long,” Verbeuren adds. ¶ In reality, Goodall’s work with Savage Lands supports their mission of promoting biodiversity by financing reforestation projects. Demercastel got the idea for the band during the pandemic real estate boom in his adopted home of Costa Rica.

20 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

Thousands of acres of rainforest vanished virtually overnight. “I would hear the chainsaw every day,” Demercastel says. “I got completely upset about it, and then I called Dirk.”

“Sylvain is amazing,” Verbeuren says. “He’s been an activist his whole life, pretty much. I’ve always aspired to be more than just a spectator that got upset with stuff, [but] I’ve never felt like I had the time and the tools to really make it happen myself, because I’m always too busy with bands. But Sylvain was like, ‘This is my domain.

I can do this.’”

Music and mission are deeply interwoven in Savage Lands.

Album highlight “The Last Howl” features Tardy at his most simian, paying homage to the endangered howler monkey. It’s estimated that half of Costa Rica’s howlers have disappeared in the past 15 years due to habitat loss. Proceeds from “The Last Howl” will directly fund the work of rebuilding their homes.

“Only by listening to the music, [the fans] are helping, because everything goes to the nonprofit.

There’s no intermediary,” Demercastel says.

Some people have been inspired to do more. “I’ve had people write and say, ‘I know it’s not much, but I bought this little piece of land behind my house, and I’m keeping it wild and taking care of it,’” Verbeuren says. “That’s exactly what we want.”

As for Goodall, her foundation is teaming up with Savage Lands on reforestation projects in Demercastel’s native France and in Burundi, where habitat loss has pushed the chimpanzee population to the brink. Demercastel says her blessing has been a legitimizing force.

“Some people might not know the metal world, or they might think we’re just metalheads, full of dreams,” he says. “But then when they see that Dr. Jane Goodall is partnering up with us, maybe they think we’re not so crazy after all.”

—BRAD SANDERS

SABER

SABER

L.A. heavy metallers sharpen their teeth through turbulent years

TO

say saber’s sophomore outing, Lost in Flames, is “trauma-inspired” is an understatement. The emerging L.A.-based traditional heavy metal outfit went through hell while writing the follow-up to 2021’s Without Warning. According to guitarist Joel Dominguez, “We were on the verge of just giving up. It almost felt like the universe was against us. It was terrible. ¶ “I had a back injury,” continues Dominguez, who formed Saber in 2018 alongside bassist Dave Sanchez, lead guitarist Antonion Pettinato and vocalist Steven Villa. (Drummer Jesus Decay joined in 2021.) “I couldn’t lay out or stand up for more than five minutes… it was so painful,” he recalls. “I went to go see a specialist and they gave me an MRI, and apparently I had a herniated disc.” ¶ While Dominguez was undergoing months of “excruciating” physical therapy in lieu of surgery, Villa was struggling as well. “Steven’s relationship was declining, and he was spiraling down,” says Dominguez.

“It was hard for me to be there for him because I had to take care of myself. So, he felt alone. We have this close connection.

We’re almost like brothers. And I couldn’t be there for him.”

22 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

Simultaneously, Saber were hot off the heels of the Allied Forces tour, receiving a gig to open for blackthrashers Midnight in San Diego.

“It was a sold-out show. A great night,” enthuses Dominguez. “We were getting ready to get all of our gear out. And [Sanchez] brings his car in, loads up his gear and puts [the car] back to where it was. Then he came back just to say goodbye to everybody.”

Sanchez returned to his car to discover that someone had broken in, stealing his bass, pedals and leather jacket. Around that same time, Dominguez received a harrowing call from Decay.

“He’s like, ‘My house burned down.’ He sends the pictures and, like, everything is just gone. After a while, he [said], ‘My dog was in there and no one was home.’

So, unfortunately, his dog passed away and they didn’t have home insurance. They bought the house in cash. Him and his mom had nowhere to go. It was completely insane. This is just the stuff of nightmares.”

All of this occurred while COVID was raging. Given the fire, Decay’s mother was forced to return to work, despite being retired. Rather than succumb, Saber created a GoFundMe for their bandmate, and “came together as brothers.” The result is the hungry Lost in Flames.

Emulating Cauldron, Skull Fist and Haunt, the eight-track album is elevated by Villa’s epic screams and is chock full of catchy bangers.

As Dominguez says, “It’s the best thing we [could] do: channel our frustration, our sadness, all of our pain, and pick up our instruments and play. [It was] our salvation from all the pain and sorrow that we were going through at that time. It’s just a matter of having the strength to get there. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. We have to get there. This past year, everything has just been significantly better for each and every one of us.

So great.”

And as the cherry on top, Sanchez eventually got his custom Rickenbacker back.

—SARAH KITTERINGHAM

PHRENELITH

PHRENELITH

Darkness-driven Danes don’t bug out about our destined demise

IT’S

common wisdom to avoid reading the comments on, well, anything, but we here at Decibel recognize that it can be hard to resist the temptation when your band is the topic of discussion.

That’s how Phrenelith guitarist and vocalist Simon Daniel found out that, according to at least one anonymous forum-dweller, his band is “death metal for black metal fans”—and to be fair, the Danish quartet isn’t exactly scrambling to beat the allegations. ¶ “It was initially something we all had a good laugh about, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense—especially in the context of the new album,” he says. Within the interlocking confines of Denmark’s small but mighty death metal scene (which counts Undergang, Hyperdontia and Phrenelith’s sister band, Sequestrum, among its sinister luminaries), Phrenelith truly do it darker than most. Their latest album, Ashen Womb, is an intentional throwback to death metal’s messy early days, when evil thrash met the Evil Dead, but there’s black metal lurking in its shadows. (For example, the melodic guitar work on songs like “Stagnated Blood” and “A Husk Wrung Dry” 24 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

is far more Dissection than Demigod, and the epic title track displays a masterful use of tense, gloomy atmosphere).

Ashen Womb is apocalyptic in focus, consumed by the existential dread of the Anthropocene.

Phrenelith are no strangers to cosmic, anti-human philosophy, but they dig especially deep this time around, encouraged by the rapid disintegration of the terrible world we’ve built. “The thought of the insignificance of us all in a chaotic and uncaring universe is something that has always fascinated me,” Daniel explains, citing Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, Norwegian pessimist Peter Wessel Zapffe and French philosopher Georges Bataille as major influences on his lyrics.

They are still a death metal band, though, and Ashen Womb certainly gets plenty gross, too. A seemingly straightforward song like “Astral Larvae,” is rife with parasites both literal and metaphorical—enough to make anyone sick. “I felt actual

distress while working on the lyrics because I can plainly not think of anything I find more repulsive than reading about parasites and their insectile organs,” Daniel says. “That might seem peculiar to some in light of all the death, gore and destruction that are present elsewhere in the lyrics.”

Phrenelith’s vision of the future may not be pretty, but it’s probably closer to reality than anyone cheering for a zombie apocalypse or massive space exodus may prefer to acknowledge. That’s the beauty of death metal—at the end of the album, everybody’s worm food, no matter how they ended up that way.

Much of the same could be said for humanity itself. “Ultimately, I think our downfall will be a lot more boring than most would expect,” Daniel muses. “It’ll be slow, but it’ll still be painful as we cling to a life that barely seems worth living. However, I think the truth is that there will probably always be some of us who make it and are able to live to suffer another day.” —KIM KELLY

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YEAR OF THE COBRA Veteran doom duo doubles as least lame parents in the Pacific Northwest

S

teve from stb records, who released our first album [2016’s …in the Shadows Below], said to us back when things started picking up, ‘Say yes to the things you want to do, and you’ll figure out how to make it happen.’” ¶ Johanes (John) Barrysmith is sharing one of the pieces of valuable advice he’s received since Year of the Cobra started fusing punk, grunge, psych rock, doom and sludge in 2015. Along every step of the way, the Seattle band has had to go the extra mile to make things happen. It starts with their lineup configuration: John beats drums while his partner, Amy Tung Barrysmith, sings and slings bass. ¶ “Two-piece bands are doing a lot better at not sounding like two-piece bands,” he reasons.

“Technology and creativity helps as they’ve found ways to fill space and make it sound huge; Mantar and Bell Witch are perfect examples.” ¶ “I play through two 8x10 cabinets that are two totally different tones, different amps, different pedals. It sounds like it’s baritone guitar, but it’s all bass,” says Amy about her rig.

26 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

She’s grateful for the magic that producer Matt Bayles worked in capturing the band’s latest and third full-length. “We were looking for someone precise and meticulous as an engineer, but also creative as a producer for an extra voice because it’s just the two of us.”

“We really feel we’ve written and recorded the record we’ve been trying to do,” John says about his satisfaction with the new album and the decision to self-title it. “We feel it’s an arrival point on some level and definitely our best foot forward.”

The lives of the Barrysmiths are further complicated by being the proud parents of two kids. This makes logistics more complicated— especially when the parents are the entire band!—when scheduling, writing, rehearsing and touring around their daughter’s ballet aspirations and their son’s dedication to athletics of all stripes.

“It’s a challenge,” understates John. “Our moms helped out when

they could, but they’re getting older, so we can’t lean on them too much. What we’ve started doing is that, if it’s a U.S. tour, the kids come with us. We’re hoping to take them to Europe next year. It used to take a lot of coordination and planning, but now, if the timing works out, we can throw ’em in the van with us.” “[But] they’re involved in a lot of activities,” counters Amy, “and I don’t want to take them away from their lives and futures for what I want to do. So, it’s a balancing of those things. But our daughter is 15 and almost ready to start driving, which will make our lives easier.”

When Decibel offers that maybe she can help by driving the Year of the Cobra van, the laughter is uproarious.

“I don’t know if John will let her drive the van,” Amy howls.

“He barely lets me drive the van!”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY AMY BARRYSMITH

YEAR OF THE COBRA

TORONTO THRASH LEGENDS

EMBODY THEIR NAME VIA THEIR FIRST RECORD IN 16 YEARS

IT

STORY BY KEVIN STEWART-PANKO | PHOTO BY KELLY CLARK

can hurt to play,” laughs Rob Urbinati. The Sacrifice vocalist/

guitarist is referring to one of the silent hurdles himself, fellow guitarist Joe Rico, drummer Gus Pynn and bassist Scott Watts continually face as each of them flirts with the age bracket that allows for unfettered access to senior menus and drug store discounts while remaining steadfast in their desire to playing lethal thrash metal. ¶ “This isn’t Bruce Springsteen, the Stones or those guys who are in their 80s playing music,” Urbinati asserts. “This is physical music, and our right arms are burning during some of the songs. I’m sure Gus will tell you there are songs that hurt to play.

I’m not saying we can’t do it, because if we couldn’t, we wouldn’t. We feel like we’re doing it at the level we were in our 20s; it just takes more out of us.”

28 : M J UANREC H 2 022042:5 D: EDCEI C BIEBLE L

Herein lies the rub. Even as the members of Sacrifice push along life’s back nine, they haven’t given up on doing what they love. In addition to those burning arms and aching backs, other hurdles include members spread across two countries; the pandemic’s soul-sucking, creativity-draining impact; and a 16-year gap between previous album The Ones I Condemn and latest full-length Volume Six. If none of that has put Sacrifice out to pasture, then what will?

“We’re the kind of band that doesn’t have recording and touring pressure behind us,” explains Urbinati. “We obviously enjoy doing this as our part-time thing.”

a variety of split EPs and live recordings. Now, With that in mind, a decade and a half Volume Six. (Urbinati: “That’s a nod to Black between albums is a mere blip on the radar Sabbath and the fact that it’s our sixth album.”) to the same four dudes who appeared on 1986 Recorded sporadically between September debut Torment in Fire. Heck, this bunch of dudes 2023 and May 2024, the album swings between is the same bunch of dudes who cranked out The parries of rapid-fire machine-gunning and Exorcism demo a year prior. That same bunch of songs with even-keeled tempos and grayscale dudes continue the tradition of enthusiastically gradation. Both sides of the Sacrifice coin scalding and turbulent thrash with Volume Six. allow Urbinati to continue expressing his bleak “I write all the time,” says Urbinati about takes and desolate observations on the state of the album’s genesis, “and around 2017 I wrote a couple songs I thought were really good. I played mankind, a sentiment expressed in the appropriately “apocalyptic-looking cover art” drawn them for the guys and they were totally happy

by Propagandhi bassist with the direction. I wrote and lifelong Sacrifice fan a couple more, and Gus Todd Kowalski. and I were making some “A lot of lyrics were real progress and talkwritten over the paning about recording; then demic when things were the pandemic hit. When feeling pretty apocathings started coming lyptic, especially at the back, our original plan beginning of it. There’s was to do an EP, but we that, world politics, war, had enough songs that we natural disasters—half were completely comfortof Canada was on fire last able and happy with to do year! The album is pretty a whole album.” dark and the art conveys Formed in 1983, the the content.”

Toronto natives took Volume Six is the interest in a variety of Sacrifice of the ’80s/ metal and hardcore, early-’90s heyday distilldropped a brick on the ing lessons learned and accelerator pedal and, in influences accrued into Urbinati, had a recognizan urgent and distinctive able banshee screech that 21st century staccato, helped define their sound tritone-abusing and, of before influencing huncourse, apocalyptic candreds of thrash frontmen non-fire blast. The band and most of black metal’s has been through the second wave. Torment in ringer of highs and lows.

Fire was followed by Hall They went from local subof Fame inductee Forward ROB URBINATI urban legends to the top to Termination. The latter of the nation’s popularity housed “Reanimation,” heap to the crashing low the single/video that of a breakup to the redisforced its way onto covery of not only their own love of the game, Canadian airwaves to the point that, by the end of 1988, the joke was the track had become but that legions of fans are still hungry for what the country’s unofficial third national anthem four dudes who were doing this in the ’80s have behind “The Hockey Song” by country icon on offer today.

Stompin’ Tom Connors and the actual national “If you read Sacrifice’s lyrics, you’d think anthem. A deal with Metal Blade brought 1990’s I was an extremely negative person,” laughs Soldiers of Misfortune and 1993’s Apocalypse Inside to Urbinati, “but I look back and think about how American audiences who would witness the band we’ve got to do a lot of stuff that most bands at U.S. fests and on tours with Believer, Bolt don’t get to do. We don’t have a massive fanbase, Thrower and Death. but the people who love our band are pretty solid Silence followed until September 23, 2006 and loyal. The older I get, the more I appreciwhen Sacrifice reconvened for a home turf ate that. We’re still the same original guys that reunion show before beginning the process recorded our first album. We’ve known each that birthed The Ones I Condemn. Since then, the other since we were kids, and we’re happy with band has made festival and one-off appearances where we are as a band and how things have throughout the Americas and Japan, and issued worked out.”

WE DON’T HAVE A MASSIVE FANBASE, BUT THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE OUR BAND ARE PRETTY SOLID AND LOYAL.

THE OLDER I GET, THE MORE I APPRECIATE THAT.

D EDCEI C BIEBLE :L M: AJ U RC NH E 2025 4 : 29

S TE FFE N KU MME R E R WEAVES TECH -DEATH M AS TERS

OBSCURA’s

MOST A MBITIOUS YARN YET

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STO R Y B Y JOH N H I LL

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PH OTO B Y G R Z E G O R Z G O Ł E B IOW S K I

hat the hell is a technical death metal band supposed to do when, 20 years into a career, seemingly every arpeggio and wild riff has been well-expunged?

Turns out the answer is slowing things down a bit. ¶ Germany’s Obscura have spent the better part of two decades playing incredibly complicated death metal riffs and keeping the genre lively from the 2000s to now. After completing a quadrilogy of records beginning with 2009’s Cosmogenesis, Obscura find themselves in the middle of a new trilogy with A Sonication. But much like Aliens or The Empire Strikes Back, the second installment in this series seeks to change things up significantly for the band instead of falling in line with what they’ve done previously.

MUANREC H 30 : J 2 022042:5 D: EDCEI C BIEBLE L

“There was a shift from previous records as I tried to become less guitar-centered,” band leader Steffen Kummerer says, expressing one of the most surprising things a tech-death guitarist has maybe ever uttered. “Songwriting is more like storytelling, and if you just think about a big story and everything’s just built around one character, it’s a little bit onedimensional. After seven albums, I had a little bit of this feeling because, on the other hand, if everything is centered about one character or one person, there’s no room for all the others.

And when it comes to production, my intention is always to highlight every musician who is in the band at that point.”

Kummerer had to write the band’s story quickly from the jump. When Obscura started in the early 2000s, they were late to the party, forming after the bands Kummerer fell in love with like Death, Atheist and Cynic had all broken up. “There was a kind of fun in making music that didn’t really exist anymore,” Kummerer says. “Like, we loved that music, but no one was playing it anymore at the time, so fuck it, we’ll do it on our own.” He started by learning Death’s “Flesh and the Power It Holds,” slowly building his craft until he was coming up with his own insane riffs and finding his own lane.

Driving down to Washington D.C. from New York City for Christmas, I threw on A Sonication for my wife, who likes heavier stuff enough, but doesn’t remotely fuck with anything super noodly. To my surprise, she got pretty invested in the record. Each instrument on the record has enough time to breathe and never overpowers another. It felt like a testament to that time spent honing the craft, realizing when to trust the instinct to shred and when to let the rest of the band do their thing. I relayed this to Kummerer, who let out a small chuckle.

“That’s fantastic. That’s like an early Christmas present,” he says, taking a pause.

“You work for months on a record like this, and you never know if people are going to hear what you’re thinking. I learned a very long time ago you need to leave room for other instruments at some point. Some records sound like other instruments getting in a fight with each other, which is always a nightmare. With our band, I mean, we work with a seven-string fretless bass, which is pretty difficult on its own to mix, not to mention adding blast beats on top. Jesus. It’s quite a task.”

Task accomplished. None of this is to say that Kummerer and company ever dumb things down; you’ll still get plenty of riffs and solos that’ll make you ask, “What the fuck is going on?” But unlike the vast majority of shredderfocused records in this genre, every part has a sense of weight behind it. “In Solitude” allows enough space between its parts to allow for something that feels truly emotive, the soaring highs of quick solos contrasted by blast beat chugs that sound determined to send the song straight into the underworld.

I ask if Kummerer worries about having to pull off certain songs live, or if he ever kicks himself for writing songs that are too complicated. “Oh, every show pretty much,” he laughs.

“Every live show you figure out what works and

what doesn’t, and sometimes you’re very surprised. In the studio, you assume something’s going to be a fantastic live song, and then when you play it, everyone is just standing around and there’s no vibe. But for whatever reason, you’ll catch people with a certain groove that might seem simple and it just attracts people. So, there are surprises both ways.”

It’s not an easy kind of chemistry to achieve for a band, especially one like this. Obscura have gone through some heavy lineup changes over the years, with 14 former full-time members and 10 touring musicians having been attached to the band at one point or another. I ask what it’s like going through that many members, and what comes up for there to be turnover.

“To be honest, not everyone is in a position to make a living off music only. I can because I’ve been running this ship for a very long time and I understand if people don’t want to be away from home for six to eight months a year; sometimes life comes up like that.” Kummerer reflects for a moment, looking at the bigger picture. “It’s always a journey to find the right people at the right time and have a good time together. But even if my journey ends with some people, I want us to leave as friends. The band is always going on, but the story of everyone’s life is always changing.”

EVEN IF MY JOURNEY ENDS WITH SOME PEOPLE, I WANT US TO LEAVE AS FRIENDS.

THE BAND IS ALWAYS GOING ON, BUT THE STORY OF EVERYONE’S LIFE IS ALWAYS CHANGING. STEFFEN KUMMERER

D EDCEI C BIEBLE :L M: AJ U RC NH E 2025 4 : 31

interview by

QA j. bennett

WIT H

BOBBY LIEBLING

PENTAGRAM main man on his new lineup, new album and how prison may have saved his life

32 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

W

hen I was a kid, I wanted to be either a New York Yankee or a rock [geographically] as we are now, but we never

star. Careful what you wish for, huh?” That’s Pentagram founder Bobby Liebling on the facts of life. In the underground sphere that Decibel occupies, far away from the bright lights and vicious ticket fees of stadium music, Liebling is absolutely a rock star. The band he started in 1971 in Washington, D.C., was poised to be the American answer to Black Sabbath. Pentagram recorded dozens of songs—Liebling says he wrote hundreds during a four-year period in the ’70s—at rehearsals, many of which only emerged decades later on the famed Last Daze Here collections. In ’75, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of KISS stopped by a Pentagram rehearsal, reportedly with an eye toward buying some of Liebling’s songs. That same year, Blue Öyster Cult’s manager-producers Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman did a demo session with Pentagram. But it all went tits up in a blaze of drugs, egos and arguments. ¶ Different Pentagram lineups released proper albums from the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, but Liebling lived in Beltway obscurity until the documentary Last Days Here, which depicted an emaciated Liebling nodding out at his elderly parents’ house while his then-manager Sean “Pellet” Pelletier implored him to get his shit together. ¶ And he did, sort of.

Decibel caught up with Liebling that same year, not long before Pentagram’s 2011 comeback album, Last Rites, hit the shelves. We spent an afternoon with him at his place in Ridley Park, just south of Philly. At that point, he was still living with his much-younger wife and their newborn son, Bobby, Jr. “He’s 14 now,” Liebling tells us. “Isn’t that a trip?” ¶ It is, of course. And it seems Bobby Jr. is doing okay. Liebling says his son has non-verbal autism and attends a special school: “He’s a fantastic kid. He gets straight A’s. He uses a tablet to communicate. He makes my life worth living.” ¶ After moving away for about a decade—and doing some prison time—the now 71-year-old Liebling is back in the Philly area. Lightning in a Bottle, the first new Pentagram album in a decade, sees Liebling with an entirely new lineup consisting of guitarist/producer Tony Reed (Mos Generator), drummer Henry Vasquez (Saint Vitus) and bassist Scooter Haslip (Mos Generator). Our man gave us a full rundown…

Lightning in a Bottle is the first Pentagram album in 10 years. What needed to happen to make it a reality?

Not much, really. Ten rough demo songs were sent to me by these guys [the new lineup] in 2023 when I was with the old lineup. I was financially hurting at the time. I came back from Europe and moved directly into a motel. I had nowhere else to go. I had vacated my folks’ house because I wasn’t gonna take the mortgage on. So, I moved back up to the Philly area, near broke, about to be on the streets. I couldn’t take the time to listen to these songs that had been sent to me.

I told them, “Sorry, my allegiance is to the guys I’m with.”

About six months went by, and I acquired the place where I’m living now. The guys in the old band couldn’t or didn’t want to travel anymore.

I said, “Look, I’m a lifer. This is my profession, my livelihood. I just can’t stop doing this.”

So, we amicably parted ways [in 2024] after playing our last show in May. Then I called up Henry Vasquez, Tony Reed and Scooter Haslip—the guys from Saint Vitus and Mos Generator that I’m with now—and they were still gung-ho on doing it. By that time, they had 18 songs in the can. I flew out to Tony’s house in Port Orchard, Washington, to record vocals. I had never met Tony or Scooter before. Four days later, I had tracked all the vocals for all the songs, with all the harmonies and backup stuff.

So, even though the last album came out 10 years ago, this one came together pretty quickly.

What’s the story there?

Really, during the last 10 years, after the movie came out, is when Pentagram really came into prominence and became well-known—touring Europe and so forth. We were just always busy.

At that time, we weren’t nearly as far apart

did any remote stuff, and we just never got it together to record. Plus, there was no label interest during that entire time.

Really? You guys were touring all the time, playing sold-out shows and huge festivals.

Plus, everyone knows who you are: Pentagram is a name-brand. You’d think that would be a no-brainer for a label.

Yeah, go figure. The First Daze Here collection sold great—still does. The first three on Peaceville still sell well. But [Pentagram’s 2015 album] Curious Volume did not do well, and never really recouped. Pellet was still working with the band at the time—we’ve since parted ways—and he eventually hooked up with Heavy Psych [Sounds], the label we’re with now.

But it had been too long without an album. I was very frustrated with that. Even though we were touring a lot, we weren’t so busy that we couldn’t record an album, you know? Plus …

Victor [Griffin] and Matt [Goldsborough] were switching in and out of the band on guitar, there was a mishmash of drummers, like five different guys, and me… well, I was still kinda detached and fucked up through a lot of that. It’s a different story now. These [holds up cigarette] are my crutch now, pretty much.

You’re totally clean?

I have a fall now and then. I’m human. But it doesn’t happen a lot. I’m too old. Too much shit has happened, too much water under the bridge. I don’t have time for it. I’m about business nowadays—and getting out there and doing it the right way. I’m an integral part of the inner workings now, and I’m fully present and accounted for.

I know the new guys wrote the music for most of the new songs, but are any of them from the famous Bobby Liebling archive of the early ’70s?

You’ve said you wrote hundreds of songs back then.

Just one. It’s called “I’ll Certainly See You in Hell.” There’s a real crude, early, basement-tape, lo-fi version of that up on YouTube somewhere; one of those “lost rehearsals” or whatever they call them. It was recorded with two plastic mics and a reel-to-reel tape recorder. I wrote that in 1970, and it’s a garage-rock, [13th Floor] Elevators type of thing. I love that stuff—they’re one of my earliest influences.

Lyric-wise, you wrote some and Henry wrote some?

I wrote a little more than half of them. Henry wrote four or five, but wrote them as if he DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 33

 Last daze? Still here

Liebling (center r) and a reworked Pentagram defy the odds to deliver a brand new album

took me out and detained me. They didn’t arrest me. They took my mom out in a blanket.

I don’t know why they didn’t wait for a stretcher. But they wouldn’t let me get near her because the neighbor told them I was hurting her. And instead of taking her to the hospital three miles from our house, they took her to one 25 miles away. But they took me to the hospital three miles away, still not arrested, but “observed.” Then they took me 180 miles away to a psych hospital on the other side of the state.

The night before this argument, I had smoked a bunch of coke. I wasn’t high at the time of the argument, but I had cocaine in my bloodstream.

The neighbor was going to testify in court.

Instead, my mom voluntarily spoke on my behalf and was completely on my side. She knew what had happened.

Well, I had to kick all kinds of shit in jail.

That was a blast, going cold turkey. I had a benzo habit at the time, plus crack, which isn’t addicting, but psychologically is a problem. I had two grand mal seizures from benzo withdrawal in jail.

It was fucked up, to say the least.

At the time this happened, I was 67. I was origiHow did you end up in prison?

were in my shoes. And you can hear it in the lyrics he wrote—songs like “Live Again.” That song has some drug references; and then, of course, the song “Lady Heroin,” which is a heavy-duty, cold, chilling cut that I adore.

Henry wrote the lyrics to that one.

No shit? That’s really putting himself in your shoes.

Very much. When I saw the lyrics, I said, “Damn, that’s me! That’s exactly how I feel.” He really nailed it with that one. I was proud, man. I never had another version of Pentagram where the other members knew the lyrics. And that stinks to me. When you see other bands onstage, there’s always another guy who’s not the singer mouthing some of the words. I never had that.

But these guys know every word to all the songs.

It feels like a team. Fifteen minutes after I met Tony Reed, we were like this. Instant mesh.

After all the addiction shit you’ve been through, is singing a song like “Lady Heroin” difficult?

No, because I’m in a lot better place with it now. I see it in retrospect and for what it was worth. You go through ups and downs and different avenues in life. You either grow up or you don’t—and I won’t. [Laughs] I refuse to. But you do have a little more wisdom when you’re older.

That’s why I was so impressed with Henry’s lyrics. He really put himself in my perspective. It really helped me to be able to feel stuff like that intensely. It felt good, man.

I know this isn’t your favorite topic, but ex-bandmates of yours are talking about it, so I think your fans should hear it from you.

34 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

You went to prison for a little while, and the rumors about how you got there aren’t pretty.

What really happened?

Okay, truth: For people who don’t believe me, look up the police records. They’re freely available. First of all, I never beat up my mom. I loved my mom to death. We were super close. My mom fell off an unattached toilet seat and hit her head on the wall. She was 87 at the time. We were having a loud verbal argument at the time through the door of the bathroom. I opened the bathroom door, she got scared, fell off and hit her head. She cut it open a little bit. At that age, you bruise like a banana. I know this now because I’m getting up there. When that happened, I got scared. I pulled her out of the bathroom and dragged by the arms into the living room.

My mom was on oxygen for the last six years of her life, so she couldn’t breathe. I tried to sit her up on the living room floor and I called 911. I’m not gonna do that if I beat on her. It’s unlikely, let’s put it that way. I was trying to hold her up with my knee while I was trying to get her hooked back up to the oxygen tank. She toppled to her side again and hit her head, again, in the same exact spot. So, now it was really bleeding, and I was really scared.

nally charged with first-degree assault, and four other things like “abuse of elderly adult.” These days, when you get charged with anything harmrelated, they tack on 15 other charges to make sure something sticks. So, they wanted me to do three to five years intensive in-patient in a drug program. I said, “What are you, nuts? My career is gone if I do that.” Then they come back and say, “Okay, we want you to do 10 years in prison.”

[Laughs] I obviously said no deal. I didn’t do anything! They talked it over some more and finally came back with five years, three-and-a-half suspended, so I’d get 18 months, minus the time served [while waiting for trial]. And they dropped it to a second-degree misdemeanor. So, I took it. I ended up doing about 13 and a half months.

What’d you do to pass the time inside?

Well, I had to kick all kinds of shit in jail. That was a blast, going cold turkey. I had a benzo habit at the time, plus crack, which isn’t addicting, but psychologically is a problem. I had two grand mal seizures from benzo withdrawal in jail. It was fucked up, to say the least. Other than that, I worked in the laundry, read a lot and listened to baseball on my little radio. But I will say one thing: I had gotten so messed up with the crack thing, being there may have saved my life. Everything they were accusing me of was bullshit, but it might have saved my ass.

That’s terrifying.

I called a neighbor down the street who we knew, and he came over really quickly. When he came in, I had her laying down. He was a little bit buzzed, I think. He says, “What are you trying to do, keep her from her oxygen?” I said, “No, I don’t know how to hook her back up.” So, he hooked her back up. About 60 seconds later, seven cops flew in the door of my house. They

In the album credits, you say, “Never forget The Little Engine That Could.” Why did you include that?

Because I’ve never forgotten the story of, “I think I can, I think I can…” I’ve always kept my vision. I’ve always kept my eyes on the prize. I feel like the Little Engine That Could, because I’m still going.

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DECIBEL : MARCH 2025: 35

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Hallowed, Grand the making of Paradise Lost’s Draconian Times MARCH 2025 : 36 : DECIBEL

by

joseph schafer

S

DBHOF243

PARADISE LOST Draconian Times MUS IC FOR NAT IONS JUNE 12, 1995

Extreme measures

ome albums are so ahead of their time when they’re

released that it takes decades of word-of-mouth recommendations and critical reappraisal to reach an audience commensurate with their quality. Many of those records are already enshrined in the Decibel Hall of Fame: Satan’s Court in the Act, Demilich’s Nespithe and Cynic’s Focus didn’t pay dividends for years.

Draconian Times is not one of those records—at least not in Europe. Universally acclaimed upon release, Paradise Lost’s fifth album was a critical and commercial success from the get-go. The band headlined Dynamo Open Air to a crowd of tens of thousands just days before it hit the streets. Those fans could have looked at a magazine rack that week and found vocalist Nick Holmes on the cover of Kerrang!, which heralded him and his cohorts “The New Metallica.”

That’s high praise, but the comparison is apt. Draconian Times masters the melting pot of pop songwriting, gothic gloom and indomitable riffs that the Four Horsemen barely explored on The Black Album’s b-side. But Paradise Lost’s imperial triumph is a suite of songs only they could deliver.

Draconian Times distills the melodic and mournful sound of their first four albums into certified arena rock anthems like “Enchantment,” “Shadowkings,” “The Last Time” and especially “Hallowed Land.” The latter perpetually wrestles with Gothic’s “Eternal” as the band’s career-best composition. Not bad for four childhood friends from Yorkshire.

Yes, four. Though beloved by fans, Draconian Times captures a bittersweet moment in the band’s history: It’s their first record without founding drummer Matthew “Tuds” Archer.

His absence left a hole in the band’s heart and required them to compose much of Draconian Times with a drum machine.

Of course, Paradise Lost found a more-than-suitable percussionist in Lee Morris, who had little exposure to extreme metal then. Instead, he brought to the table a deep appreciation for prog, funk, jazz fusion and especially the collected works of Toto’s Simon Phillips, who Decibel readers may know best as the drummer on Judas Priest’s Sin After Sin. Morris’ exuberant performance on Draconian Times is as revolutionary as Phillips’ work on Priest’s “Dissident Aggressor.” His contributions to the streamlined tunes on Draconian Times propelled the record to a singular position in the band’s discography.

However, achievements overseas didn’t make Draconian Times a success in America. Relativity Records folded its rock division just days before they were slated to release the record. That hurdle might have been overcome if the band had toured the States, perhaps with their ascendant friends and genre-siblings Type O Negative. However, a disastrous 1993 U.S. tour with Morbid Angel and Kreator left PL with such a rotten taste that they avoided America for decades. By the time they returned a decade later, they’d pivoted almost completely to electronic rock music for their brilliant (though less metallic) follow-up One Second and a trio of fascinatingbut-frustrating successors.

Draconian Times might be a world-beater in the EU, but it’s a cult favorite on this side of the pond, which is a shame considering how unique the album is. Simultaneously prog and punk, arena-sized but deeply personal, it’s a rare example of royal triumph and a bittersweet defeat wrapped in the same record. The juxtaposition of those two stories only adds to the sophisticated flavor of Paradise Lost’s most unique slice of melancholy.

DECIBEL : 37 : MARCH 2025

DBHOF243

PARADISE LOST draconian times Tell me the story about Lee Morris joining on drums.

Paradise Lost’s music evolved rapidly between the first four records, but Draconian Times is more of a refinement of Icon. What differentiates it from its predecessors?

GREGOR MACKINTOSH: I’ve always thought and said

that Draconian Times was a polished version of Icon.

Due to the amount of touring we were doing, the writing of Draconian Times was inevitably an extension of Icon. After two years of playing Icon, we had its style and sound down. Personally, I prefer Icon because that’s where we were experimenting and finding new sounds, but Draconian Times was honing a sound we already had.

AARON AEDY: We always said our albums came in pairs, like One Second and Host. Draconian Times captures how Icon sounded live and then tweaks it.

NICK HOLMES: After Gothic, I found death metal vocals a little one-dimensional. I wanted to broaden them. On Shades of God, I was in between growling and the Icon voice. That voice is almost impossible to mimic. I don’t even know how I did it. I can do something that sounds like it, but it’s not the same. I love the voice on Shades, but it’s not a healthy way of singing. On Icon, I went a bit more clean, and Draconian Times took it even further. It’s nice to be able to sing a little higher.

I’m not going to sing like Geoff Tate anytime soon, but it’s nice to have range and variation in your toolbox. It adds to the aggression.

Can you tell me the story of Matt “Tuds” Archer leaving the drum position?

AEDY: Tuds is my oldest friend. He sat behind me at school when I was 11. We’re still friends now.

Tuds wasn’t a drummer; he was somebody who played drums with his friends. He was a decent enough drummer, but it got to a point where we were pushing our boundaries and becoming better players. It was all getting too serious for Tuds. The pressure got to him a bit. We parted ways amicably.

HOLMES: I’m the one who told him we didn’t want him to drum anymore. It was one of the top 10 worst things I’ve ever had to do. Tuds was one of my best friends. He still is. The music and the band didn’t matter to me when it first happened.

It was all about my friend not being in the band anymore. I still tell him to this day that it was a horrible thing I did, but it’s all water under the bridge now. He was struggling with playing live, and you could see it was getting to him. I took it upon myself because I couldn’t keep it from him; I just felt like there was a hole in my chest.

I remember the day very well because I was so jittery and anxious. I took the bus to his house, and we went for a drive somewhere and I told him. I think he knew it was coming, but when it happened then and there, he wasn’t expecting it because no one outside our circle was saying anything about anything. It was like splitting with your partner.

AEDY: We tried out Jeff Singer, who became our drummer later, as well as Lee Morris and Michael Dean. Jeff’s still one of my favorite drummers of all time; he has great groove. Mike was a great drummer, too, but he couldn’t really do double bass drums. He was more of a Pearl Jam-type drummer. He’s still a friend, and he’s been in New Model Army ever since. Both of them did brilliantly, but the minute we saw Lee, it was like, “Yep. You’re the guy.” He was in the band for 11 years after that.

STEVE EDMONSON: I remember he walked into the rehearsal room with a bright yellow CD Walkman around his neck. He said, “Barney Greenway [from Napalm Death] says hi,” and proceeded to hit the drums.

“I got a phone call from my friend Soldier [Paul Solynskyj], the guitarist in a British band called Excalibur, who was from Bradford. He said, ‘Do you know Paradise Lost?

They’re after a drummer.’

My response was, ‘Who’s Paradise Lost?’”

LE E MO RRIS HOLMES: I remember the audition pretty well. He

had a Napalm Death shirt on, but he was an old glam rocker, so he cut the neck off like the glam rockers used to do. So, I could tell straight away he was not really into Napalm Death. On the way out, he said, “Barney says hi.” I don’t think he knew Barney at all. He just wanted to win favor with us, and he knew that we’d known Barney for years. We laughed about that after he left because his drumming had already convinced us he was the man for the job.

LEE MORRIS: I got a phone call from my friend Soldier [Paul Solynskyj], the guitarist in a British band called Excalibur, who was from Bradford.

He said, “Do you know Paradise Lost? They’re after a drummer.” My response was, “Who’s Paradise Lost?” I came from a different background. I was into Toto, Iron Maiden, KISS and Metallica, but I didn’t know much about goth rock. He said I should go for it because the band was doing really well. So, I put together a cassette of me playing and a photo, and I just sent it to Paradise Lost’s management. Three days later, MARCH 2025 : 38 : DECIBEL

Justin from their management company called and asked me to audition. He gave me four songs to learn. I didn’t have any Paradise Lost records at this point because I was a struggling musician, but I had to learn the songs.

So, I went into a record store in Wolverhampton, my hometown, and spoke to a buddy who worked there. He lent me Icon and the Seals the Sense EP. I remember listening to the songs and thinking, “Wow! There are a lot of time changes and different sections that all go together.” I thought the easiest way to get through the audition was to write down vocal lines, so when Nick sang one vocal, I knew I had to change into the next section. I thought there was no way that could go wrong… but Nick didn’t sing at the audition, so all the notes that I made were useless. I could tell the guys were thinking, “This guy doesn’t even know the songs,” which was the truth. So, I explained the situation, said bye, went off and didn’t think anything more of it. Then I got another phone call from their management about three or four days later saying, “The guys would like to invite you back for a second audition.”

How was Draconian Times written without a drummer?

MACKINTOSH: The songs were already pretty much written [before Morris joined]. We used a really shit old drum machine to write the album in the rehearsal room. I don’t know why we had it, but that’s how Draconian Times was written without a drummer. I have to say, when we were auditioning people, they were giving us good ideas for some of the songs as well.

HOLMES: It was kind of weird. We used a Tascam four-track alongside the drum machine. It was clunky. Nobody knew how to use it properly. Greg would bring riffs, and we would bounce ideas back and forth. When we got the four-track, it changed how we did things. I remember spending a long time flipping the switch on the four-track to different channels. I didn’t enjoy it, but that was how everything was going with music technology.

AEDY: Tuds was there for at least three or four songs. The first song we wrote was “The Last Time,” and Tuds played the drums on the demo version of it, which is on the anniversary edition of the album. We used an old Roland drum machine that our drum tech had for a week or two. We’d just set up a basic beat to get us playing the riffs together. We used [Jeff Singer and Lee Morris’] auditions to try out riffs and help with the writing.

MORRIS: [During the second audition] we worked on songs for the new record. Greg showed me riffs and I came up with my interpretation.

We jammed for a few hours. After that session, I got a phone call from Nick, who asked me to come down for a week and work through some more new stuff. Greg wasn’t there; he had gone on holiday after the [second] audition. I was

working through the songs, but no one was telling me what was going on. I thought maybe they just wanted to use me for the new album because they were going to the studio in a couple of weeks, but I didn’t feel I would work for the band as a full-time member.

At the end of the third day, Nick and I went out for a drink and had a conversation about what was going on. He said, “All the guys in the band really like you and your playing, but when Greg gets back, he’ll make the final call if you get the job or not.” When Greg came back, we started playing together. I got about halfway through the first or second song—it was “Shadowkings” or “Hallowed Land”—and Greg put his guitar down, came over, shook my hand and said, “Welcome aboard.” And that was it. I was a member of Paradise Lost. They gave me some money to go out and get black clothes.

What did Lee’s style and performance add to the music?

MORRIS: I played in a metal band called Marshall

Law; we were similar to Judas Priest, but I had also done lighter music. I was very much into funk, jazz and other genres. As a musician, I think listening to and learning from various styles and mixing them together is important. I came from a completely different background.

I’d never done any gothic or doomy music. It was a crash between two completely different cars.

The guys gave me a lot of freedom with the songs to bring myself into it. The songs were great, and I appreciated the guys giving me free rein. Those two things—the songs Nick and Greg wrote and giving me the chance to add a little bit of myself—made for a good formula.

MACKINTOSH: Without that drumming, it wouldn’t have been the same record. He was obsessed with Simon Phillips, and he’d amassed a collection of drum fills and beats that were Phillips-esque, which he’d never been able to use before. He threw all the stuff he’d collected at us. We’d never had a drummer that gave that kind of input before. Tuds wasn’t that kind of guy. We said, “Yeah, go to town.” And he did. He brought an enormous drum kit with so many cymbals. Don’t get me wrong—it works on that record, but it put me off drums for a long time when we started touring. You’d try to go to sleep and you’d still be dreaming about cymbals. If he could have had a gong, rototoms and three bass drums, I’m sure he would have.

AEDY: Lee could play to a click, which made a big difference. Instead of us nodding at each other when time changes were coming, when we played with a click, everything locked in. That first year with Lee immensely improved us as players. He’s a great drummer, super tight and very inventive with his drums.

MORRIS: I’ve always played to a click track. That was something that I brought into Paradise Lost.

The band had never worked with a click before.

I remember saying to Nick, “The cool thing is, if you’re playing to a click track, there’s going to be no deviance in tempo. So, if you’re recording a chorus and you get an amazing take, instead of recording it again, drop that perfect take in for every chorus, so you get the perfect take.” It saves studio time for a start, and you can focus on getting one great performance. Using click tracks opened up many possibilities for that record and for things the band wanted to do in the future. On later albums, like One Second and Host, we started bringing in keyboards and strings, the kind of stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do live without playing to a click.

This was your last recording with longtime producer Simon Efemey. What did he bring to the recording both as a producer and personality?

MACKINTOSH: The bestsounding albums in rock and metal at the time were done by Peter Collins.

If you listen to Rush’s Counterparts, Queensrÿche’s Empire and then Draconian Times, you can see what we were aiming for, especially the drum sounds. Simon Efemey was going in-depth into how this was all done and then doing it with us. He stepped up his production quality on that record. You can hear it in the drums. I think he learned as much as we did while recording.

Are there any deeper-cut songs on Draconian Times that you would like to highlight?

MACKINTOSH: I love to think about church-type music. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that; it’s a feeling. I get it from a couple of the Dead Can Dance albums and a bit from the Sisters of Mercy and the Cure. I began dissecting how church choirs intersect. On “Shades of God,” I was trying to make guitar chords and melodies fit together like voices in a choir do, and I’m happy with how it turned out. That song has that church-like feeling in spades.

HOLMES: I love “Yearn for Change.” That song was thrown together, and it came out well. It’s a testament to Lee’s drumming. We were listening to DECIBEL : 39 : MARCH 2025

We see their faces  A reworked Paradise Lost as seen in the interior booklet for Draconian Times

Rush’s Counterparts. I love Neil Peart’s drumming on the first song on that album [“Animate”]. I remember saying to Lee, “Can you do the sort of thing that he does on that song?” And he did.

The drumming carries the song nicely, and the chorus is really big as well.

MORRIS: “Yearn for Change” hadn’t been written during rehearsals for Draconian Times. I was listening to Rush’s Counterparts at the time, and I heard this interesting groove that Neil played on the song “Animate.” I did a variation on that groove in rehearsal one day while the guys were setting up. Aaron and Steve just started jamming with me and putting some chords together.

Nick really liked it. At that point, it was a different kind of song than Paradise Lost had done. There’s a lot going on rhythmically.

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PARADISE LOST draconian times  Nothing else matters

Two examples of the U.K.’s glowing coverage of Draconian Times, including the notorious Kerrang! cover

MORRIS: We were the darlings of the press at that

“We did everything we were told.

It wasn’t a case of, ‘Do you want to do it?’

We didn’t realize when we’d had enough.

We just carried on, which is what bands do when they’re young. You don’t know where your line is, or if you need a break. You keep going until you drop, which is pretty much what we did.”

N IC K HO L M E S If you’d only heard the first four Paradise Lost albums, you wouldn’t think that was Paradise Lost. It’s coming from a completely different direction. But when you put Greg’s guitars and Nick’s vocals over the top of it, it sounds like Paradise Lost.

EDMONSON: I don’t think there are any deep cuts on the album. We’ve played all the songs many times live over the years. All the tracks are pretty special, but I particularly enjoy playing “Once Solemn” live.

Is it true that Music for Nations ended their relationship with Metal Blade and moved to Relativity Records only to have Relativity’s rock department close on the day Draconian Times was released?

AEDY: We were on Relativity Records, and in the month leading up to it, we had done a lot of press, and we were looking to tour. Literally, the week before Draconian Times was supposed to come out, Relativity got new ownership and they decided to turn it into a rap label. So, they

dropped Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, us and a few other artists. All the scheduling that had been done was canceled.

EDMONSON: Yes, I believe it’s true. It would have been nice for someone to push and promote the album over there. Who knows what could have happened.

What was Paradise Lost’s relationship with the notoriously fickle U.K. music press after Draconian Times?

MACKINTOSH: I don’t remember a bad review, which is crazy because there’s no such thing as an album that’s that good; it just doesn’t exist.

It hit the right note at the right time with the right people. We were fortunate to be in that position. Everyone’s opinion is as valid as the next, but I never read into the good reviews. A few years earlier, Into the Pandemonium by Celtic Frost got a one out of 100 review in Metal Forces, and I thought that was a great record. I took it all with a bit of a pinch of salt, but it was nice to get the coverage and the plaudits.

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point. We were getting two-, three- and fourpage features in magazines. Some crazy things were being said. I remember when Nick was on the front cover of Kerrang!, and the headline said that Paradise Lost was the U.K.’s answer to Metallica. That’s quite a big statement for anybody to make, to mention one of the biggest bands in the world in the same breath as Paradise Lost. That knocked us off our feet.

HOLMES: There were always angles with covers; they wanted me to wear a crown of thorns [on that cover]. It was [esteemed rock photographer] Ross Halfin’s idea. I could see what he was thinking, but it felt weird. He said, “If you don’t wear it, you won’t get the cover.” I don’t think I even put the crown of thorns on. Now I’d probably wear it, although I think it would look a bit stupid with a bald head. I know that Ross had been given a brief and I was going against it, but at the time I felt uncomfortable. We still got the cover anyway.

MACKINTOSH: Music for Nations wanted to make a splash with the press. Backstage at Donington Festival [in 1996], they gave us our own hospitality tent and everything inside was black, even the food. Every sandwich was black bread filled with black cheese, and there was black cake.

They must have spent a fortune on that thing just to lure the press to write us up.

Paradise Lost played over 100 shows in support of Draconian Times, including several large festivals. Do any of those gigs stand out in your memory?

MORRIS: It was an absolute baptism by fire for

me. Prior to Paradise Lost, I’d done local shows to 300 or 400 people, but nothing at all at this level. My first proper show [with Paradise Lost] was headlining Dynamo [Open Air] in Holland to 120,000 people. Let’s just say I’m glad the band’s image was wearing black at the time, because the back of my underpants was probably taking a battering. From there, I got my bearings. The tour was amazing. We had two tour buses for the band and crew, and had a massive production with two big trucks of staging, lights, drapes and things. It was surreal. I still pinch myself thinking about that tour.

MACKINTOSH: Dynamo was huge. If you’d taken a snapshot backstage at that Dynamo festival, it would have just about every band that was important or influential in metal music at that point in time. In the dressing room was Type O Negative, then Biohazard, then Anathema.

Type O Negative were on before us, and we

headlined. Nick had to plunge a plunger to set off some fireworks, but they didn’t go off the first time [he pressed the plunger], which was embarrassing.

HOLMES: Coming off from Icon to ending the touring for Draconian Times, we never stopped. It was relentless. We did everything we were told.

It wasn’t a case of, “Do you want to do it?” We didn’t realize when we’d had enough. We just carried on, which is what bands do when they’re young. You don’t know where your line is, or if you need a break. You keep going until you drop, which is pretty much what we did.

AEDY: It was intense touring. I didn’t even have a home because it was pointless. I was literally homeless. My bags were at my friend’s house and my brother’s house and that was it. I lived out of a bag for a number of months. We were due for a three-week-long gap at home. [Our manager] Andy Farrow rang us up and said, “I’ve got you some shows during those three weeks.” We said, “No way. If we do those shows, you won’t have a band.” We were mentally shredded. We needed to be away from each other for a bit. We’d been in each other’s pockets for months on end.

Donington was my last gig with long hair. Nick cut his first, and then I cut mine, and then Steve cut his. I was like, “Well, this is the peak.” I was sick of brushing it out every night.

Why didn’t Paradise Lost tour behind Draconian Times in America?

EDMONSON: Our first tour over there burnt us out a bit. We just wanted to play where we were appreciated.

MACKINTOSH: It was purely down to that tour [in 1993] with Morbid Angel and Kreator. We never wanted to go back again. We had such a bad time that we came back with mental problems. It was a seven-week-long tour, and gigs were getting canceled. We wound up stuck in the car park of a Days Inn in Pittsburgh for about five days of canceled gigs, but it felt like we were in that car park for two weeks. The other two bands weren’t getting along, and we were stuck in the middle of it, except we were playing first. We started before the doors opened. It felt like we were on a knife’s edge the whole time. We’d never come across that kind of thing before or since. We thought, “Is this what it’s like to tour in the States? This is awful!”

We were so jaded from it. We specifically told our agent and our manager no U.S. tours for years.

Paradise Lost’s music took a left turn and another evolutionary leap after Draconian Times.

What led to that shift?

MACKINTOSH: It was an honesty thing. After touring and playing Draconian Times back-to-back every night for so long, I was sick of that style of music. I wanted to play something different.

“Don’t get me wrong—it works on that record, but it put me off drums for a long time when we started touring. You’d try to go to sleep and you’d still be dreaming about cymbals.

If [Morris] could have had a gong, rototoms and three bass drums, I’m sure he would have.”

G RE G MACKINTO SH That was the main reason. There were side reasons; we didn’t like it being called hair metal or “the New Metallica,” but those aren’t reasons for changing music. We just wanted to try something else. We wanted to do something darker, which is ironic because, when it was released, people were saying One Second was too light.

But to us, it was way darker. I’ve never wished we’d done Draconian Times parts two and three because I don’t think we could have. It wasn’t in us anymore.

HOLMES: The relentless touring played into that.

If we hadn’t toured as much, the next album would have come out differently. When you play one type of music, you always end up listening to music that’s unlike the music you play. Also, as you get older, your tastes change. Around ’94, I started getting into Aerosmith and Morrissey, artists I had never thought I’d get into. We started branching out, and Greg got into the more electronic element of music. When One Second came out, it was a massive departure, D E C I B E L : 41 : M A R C H 2 0 2 5

but the response wasn’t unexpected. I knew there would be backlash.

AEDY: After Gothic, we noticed a lot of bands came out that sounded a bit like that record. So, we always try to do something different with each album because we didn’t want to be mixed in with a crowd. We wanted to be doing our own thing. We’ve always been our own biggest critics.

It’s nice to get good reviews, don’t get me wrong, but we never wanted to make an album to please other people. We only make music to please ourselves. The temptation came after Draconian Times. I remember people asking, “Is the next record going to be like Draconian Times because it was so successful?” Absolutely not. We needed to do something different. If we’d recorded another album trying to be Draconian Times, we would have just split up. Our hearts wouldn’t have been in it.

MORRIS: Paradise Lost has been around since the late ’80s, and they’re forever evolving.

It’s cool that each album seems slightly different; they never stand still. A few different

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PARADISE LOST draconian times

drummers have come through, which has been great for the band. I have full respect for everyone who’s held the drum throne, and everyone who’s been in the band has brought something of themselves, which has allowed the band to evolve.

Times show, we were constantly asked to perform it. That was the period in the early 2000s when bands started doing full-album shows for their popular albums, but we always said no. We were determined not to do it, first because we didn’t want to seem like a legacy band. Secondly, we didn’t want to do it until we wrote an album heavier than Draconian Times. Once we did The Plague Within, we said, “All right, now we can do Draconian Times.”

What do you think is Draconian Times’ legacy?

HOLMES: It represents 1995. Some albums remind

you of being 18 years old, the best time of your life. Any album that’s going to do that is going to last. You’re going to listen to it again and again. When I have a drink, I listen to Maiden’s first three albums because that’s what I grew up listening to. They’re still the best albums for me. There are a lot of metal fans who were at the right age when Draconian Times was coming out. We’re lucky to have had a successful album in that way.

MORRIS: I’ve done albums since, but I’ve had more people ask me about Draconian Times than anything else. I can’t explain it; it just resonated with people. If I knew the ingredients for that album’s success, I’d be a rich man.

It’s humbling to know that we created something people still talk about 30 years later. It’s every musician’s dream to create something that stands the test of time and is held in high regard. It was great to be in a position to bring something that helped the band develop, and I’ll always take a lot of pride in that record.

We must have done something right.

AEDY: Draconian Times is a beautifully complete item. It flows well; every song is good. It just works. For 10 years before we did a Draconian

Lastly, is there anything about the record that you would change?

MORRIS: If you get an album that ticks all the

boxes, the smart thing is to continue down that road a little longer. I shared this view with the band at the time. Once you reach a ridiculously crazy level, you have more freedom, and fans are more forgiving. They’ll allow you to try different things and indulge yourself, but you have to get to that point first. This is just my opinion, and it’s probably different from the rest of the guys, but I felt we changed too soon. We hit on something with Draconian Times, and we should have carried on a little longer.

AEDY: I wish we’d still been on Metal Blade instead of Relativity when building up to Draconian Times. That’s what put the biggest

Losing their religion  Promotion for Draconian Times and the Paradise Lost back catalog before changing everything in just one second

“I wish we’d still been on Metal Blade instead of Relativity when building up to Draconian Times.

That’s what put the biggest obstacle in our path.

It completely ruined the second half of the ’90s for us.”

AAR ON A EDY MARCH 2025 : 4 2 : DECIBEL

obstacle in our path. It completely ruined the second half of the ’90s for us. If we had still been on Metal Blade, Draconian Times would have built up nicely in the States.

MACKINTOSH: I would have toured America. We should have realized [our bad experience] was just that tour and gone back. For the last couple of decades, when we’ve been to America, we’ve loved it. That’s not a regret, but it’s something in hindsight that we should have done differently. But that’s the only thing. I don’t think anything else could have been done differently with Draconian Times, apart from Relativity folding just before it came out. Everyone involved, from agents to local promoters to press, did their utmost for it, and it paid off for everyone involved.

HOLMES: One regret, if I’m honest, was not spending more time in America in the ’90s. I wish we had gone. We had a tour in 1993, which none of us particularly enjoyed. It left a bad taste in our mouths. I wish we’d stuck it out. We love coming to America now. If we could do it over again now, we would have gone back. There were years when we would release an album and tour Europe, but America wasn’t in the cards, and unfortunately, we kind of got left behind a little bit in the States. That’s the only thing in the band that I regret.

DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 43

story by JEFF TREPPEL photos by BECKY DEGIGLIO, SEBASTIAN LUDVIGSEN, NECROHORNS and ROB MENZER additional photo editing by ESTER SEGARRA

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NEW SKELETAL FACES, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, MORTIIS and MAYHEM

make a grand declaration of war with the 2025 DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR

ive years ago (has it been that long already?), the 2020 Decibel

Magazine Tour was shaping up to be the tour to end all tours. Promising goth rockers Idle Hands (now Unto Others), southwesternthemed death metal beasts Gatecreeper, outlandish ’90s Norwegian legend Abbath and the very originators of black metal, Mayhem, all hit the road, ready to devastate these United States. And the bands were here!

They were in the country and ready to go! Unfortunately, we are all very familiar with what happened that literally ended all tours and devastated the United States. ¶ Thankfully, we’ve been able to treat audiences across the country to killer packages for the last three years (Gatecreeper even got another shot in 2022).

2025 looks to be no exception. While the previous roster focused on black metal, Decibel decided to cast a wider net this time. This year’s bill features goth rockers, northeastern-themed death metal beasts, an outlandish ’90s Norwegian legend and the very originators of black metal, Mayhem. ¶ Wait. That sounds familiar.

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WE BROKE INTO A CHURCH, OKAY?

And we just started filming. It wasn’t like a set, we didn’t decorate the place or anything.

That’s an actual church we just started filming in.

ERROL FRITZ, New Skeletal Faces Our esteemed editor-in-chief, Albert Mudrian, approached the lineup with a deliberate eye on covering different styles—just like the magazine itself. “Typically, when assembling a lineup, we settle on a headliner first and then build around them. The main thing that both Decibel and Mayhem agreed on was that we didn’t want this to be a ‘black metal tour.’ That obviously removes some creative restraints, which has allowed us to assemble what I believe is the Decibel Tour’s boldest lineup ever.”

This time around, San Diego death rockers New Skeletal Faces bring the doom and gloom. New York-based Art Deco experimentalists Imperial Triumphant build complex monuments from the deconstructed pieces of death metal. The goblin-faced developer of dungeon synth himself, Mortiis, shows the newer dungeon-delvers how it’s done. And Mayhem—who, over the course of their 40-year career, pioneered second-wave black metal and proceeded to blaze groundbreaking 46 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

trails beyond that—put the corpsepainted cap on the whole thing, finally taking their rightful place atop a Decibel Tour package.

The festivities begin March 17 in Atlanta and end a month later in Austin, carving a serpentine path across the U.S. and Canada along the way. It’s gonna be a chainsaw gutsfuck of a time.

Give Me to the Night Skeletal or otherwise, New Skeletal Faces are likely to be the new faces on the tour to most attendees. Although they first rose from the grave in 2017, they self-released their first few EPs and debut, so it took them some time to catch people’s attention. Luckily, they caught the right person’s ear—fellow San Diego native (and Cattle Decapitation vocalist) Travis Ryan, who became their manager after seeing their live performance.

“It’s weird because we never knew him previously,” notes guitarist/vocalist Errol Fritz. “He MAR 2025 •

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was just at one of our shows randomly and saw us and bought a record. He was like, ‘I fucking love it.’ So, that’s literally how it was. We just played some matinee show for like 30 people in the audience, and he was one of the people there, and that was that. The rest is history.”

2024 saw a dramatic rise in their profile: NSF released their Bill Metoyer-produced second album, Until the Night, on Peaceville, to critical acclaim. Packed from sunset to sunrise with sinister soliloquies that reflect Fritz’s bleak view of humanity, Until the Night takes the pitch-black building blocks forged by Christian Death and 45 Grave and bolts them together using metal brackets. Now they’re about to reach an entirely new level by presenting songs from it (and its predecessors) to their biggest audience yet.

“Travis has been trying to make this kind of shit happen for us,” Fritz explains. “I don’t know if that’s maybe one of the seeds that he planted a while back, but he was kind of surprised that we got offered it, because they hit us up and then fucking next thing I know Travis is blowing up our phones. I’m like, ‘What does he want this time?’ Because I woke up all hung over and shit from a late night. And he’s like, ‘Bro, you guys got offered, like, the biggest fucking tour ever.’ I’m like, ‘What?’ I couldn’t even really process it.”

Although New Skeletal Faces aren’t as traditionally “extreme” as the other bands on the bill (which is one of the reasons that they were picked for the slot in the first place), Fritz began his musical journey listening to more typical Decibel fare before his interests diverged.

“When I first started getting into death rock and shit, I was like 16 or 17,” he tells us. “I was mostly just listening to metal at the time, actually, and I got bored of it. I wanted something a little bit more straightforward and dark, not like super technical. And I like punk. Death rock is rooted in punk. It’s pretty much just dark punk.

My first band ever was death rock. They were called They Feed at Night. I did that when I was like 16. I just like dark music, and it’s raw, and it’s not a very popular genre. There was a hunger for it. I had to see it often. And the imagery is always cool with those bands, like very extreme artwork and the way the band’s dressed and shit.

It was just another form of extreme music.”

The video for album highlight “Ossuary Lust” demonstrates their commitment to the darkness.

For the lo-fi, black-and-white affair, Fritz and his bandmates, KRO and Don Void, took a page from Mayhem’s black Bible.

“We broke into a church, okay? And we just started filming. It wasn’t like a set, we didn’t decorate the place or anything. That’s an actual church we just started filming in. And we filmed another clip at the cemetery on those statues.

And, yeah, that was, like, late at night, like the gates were closed, so we had to, like, sneak in there and fucking do all this shit. If they

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the bill, too. So, that was a bitching show, but goddamn, I’ve seen Mayhem so many times, and now I’m gonna see them a lot more, since we’ll be playing with them. It’s like, damn, hopefully I don’t get sick of them,” he jokes. “They’re sick.

I never get tired of their music. But Mortiis, I’ve never seen him before. The first time I saw a Mortiis music video, I was, like, 16 or something. This was ‘Parasite God.’ I was like, ‘This is fucking sick.’”

As for why readers should show up early for New Skeletal Faces, Fritz has a simple answer (besides that they’re sick): “You should show up early because we’re fucking dark. We’re the darkest, sexiest thing you’ve seen,” he says with a grin.

Masterpiece of Chaos

We only have 30 minutes to make an impression on this tour, so we can now put more songs onto the set list and go even harder.

Truly just disrespect our instruments and ourselves

IN THE NAME OF AVANT-DEATH. ZACHARY EZRIN, Imperial Triumphant

saw what we were doing, they probably would have called the cops. Especially the church situation. I mean, they probably knew, they probably saw us on the cameras, and they thought like some serious exorcism devil possession was going on. And they were just like, ‘Fuck it. I’m not going in there.’ That’s the reason why nobody stopped us. They were scared, sure.” [Laughs] While NSF won’t be bringing any souvenirs from the church on tour with them, attendees can expect some serious rock ‘n’ roll showmanship from the band. The visual aspect is very important to Fritz—he even uses his own paintings for their striking album covers. That said, they’re going a different route than the headliners.

“We have our image and, I mean, we fucking get down. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll show, for sure.

We’re not theatrical in a very orchestrated, contrived way. It’s theatrical on accident, because the way we look and act onstage is just how we act onstage. There’s not going to be any actors 48 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

onstage coming out, or any opera singers or anything like that. We’re not Ghost or anything like that.”

Their stage presence is actually one of the reasons that Mudrian thought of them as potential openers: “I felt it was also a bonus if the opener had a strong visual component. I don’t necessarily mean an act versed in stage theatrics, but adding a band with a striking look has more value than just another group of people in T-shirts and jeans—New Skeletal Faces clearly present in ways that other extreme metal bands do not. You can’t really just stand there with your arms folded over your ratty Once Upon the Cross shirt next to Attila, Mortiis or a trickedout Zachary Ezrin and pull it off.”

Fritz can’t wait to get up there with some of his favorite artists: “The first time I saw Mayhem was, it was Easter or something—like, seriously, on Easter, or the day before Easter.

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If audiences may not recognize New Skeletal Faces, they literally won’t recognize Imperial Triumphant’s faces. That’s because the trio wears ornate masks onstage. Otherwise, Decibel readers should be somewhat familiar with their dissonant approach to death metal—the New York-based act are perennial favorites of this magazine, having graced the cover, contributed a flexi single, and made appearances in multiple year-end lists (including placing third in 2020 with breakthrough record Alphaville).

Mudrian explains why it took so long for them to get on the tour: “For the last few years, we’ve been searching for the right opportunity to invite Imperial Triumphant on the Decibel Tour. The band has always been an entity unto itself, so it’s appropriate that the year they finally fit perfectly is within our most batshit lineup construction.”

Zachary Ezrin (presumably not all tricked up when we get him on the phone) expresses his excitement at being involved with Decibel once more. “We are very grateful to be included on this tour and have a connection with Decibel, because I’ve been reading it since I was a teenager, and now I’m on the Decibel Tour. It’s pretty wild. We were on the Abbath tour, and I got a call from my manager. She just was like, ‘Check it out. You got an offer to be on the Decibel Tour.’ And I was like, [sighs exasperatedly] ‘Just tell him yes.’”

Ezrin’s wry sense of humor perfectly demonstrates the difference between himself and his gold-masked stage persona. Ezrin, Kenny Grohowski and Steve Blanco are known for composing extremely complex, challenging compositions, with their image based in an art deco aesthetic that makes them seem sinister and mysterious. In reality—not to puncture the illusion—they’re giant dorks just like everyone else. And they’re stoked to be living their dream.

For example, they shot the video for “Lexington Delirium,” a single from their upcoming album Goldstar, on top of the Chrysler building (where, coincidentally, Francis Ford Coppola had recently finished filming his instant cult classic Megalopolis). When asked if it has a theme,

DECIBEL : M A RCH 2 0 25 : 49

Ezrin replies: “The theme is, holy shit, we’re shooting in the Chrysler Building, and we’re all standing right next to the eagle head gargoyles.”

Megalopolis actually comes up again in the conversation, but as a contrast to Goldstar—whereas Coppola’s misguided magnum opus took him 40 years to make, Imperial Triumphant’s sixth album took five days. “I think in general, most artistic endeavors that have carte blanche, blank check, unlimited time, unlimited resources—in my opinion, they’re never as good as the ones that are like, we had no money, we were just working overtime, paying people with IOUs or whatever,” according to Ezrin. “And Coppola’s a great example. And then Goldstar is a great example, because we recorded that record in five days. We had a schedule to record at Colin Marston’s Menegroth Studio, and then we got a call to go on tour with Abbath. And you cannot say no to that. So, we had to reschedule when we were recording, and the only time he had was a five-day period. I think there’s something to be said about not having too much time to linger over work and creating something in the passion of the moment.”

Goldstar, wrapped in its bright yellow cigarette packaging-style cover art by Alphaville and Ghost artist Zbigniew Bielak, may be the trio’s most experimental record to date. Not just because it’s a themed piece based around a fictional tobacco brand—“To me, the cigarette is so classic New York City. It’s something super cool and sexy that everyone enjoys, and it slowly rots you to death from the inside out. So, it’s kind of a great allegory for just living in this, the greatest city on Earth.” No, it’s more a structural change. They edited rather than expanded. With a runtime under 40 minutes and most songs in the fiveminute range, they compress their experimental evil into listener-friendly bursts. That includes an actual grindcore song with Yoshiko Ohara from Melt-Banana shrieking over it, which may make an appearance (sans Ohara) on the setlist.

“One of the things that we worked on on this record was shortening song lengths to five minutes at max,” Ezrin explains. “I think you get better art when there are boundaries on certain ways to what you can do. You know, we talked before about having unlimited resources, unlimited time. If you have a certain amount of time, and that amount of time is five minutes, you can only say so much. So, you can only put in the leanest, the best stuff that’s going to be acceptable.

Part of that reasoning was also because these last few years we played over 300 shows, and if we have a 30-minute time slot, it’s like, oh, which three songs do we want to play? We only have 30 minutes to make an impression on this tour, so we can now put more songs onto the set list and go even harder. Truly just disrespect our instruments and ourselves in the name of avant-death.”

Attendees can look forward to an upgraded stage show as impressive as the New York 50 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

architecture the band loves. “Everything must change. Everything must grow, and so must us.

Yeah, we will certainly be upgrading the live show. As you’ve seen by now, we’ve got upgraded masks, upgraded costumes. Everything must develop, must change. We’ve played in America too many times to bring them the same old song and dance. I’m going to go as hard as they let us.”

And Ezrin is aware that they have stiff competition. Like his tourmate Fritz, he has seen Mayhem many times over the years. He even cites them as unexpected influences on Imperial Triumphant.

“I think a lot of people wouldn’t think so, but their Ordo ad Chao record is such a dark horse, like nobody talks about that record. And it is, in my opinion, maybe the best one, but that’s just because I’m coming from the world of dissonance and obscurity, and what I think is truly evil music. And to me, that record is really disgusting, from the production to the arrangements to the songwriting to the actual performance.

Everything I think avant-death metal should be.”

So are Imperial Triumphant. Asked why concertgoers should show up early for his band, Ezrin puts it succinctly: “Imperial Triumphant’s live show is the decadent appetizer to the most insane meal of your life.”

Dread Reaver Mortiis has one of the most recognizable faces in all of extreme music—with his hooked nose and curved elven ears, his troll-esque visage certainly stands out from his corpsepainted peers. In case you’re unfamiliar with the man behind the mask, however, he’s had quite the storied career.

An early member of Emperor, he was fired by the band for his then-combative attitude. He responded by buying a keyboard and creating spooky lo-fi ambient soundscapes. In the process, he invented dungeon synth. Since then, he’s dabbled in synthpop and industrial rock, but his first recordings remain the most influential.

Over Zoom, Håvard Ellefsen comes across as pleasant as his alter ego is creepy, even with the nightmarish paintings depicting Armageddon and the netherworld on the studio wall behind him.

“My manager was actually trying to convince me to do another tour with some other band in the U.S. And he said, like, ‘Yeah, this is gonna be a good tour for you.’ And I was initially skeptical. But the funny thing was, all of a sudden, the Decibel Tour came around. And he was like, ‘I highly advise you do this one instead.’”

Mudrian’s reason for inviting him on the tour was simple: “I’ve been a Mortiis fan since the mid-’90s, with the Era 1 material resonating MAR 2025 •

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deepest, so I’m stoked that’s what he’ll be performing on this tour. It’s rare to land one genre progenitor on any tour, but having the godfather of contemporary dungeon synth back-to-back with the founders of modern black metal feels like a coup for us.”

Ellefsen thinks it’s weird to be considered the godfather of anything. “It’s a strange credit to be given. People say that and I’m like, ‘Okay, cool,’” he laughs. “It’s not like I realized it at the time.

When I started tinkering on keyboards in 1992, I didn’t realize that that was going to be given that sort of credit three decades later. But that’s awesome. I mean, I’m flattered that people say that. I guess I don’t really have a lot to prove. I just do my own thing, and I try not to worry too much about it.”

He is also aware that his outrageous look and cult sound haven’t always been as appreciated as they are now—especially the album cover to 1999’s The Stargate, which depicted him hovering in the air, wearing full goblin gear and winged armor with a skull codpiece. Needless to say, the internet has had fun with that one.

“I had to take an endless amount of shit, of course, because back in the ’90s, I was considered a complete fucking freak show, first with the mask, and then the spikes and that Stargate stuff and all of that. So, I took a lot of shit. I got crucified so everyone else could fucking do their thing. I’m just joking around, but it’s cool to see that it’s sort of came back from the grave, so to speak.”

The man himself didn’t even notice that it was happening. “I really do think this dungeon synth, or whatever you want to call it, it really wasn’t a thing for a long time. I went away from it and did my industrial rock thing for a long time, and in the meantime it slowly came back—through other projects, not me,” he explains. “And through strange coincidence, I finally decided to start reissuing my old stuff in 2016 or so, and I wasn’t really aware that there were little movements in this genre. That was something that happened parallel to me deciding to go back to playing live as part of a Cold Meat Industry [label] 30th anniversary show in Stockholm a few years ago. And then the snowball just started rolling and that’s when I was made aware that, fuck, man, there’s a lot of other bands doing this kind of thing, and apparently I’m very inspirational to them. So, it’s interesting how that all came about.”

As our EIC mentioned, Mortiis plans on presenting that early dungeon synth-influencing material to the audience. “I toured my second record, like a reinterpreted version of it, which was 50 percent the old material, the original material, and I had expanded upon it for the second half. I did that for a long time, and recently, since I had such a great time doing that, a lot of people were talking to me about

DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 51

I really do think dungeon synth, it really wasn’t a thing for a long time.

I went away from it and did my industrial rock thing for a long time, and in the meantime it slowly came back—

THROUGH OTHER PROJECTS, NOT ME. MORTIIS

doing the first album. And I was thinking about that myself, too. So, I’ve done that now for maybe a year.”

Even if you’re familiar with the albums, however, it’ll still be worth your time to hear the live interpretations. According to Ellefsen, “There are tracks to what I do, backing tracks and stuff like that. I re-recorded all of those for the first record and made them sound bigger and more evil, so to speak—just better, man. It was like 30 years ago. So, I fixed all the mistakes that always bothered me, and I replaced the sounds and made everything sound deeper, darker and meaner. I was thinking that what I want to do is mix all these things up and do a combination of the first and second record for this tour, make it a little less predictable. When you’re performing an album, if you know the album, you know what’s coming next. So, I figured for this one, I would mix it up and do this time machine trip again, but slightly less predictable.”

52 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

One predictable thing: his rapport with the tour’s headliners. They obviously know each other from the early Norwegian black metal scene, and they’ve played together as recently as last year. “They’re very easygoing, very easy guys to get along with. So, I think it’s gonna be a fun tour. I don’t know the other two bands, but I do not doubt for a second that they’re going to be fun to hang with as well.”

Considering that Mayhem have hand-picked Mortiis to open for them in the past, it’s not something you’re gonna want to miss, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the genre he created. His one-line pitch: “I’m not a great salesman. I just do Mortiis. And you know, if you’re curious about dungeon synth, that would be the one [to see].”

From the Dark Past The final faces on our tour belong to one of the most notorious bands in black metal. In case you’re somehow unfamiliar with Mayhem, a MAR 2025 •

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brief recap: They helped invent second-wave black metal and kick off the infamous Norwegian black metal scene; had a brief interlude involving suicide, murder and church burnings; hired Tormentor vocalist Attila Csihar and released the genre-defining De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, followed by a string of groundbreaking and wildly experimental albums (some with former vocalist Maniac). Now consisting of Csihar, founding bassist Necrobutcher, classic drummer Hellhammer, and guitarists Ghul and Teloch, they’ve embarked on a series of career-spanning 40th-anniversary shows while working on new material (which they remain tight-lipped about and which we probably won’t hear on the tour).

We catch Csihar on Zoom at a chaotic moment: backstage at ZOOM Frankfurt (the venue) as the band is loading out from a 40th anniversary show. He’s joined by guitarist Charles “Ghul” Hedger and their tour manager, Kit Cloutier, to help with the language barrier. The legendary frontman is in high spirits and seems in good shape—which is good, because Mayhem had to cancel part of their 2024 North American tour so he could get emergency surgery.

“I had a kidney problem, which is normally, like anyone has it kind of shit,” Csihar begins.

“But my case was more serious, so I’m still fucked up. I still have a tube in my kidney, so it’s a more complicated one. So, we had to cancel the U.S. leg. And it is what it is. I didn’t feel anything. I was completely fine. I just went for a check, and they found this shit out. It looked like had a stone in the ureter, which is pretty fucking bad and dangerous. I could die anytime on an airplane or whatever. So, I had to do this shit.”

A more pessimistic person might take that as a sign that Mayhem headlining the Decibel Tour was a cursed proposition. Thankfully, the man feels better now, and he looks forward to making the trip out here for a second try.

He’s still salty about having to cancel the first time around. “We were very close to doing the show, like we left from Chicago to Denver to do our first show, and we had to turn back from Omaha,” Csihar recalls.

“We thought we couldn’t get out of the country,” Hedger adds, “Because they were closing the airports.”

“It couldn’t go worse than that. We just fucking maxed our costs and minimized our incomes,” Csihar laughs.

Mudrian looks forward to finally getting the black metal provocateurs under the Decibel banner, but he cautions against doing something silly like comparing this go-round to the 2020 attempt. “I understand why fans might view the inclusion of Mayhem as our way of finally completing the aborted 2020 Decibel Tour that the band was scheduled to headline, but I’d rather not tempt fate and connect the two.

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I tell you what, bro, I think we are the fucking best. Seriously.

MAYBE IT SOUNDS LIKE I’M SOME KIND OF EGOIST, BUT I’M NOT. ATTILA CSIHAR, Mayhem That said, Mayhem are still touring on the same album from our COVID-obliterated run, so if you just want to pretend the last five years never happened, I don’t blame you.”

Csihar informs us that we can expect to hear a true career retrospective: “We play from each record, you know? And it’s like we go back in time chronologically. Also, we sometimes have this kind of projection, like a video, so it’s like something new, something else. So, I think if you like Mayhem, it’s gonna be great to hear stuff from each record; and even if you don’t like Mayhem, it’s gonna be great.”

“If you don’t like Mayhem, you’re gonna have a pretty bad time,” Hedger deadpans.

Although Cloutier tells us that their production for the Decibel Tour will be an evolution of the 40th anniversary set, not a repeat, attendees can look forward to maximum Mayhem. They’re still planning out specifics, but Hedger says the band intends to deliver as much as demonically 54 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

possible. “I guess it depends on the package and how long we have to do it because it’s a long set, but we’ll certainly do as much as we can feasibly do. So, it’s going to absolutely be in that spirit.

But it’s gonna, of course, depend on slots and how many bands, and because we can’t play ’til like 5 in the morning.”

When asked what he thinks about 40 years of Mayhem, Csihar is understandably proud of what they’ve accomplished. “I tell you what, bro, I think we are the fucking best. Seriously.

Maybe it sounds like I’m some kind of egoist, but I’m not. I started to play in ’85-’86, I first started with Tormentor, and then I got invited to Mayhem like ’91-’92. And I don’t know, I think this band is amazing. I think our music is unique and complex. I mean, yeah, it’s been fucking what, 40 years? What the fuck? [Laughs] “When I started to play music, I would never imagine to be that far. You know, we were just underground, and we are still, in a way. But, MAR 2025 •

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yeah, 40 years is 40 years. It’s changed so much stuff, and we are part of the history somehow.

And I think it’s just amazing that we can still go on. Here’s the thing: When Hellhammer is playing, it’s fucking insane; you know, like, we play the same shit and we are not giving it easy. I think it’s very unique. And even if people don’t get it, we don’t give a fuck. We just play the show.”

When asked about their opening acts, they seem pleased by the choice. Hedger cites the Imperial Triumphant guys as “good friends and a cool band,” and, of course, Csihar (who’s put out his share of experimental music on his own) approves of the inclusion of Mortiis. “Yeah, I like him. It’s different. He made his dungeon music.

It’s cool. It’s good to have something not so punishing. I like diversity.”

That’s apparent even within his own contributions to Mayhem. Csihar tells us the variety of vocal styles required to do a career-spanning set help keep things interesting for him. When asked how he keeps his instrument in shape for such rigorous stylistic changes, he quotes the usual vocal lessons and breathing exercises—but he also has a theory as to why he has such an unusual voice in the first place.

“Actually, it’s fucking funny, because I have this video from my mother. She told me when I was like, really, really young, I lost my voice. I was actually dying, like choking. I was close to dying, so they ran to the hospital, and they had to cut my throat and put this fucking shit in it.

You can still see it here.” He points to a small scar in his throat. “Yeah, it looks like a pentagram here. It’s fucking cool. I never told this in any interview, but it’s true. They had to cut my throat, put in this fucking tube, and my mother told me after the doctor said, ‘Yeah, maybe he will have a problem with his voice,’ because they couldn’t fix it or something. And my mother says probably that’s why I have this voice.”

It’s a happy accident for certain—it’s hard to imagine Mayhem without its charismatic frontman and his unique intonations. When asked why readers should show up for his band, Csihar replies, “They don’t have to come.”

Which, of course, causes the room to explode in laughter. “Don’t come unless you like music and black metal and heavy metal.”

Aeon Daemonium As Mudrian pointed out at the top, this may be the most wildly varied Decibel Tour to date.

The gathered bands represent four very different corners of the extreme music universe. The connective tissue? They’re all dark as fuck, they all bring their own brand of theatricality to the stage, and they represent the genre’s past, present and future.

And if that lineup evokes a certain tour that never happened, well, this one looks to be even better.

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The first new album in 11 years from one of noise-rock’s most important bands is every bit as shocking and intense as anything the influential trio has ever made.

The Australian sax & drums duo return with a heavy dose of law and disorder on a feral new album that intuitively blends no-wave, funk, shoegaze, and noise rock.

The first new album in seven years from the instrumental icons is a loud, dramatic, wild rumination on life and death. It is simultaneously their quietest and most crushingly loud album to date.

The new album by Scottish underground rock legends is a core of darkness held up by a transcendent lift that only this iconic group can achieve.

The surprise new album by one of the world’s best out-rock bands goes back to their beginnings, and in the process delivers easily the best album of their brilliant career.

The entire recorded history of one of the foundational pieces of early 1990s post-hardcore is restored and remastered after being unavailable for over 25 years.

The legendary composer unearths a mystifying meditation on empathy and melancholy originally recorded in 1982 and finally completed in 2024.

The legendary Japanese experimental rock band returns with their 12th and most contemplative allbum, produced by longtime friend and collaborator, Steve Albini.

The long out-of-print lone album from one of the most influential and innovative hardcore punk bands of all time gets a brilliant reissue with restored artwork.

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INSIDE ≥

58 DREAM THEATER A dramatic turn of events 58 KILLSWITCH ENGAGE From yourself you can’t run away 60 MANTAR Post apocalypse now 61 SACRIFICE Re-re-animation 61 SCOUR Blackend gold attack

Survivors’ Guide

MARCH

15

Not one florida show?

12

Make vancouver all ages

6

Never ohio :(

1

C’mon guys!!!

Come to Brazil!!

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

So-Cal legends 16 reach their peak over three decades into their sludge journey

R 8

oughly 12 years ago, former 16 vocalist Cris Jerue wrote a guest column for this magazine offering his pro tips about freeloading. This column was not a surprise; 16’s music has long been about living a life divorced from consequences. At 16 a certain point, that approach and conceit begin to grow fallow, Guides for the Misguided especially as the narrators become middle-aged men. This is why RELAPSE writers like Charles Bukowski and John Fante—the prose equivalent of 16’s back catalog—often don’t resonate with anyone over 35. Youth is about refusing to make accommodations. Midlife is about accepting the consequences of decades of accommodation. ¶ The fact that 16 still exists is also a minor miracle. The band, which released their first album in the Stone Age of 1993 on Pushead’s label Bacteria Sour, wasn’t built for longevity. Despite turnover (including frontman and guitarist Bobby Ferry’s departure in the late ’90s), drugs and more, 16 have kept at it. While other bands born out of teen angst would burn out, 16 have become tighter, more musical and more unified. They have much in common with blues artists who keep gigging and recording

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 57

and somehow get better in their 50s and beyond.

Guides for the Misguided is one of 16’s best albums in their three-decade-plus career, a testament to a lifetime of grinding, refining and surviving.

If Zoloft Smile is 16’s classic album of youthful mistakes and depression, Guides for the Misguided is their album about surviving middle age. Part of this is because Ferry isn’t just handling the music and riffs, but telling his own stories.

Trading a known frontman late in a career has risks, but Ferry has grown into the job. His vocal performance here is his best; his clean singing perfectly counters his growling.

Ferry and company also know their strengths and lean on them. While 16’s earlier work could meander, one asset is the number of earworms and strong ideas on this record. If there is a parallel, it would be early Helmet up to Betty, Goatsnake and even the best of Clutch; 16’s mid-life music is the right combination of strong theme and groove. Guides for the Misguided also benefits from a core lineup that has gelled in the past decade. Bassist Barney Firks and drummer Dion Thurman are criminally underrated rhythm players, two of the best in the metal genre. Guitarist Alex Shuster is a perfect foil to Ferry.

Most metal made in the ’80s and ’90s wasn’t designed to last. It’s angry music for angry kids.

Few have adapted the music of their youth to the experience of middle age. We’re fortunate that 16 have kept walking the path to the inevitable.

First, they were guides to making sense of an insane world. Now, they are helping us figure out how to keep living in it. These guys should keep playing forever. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

DREAM THEATER

7

Parasomnia

INSIDE OUT MUSIC/SONY

Mike drop (and pick-up)

Obviously, Parasomnia is what it is for two reasons: 1) Mike Portnoy’s back on drums after 13ish years abroad, and 2) it’s a new Dream Theater record.

Eggheaded fanboys of old are beyond overjoyed, while those who relished in the group’s last record—A View From the Top of the World, which would be Mike Mangini’s “ceremonious” bow— look at the old-new Dream Theater with tuckedin shirts (in knee-length shorts) as the Second Coming. Fair expectations, really.

In many ways, Parasomnia is a continuation of the musical theme extrapolated on A View From the Top of the World. Rather than compressing 50 years of music into an unforgiving seven minutes (on average), the New Yorkers stretch out, continuing to unfurl songwriting inspiration from radio-friendly Rush vs. altered-state 58 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

Genesis. OK, that’s splitting hairs. The trio of “A Broken Man,” “Dead Asleep” and “Midnight Messiah” lift heavier tones, courtesy of bassist John Myung, guitarist John Petrucci, and keyboardist Jordan Rudess against vocalist James LaBrie’s sonorous proclamations. The contrast is well-constructed and executed, as if the pros here would rifle any other performance.

That said, Dream Theater show no signs of not complicating matters with new songs, such as the nine-minute “Night Terror” and 19-minute capper “The Shadow Man Incident.”

Here, the proggiest of prog rolls out, glorious nods to past record-length songs “Metropolis—Part I: The Miracle and the Sleeper” and “Octavarium.” Parasomnia falters in its ascent, however. The brightest moments—such as Petrucci’s blindingly great solos on “A Broken Man” and “Bend the Clock”—aren’t powerful enough to overcome the sheer volume of Dream Theater “normal.” —CHRIS DICK

FAITHXTRACTOR

8

Loathing and the Noose

REDEFINING DARKNESS

Praising the world of myth

Faithxtractor is a test case in smashing together wellworn stylistic elements and creating something of your own. Are they death metal? Yes. Are they black metal? Sometimes. Are they also doom metal? Here and there, for sure! What’s consistent in the band’s latest effort, Loathing and the Noose, is the unrelenting aggression and power that washes over you with every track.

In this sense, the sound of this album recalls other extreme practitioners like Akercocke and Anaal Nathrakh, but Faithxtractor don’t tend toward the gothic theatrics of the former or the industrialized terror of the latter. Rather, it’s a vibe that’s more akin to Formulas-era Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, and early Nile that’s channeled through tunnels of doom and black metal melancholy.

The abilities of Ash Thomas, the band’s central nervous system, are on full display on dizzying death spirals like “Ethos Moribund” and “Flooded Tombs.” But there’s also the doomy nuance of opener “Noose of Being,” a song that plays like Bolt Thrower if they were a Dark Descent band. “Fever Dream Litanies” heightens the black metal elements, dousing the listener in layers of dark riffs and ever more growling.

And there’s also a thread of emotion and melancholy that shines through at key moments, especially on the closer, “Cerecloth Vision Veil,” and the bridge to the otherwise totally brutal

“The Loathing.” There’s also the extra-eerie buildup on “Caveats” that pulls you into the album’s most atmospheric track. It displays the vision of an artist not content to simply make something “really heavy,” but a work that stays with you long after the music stops. But don’t worry, it’s still really heavy, and really good.

—J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

HAZZERD

7

The 3rd Dimension M-THEORY AUDIO

Dukes of destruction

Full props to Hazzerd drummer/vocalist Dylan Westendorp for the rare feat of playing drums and singing for a thrash band. That’s no easy task, and on the quartet’s third album, The 3rd Dimension, he’s doing both at an elite level. I mean, you try sprinting for 40 minutes while yelling your head off semi-coherently. That shit’s a workout.

We were tasked with reviewing the band’s second album, Delirium, back in 2020, and were, quite honestly, a little underwhelmed. Five years ago, it seemed these young thrashers were still finding their feet and hadn’t quite struck the balance between flashing their ample chops and writing quality songs. Not a problem on The 3rd Dimension, though.

Guitarist Toryin Schadlich is a little more restrained this time around, mostly just unleashing his shredding when needed, but also taking an extended turn in the spotlight in the nineplus-minute instrumental “A Fell Omen.” This is prime old school-style thrash played with a modern aesthetic and attitude. “ThRaSh TiLl DeAtH” is a quick adrenaline burst delivered with a snaky Mustaine-inspired opening riff, while “Deathbringer” is a little more epic and Maiden-inspired. Hazzerd rage plenty hard on The 3rd Dimension, but they also know when to let Westendorp catch his breath. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE

7

This Consequence M E TA L B L A D E

Alive and not just screaming

Of all the stars that emerged from metalcore’s big bang, none have ever shone brighter than Killswitch Engage. In an era that overflowed with trends (awkwardly placed breakdowns, army hats, bird artwork), Killswitch were always above the fray, crafting a sound that was characteristically theirs. And on their ninth album, This Consequence, the band continues their sonic

legacy while trying to create something that can stand on its own.

One thing that’s immediately apparent when you play the opener, “Abandon Us,” is how the band took pains to make this album feel extra-heavy. Songs like “Discordant Nation,” “Forever Aligned” and “The Fall of Us” absolutely blow the doors off with some of Justin Foley’s hardest-hitting drum-work, paired with the crushing guitars of Adam Dutkiewicz and Joel Stroetzel.

Their sound has always been a blend of melodic death metal and ’90s hardcore, but this album leans especially hard on the metal side.

This is particularly evident on the closing tracks, with “Broken Glass” containing some downright brutal death metal arrangements, and “Requiem” providing a total riff-fest.

Frontmain Jesse Leach is in fine form, delivering a consistently rich performance that continues the winning streak he’s been on since rejoining the band. Likewise, the album’s lyrics follow the themes that have long been part of the band’s core message: morally conscious and awake to the world’s myriad injustices—but never preachy or self-righteous.

There are a couple tracks that don’t come together as well, and the songs overall fall into a predictable template of aggressive verse, melodic chorus, some sort of heavy bridge, then a reinforced chorus. How much this bothers you will depend on how much you love good cops and their bad cop partners. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

KRYPTAN

7

Violence, Our Power EDGED CIRCLE PRODUCTIONS

Short power trip

Kryptan’s debut comes with built-in metal pedigree, though not within the black metal (edged) circle the band has entered.

Helmed by former Katatonia bassist Mattias Norrman (also of Swedish doom/death act October Tide), Kryptan is his first foray into atmospheric black metal. After a pandemic-spawned EP, fulllength Violence, Our Power presents eight tracks— one being a typical scene-setter instrumental— across a tight 26-minute runtime.

There is nothing here that pushes black metal into uncharted territories; Kryptan grip second-

wave orthodoxy tight, particularly the Swedish and Norse varieties. Norrman’s October Tide colleague, Alexander Högbom, is on vocals, and his performance—pained shouts, acidic snarls, powerful roars, demonic growls, all backed by Disrupted’s Mikael Hanni—provides individual drama to lift beyond mere Dissection/Emperor worship. “I Hope They Die,” however, spreads leathery wings and flits across the light’s bane, propelled mightily by the session drumwork of Victor Parri (Isole, Valkyrja). “Vägen Till Våld” and “The Miracle Inside” split mid-paced black metal marches with blasting passages laden with subtle keyboard flourishes.

Again, nothing unique for BM, but every track is rendered in suitably energetic fashion, even though it feels like Kryptan are still working out which style to hone. They can favor rabid back metal, but at times they display symphonic grand elevations. It’s a solid hybrid, yet it leaves the impression that if Kryptan fully dedicated themselves to one niche black art, the music would be more potent. As it stands, this is a concise, traditional homage to Scandinavian black metal forebears, with a varied vocal performance to keep you engaged. —DEAN BROWN

JORDAN WHITEMAN’S

Dark Dungeon Music: The Unlikely Story of Dungeon Synth OFFERS A DEEP DIVE INTO EXTREME MUSIC’S MOST OBSCURE GENRE As far as I know the first of its kind, Dark Dungeon Music [ C U LT N E V E R D I E S ] is a book on the topic of dungeon synth, a fantasythemed spin-off of dark ambient (or black metal intros without the ensuing black metal).

By now, you know who Mortiis is, so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice to say, the pandemic was like a boom for this genre of music, a period recognized as the modern resurgence of DS. Now that we can all watch bands play live again, the appeal is arguably beginning to wane, but the fanbase remains a most dedicated one.

Authored by Ancient Meadow Records owner Jordan Whiteman, Dark Dungeon Music succeeds with a hyper-thorough vigor that makes this book feel like an exhaustive, nearly complete encyclopedia and the dungeon synth zine to rule all dungeon synth zines. There are interviews with everyone from Mortiis to Erang, Old Tower to Blood Tower, Cernunnos Woods, Coniferous Myst—truly an overwhelming amount of oral history contained within its hardbound cover.

The book benefits from Whiteman’s insider knowledge as well. Deeply embedded in the dungeon synth scene since 2016, Whiteman’s

passion for dungeon synth borders on obsession, and his book is all the richer for it.

The author’s countless philosophical musings remind us of that, despite its seeming onedimensionality, dungeon synth is far more than simply keyboard music.

Overall, Dark Dungeon Music offers more of a deep dive than a primer into this niche genre.

In Whiteman’s hands, the obscurity of dungeon synth is handled with respect and care, and none of the diehards need worry about the secret of their sacred music falling into the wrong hands. —DUTCH PEARCE

DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 59

MOONDARK

8

The Abysmal Womb P U LV E R I S E D

Late bloomers

Post Apocalyptic Depression State of the end of the world address | M E TA L B L A D E

Since forming in 2013, Mantar have represented the dangerous, fucked-up sounds we wished were present in big-room rock.

Sadly, as catchy as they can get, the world we live in will likely never bring us stadiumMantar. But maybe that’s for the best, as the German duo takes their sound to some pretty weird places on Post Apocalyptic Depression (in an extremely pure way).

Even when focused on straight rock music, there’s some obvious genre interplay right off the bat. “Absolute Ghost” goes from big rock riff to just a tease of something a little more blackened before settling into something punky. Singer Hanno Klänhardt’s voice remains as gravelly and road-torn as ever, ensuring even catchier songs like “Dogma Down” will never make it to active rock. It’s hard not to hear the obvious similarities to Lemmy’s approach, making that level of grit as much of a texture as the other instruments at play.

LVLTR

7

God Bless Our Happy Home A389 RECORDINGS

Massive attack on friendly punk rock skies

As anyone that has ever tried to track me down on social media knows, I’m not on social media.

Being six months behind the rest of the what’sremaining-of-the-free-world in meme and musical discovery and viral bullshit has its ups and downs.

People keep telling me that avoiding the online vomitory means my mental health is probably in a better place. (Really? This is it?! Good Lord.) But an Instabook heads-up meant I likely wouldn’t have sat staring at this band’s moniker, going through “Level Tree,” “Level Tear,” “Level Tier” and other Bumper Stumpers permutations until figuring out it was *facepalm* “Love Letter.” I also would have known a lot sooner that one of my buds from the ’90s Toronto scene is the guitarist.

That bud is Dom Romeo (Integrity, exPulling Teeth), who has parlayed his joining 60 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

The other half of the equation, Erinc Sakarya, keeps his drumming simple, which strangely works in their favor. Any other drummer probably wouldn’t have been able to resist the obvious opportunities for blast beats on “Halsgericht,” the closest thing the record has to a straight-up black metal song. But his choice of a more traditional rock beat lets the song sound like True Norwegian Arena Metal.

Things launch to a heavy, massive conclusion on “Cosmic Abortion,” which, in the kindest way possible, sounds like a bunch of basement weirdos trying to rewrite Rob Zombie’s “Dragula,” and making it work.

Mantar’s approach to rock/metal/whatever the hell you want to call it makes Post Apocalyptic Depression a rare record you could probably throw on for any fan of guitar music, be they the biggest kvlt hardo or someone holding out hope for an Every Time I Die reunion. Riffs are fun, you know? —JOHN HILL

with Lauren Beecher (Broken Record), Chris Kuhn (ex-Pulling Teeth) and Sean Garwood (exIntegrity) to release God Bless Our Happy Home, of which the homey, crocheted cover image isn’t the only quizzical thing. Their sound answers the unasked question, “What if Dave Grohl redirected his energy away from a second family and towards getting the Misfits, Dinosaur Jr, Torche and Wino into a room for a jam?” Equal parts serious meditation on wrangling melody out of down-stroked power chords and the levity of singing about quitting your job and flipping off cops (as they do in “Scripted”), the hypereuphony employed throughout is a contrasting adjunct to the clarity of punk progressions played at doom metal tempos.

With angelic vocal layers striding atop glittery thunder, “Past Due” is a soaring slice of I-IV-V silk, and “Born to Die” is more “Feel the Pain” than Born From Pain, as these five songs lean towards being a love letter to expanding palettes and a Dear John letter to hardcore pedigree.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

NAGASAKI SUNRISE

8

Distroyer VORTEX

Our kind of dis tracks

Readers who don’t already know this band, tell the truth: You thought this band was Japanese, didn’t you? Of course you did. From the calligraphy-lite logo to the Pacific Theater motif, everything about Nagasaki Sunrise screams “Nippon!” Surprise, they’re from Lisbon, Portugal.

That goes for the music, too. Distroyer’s 10 songs all aspire to the standard of Japan’s storied Burning Spirits hardcore scene. For the uninitiated, the Burning Spirits style alloys metallic

PHOTO BY SONJA SCHURINGA / CHANTIC PHOTOGRAPHY

8

MANTAR

This Swedish doom-death quintet’s long-awaited debut album is a heavyweight feel-good record, and we won’t hear otherwise. Who couldn’t enjoy a sound like Mercenary-era Bolt Thrower gone morbid, with lunking low-end guitars graduated from the Gaz Jennings school of melody? There is also enough evidence here to support the theory that the album title is a subtle bit of wordplay, a nod to “Procreation (of the Wicked)” perhaps.

The Abysmal Womb leans into its Jurassic primitivism, playing out like a time capsule from the Earache era, albeit with the high fidelity and power of today’s better sound engineering technology. Moondark have taken their sweet time getting their shit together, but they have some pedigree in the Swedish death metal family tree.

They initially formed in 1993 and disbanded shortly thereafter, with three of their number forming Dellamorte and cutting Everything You Hate, an altogether more savage work of hardcore-influenced Swedeath with Peter Tägtgren producing. That is an early ‘90s minor classic, supposedly tracked in four days.

They reformed as Moondark in 2011. No, that wasn’t yesterday, but let’s cut them some slack.

A sound, even one as untroubled by evolution like this, takes time to cultivate and become second nature, developing an atmosphere that makes good on the whole “deep abyssic darkness” promised on the Pulverised webstore. The Abysmal Womb might have been recorded over numerous sessions at various locations, but you wouldn’t know it to hear it. This all comes together, one cursed vision under a groove, held together by a gnarly vibe that gives tracks such as “Sterile Earth” and long-form closer “Immersed to Crypts” a three-dimensional power, a familiar yet satisfying horror thrill. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

D-beat (hence the album title) with melodic guitar pyrotechnics that evoke Michael Schenker and Gary Moore at their most glorious.

There’s actually way more to Burning Spirits than that brief description, but here’s the point: Nagasaki Sunrise are really fucking good at it.

Alongside Portland’s Long Knife, they might be the best Gaijin in the world at it. Distroyer is a half hour of pure stadium crust adrenaline.

Vocalist Gasolizna Nagasaki’s melodic pipes give each song a memorable signature while his comrades unleash a hail of bulletproof riffs.

Nagasaki Sunrise may be top students in the class, but they haven’t eclipsed their teachers.

Some of Distroyer’s relentlessness comes from its incessant programmed drumbeats, which do get grating. Also, while all these songs kick ass, they’re somewhat predictable. There’s a charming and indelible weird streak in Nagasaki Sunrise’s heroes that they don’t replicate.

But what Disaster lacks in eccentricity it compensates for with excitement. I’ll never hop into the cockpit of a Warthog to dogfight a pack of Zeroes, but listening to Nagasaki Sunrise sounds like how I imagine that feels—and it feels pretty great. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

OZOTH

8

In Remembrance of the Yellow Sun SELF-RELEASED

Death/doom stars

With each passing year, it becomes increasingly difficult for new bands in the doom genre to distinguish themselves. When everything has seemingly been done before, it takes vision and craft to step into the spotlight with grace and purpose.

Enter fledgling monolithic death-doom quintet Ozoth from Long Island, NY: These upstarts flip that script on its back and leave its legs scuttling in the light of a dying star. Not since Morgion’s classic Among Majestic Ruin have I heard a debut in this genre so assured, weighty and, well, majestic.

In Remembrance of the Yellow Sun’s five tracks all span from six to nine minutes, not bothering to wear the listener out with sidelong marathons. Atmospheric intros and arpeggios set a cosmic stage full of ash and darkness. An aura of beatific grimness abounds. Lyrically, the stage seems to be a cosmic future where the memories and emotions of humanity are all but extinguished. This album would make an excellent alternate soundtrack to E. Elias Merhige’s brutal lo-fi art film Begotten.

Particularly endearing to this old dog is the fact that Ozoth are in their early 20s, and went to high school together. They’re still based in Long Island where they grew up, and have only

7

SCOUR Gold

For simplicity’s sake | H O U S E C O R E

Some say supergroup (#1). Others say dumping ground for ideas that didn’t cut the mustard in other bands (#2). Still others define this sort of thing as a low-committal musical commune for friends and friends of friends to do stuff they wouldn’t normally have the chance to (#3). The assignment Derek Engemann, Mark Kloeppel, Phil Anselmo, and John and Adam Jarvis have foisted upon us as Scour is to figure which designation they fall into while remembering there is music to enjoy behind the gatekeeping madness.

After a series of EPs dating back to 2016, the Scour-ing pads—how’s about that for a merch idea?—have taken windows of rare downtime since 2020’s Black to wrangle their talents in the name of a sandpapery blast of American black metal. But Gold isn’t solely black metal, which gives Scour an edge cynics and doubters would deny them because of their bloodlines.

Adam Jarvis methodically pounds his drums with more intensity than all of black metal.

Anselmo is a vocal chameleon, skittering

played a handful of shows to date. There’s a knee-jerk temptation to dock them for using amp simulators and programmed drums, but I honestly wouldn’t know if they hadn’t told me.

Imagine if Godflesh or Napalm Death had MacBooks in the mid-’80s. They would have used them, too.

Overall, this is a sonically massive album, full of depressive atmospheres and dark melodies that recall Blut Aus Nord, YOB and Evoken. If that’s your jam, bring this to your next wake.

—NATHAN CARSON

SACRIFICE

8

Volume Six

CURSED BLESSINGS

Like the mighty cicada…

Of all Canada’s 1980s thrash bands, the one with the best quantity-to-quality ratio is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, Sacrifice. After rising to the top of the Canadian thrash scene with 1987’s landmark

between deep-lunged bellow and razors-onaluminum screech. The songwriting takes a brick of C4 to frost-covered tropes in the form of slinky breakdowns (“Blades”), martial trad-metal stomping (“Coin”), good ol’ grindcore (“Hell”) and a mix of class and crass, as “Infusorium” and “Devil” collide Cradle of Filth and Cattle Decapitation over Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport.

So, where do Scour fit? Judging by the early reaction from isolated Anselmo fanboys/girls, many of whom have no idea “who the other guys in Phil’s new band are”—an actual YouTube comment, by the way—and how Gold hits with deeper conviction than any of the EPs, this is going to shock, awe and surprise. So, hardly #1 and definitely not #2. With Gary Holt guesting on an album some folks have been anticipating for the better part of a decade, things angle towards #3. But with an individualist swagger swinging through the punky “Evil” and influenza levels of catchiness catapulting the inky blast of “Invoke,” can we just call it Scour?

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

Forward to Termination (inducted into our Hall of Fame back in 2015), the pride of Scarborough dutifully cranked out two more excellent albums before disbanding in 1993. Sixteen years later, the foursome made a welcome return on 2009’s superb The Ones I Condemn, and incredibly, it sounded as though not a day had passed since they were last around, as if they still had shaggy hair and wore white high-tops and acid wash jeans. It was uncanny.

Time flies when you hit middle age, though, and Volume Six arrives a whopping 16 years later.

Nestled comfortably between Testament, Death Angel and Destruction, Sacrifice’s approach is simple yet very effective: Rob Urbinati still possesses one helluva snarl (not far removed from Schmier and Mille Petrozza), his enunciation a big reason the music engages first-time listeners, while the riffs by Urbinati and Joe Rico are clinics in palm-muted speed and groove. “Comatose,” “Antidote of Poison” and “Your Hunger for War” revive ’80s thrash brilliantly, while “Underneath Millennia” employs a nifty little quotation from DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 61

Rush’s “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” Meanwhile, instrumentals “Lunar Eclipse” and the outstanding “Black Hashish” shift the focus from aggression to some good old doom and gloom before resuming the full-throttle assault. We’ll be cranking this one until Volume Seven arrives in, yikes, 2041. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

TORMENTOR TYRANT

7

Excessive Escalation of Cruelty EVERLASTING SPEW

Benton’s Satan spawn

Tormentor Tyrant started informally when the members got drunk in Finland and talked about how cool it would be to play some Deicide. At some point during the first year of the pandemic, they made good on that drunken promise, and now, four years later, we have an album. It seems like a long time to honor a pledge to jam Deicide, but we’ll let that rest.

While this album might have come from Tormentor Tyrant’s shared worship of Uncle Glen, Deicide is just one checkpoint and influence on this predominantly strong album. Listen closely and you’ll hear a lot of the ghosts of the death metal ’90s. The relentless riffs touch on DiSalvo era-Cryptopsy and mid-to-late-’90s Napalm Death. Tormentor Tyrant, fortunately, never sound like a homage as much as a band that listened intently, did their homework and genuinely loves ’90s death metal.

There are a few minor things you could quibble about. The cover is too similar to Altars of Madness and nowhere near as cool. The band says in their promo they “draw back to the time when metal was evil.” Metal is more evil now than ever; check out Blackie Lawless kissing dictator ass in a recent show, an act of obeisance far more menacing than any Satan-adjacent tunes.

If Benton heard this album, he would give it four out of five Bigfoots. He might also complain that the band owes him royalties and say bad things about Roadrunner and the Hoffmans.

But Tormentor Tyrant are on to something good. Excessive Escalation of Cruelty is tight, ferocious and listenable—achievements that most bands haven’t realized in their careers.

—JUSTIN M. NORTON

UNREQVITED

5

A Pathway to the Moon PROPHECY

Dr3am m3tal

Canada’s Unreqvited are seven albums in, and unless you’re below skin 62 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

deep in the (seemingly global) depressive black metal scene, A Pathway to the Moon might as well be the first album by sole proprietor 鬼 (a.k.a.

Ghost). Growth between albums has been slow— there’s an interchangeability at play in his repertoire—but Unreqvited are in their final form at last. For the uninitiated, A Pathway to the Moon (and the albums immediately before it) is akin to efforts by Alcest, Lantlôs and Deafheaven.

There’s also a bit of Atoma and Enshine thrown in—mostly in the form of pensive, if soaring leads and piano inclusions—for good measure.

The difference, at least as far as style is concerned, is in songcraft.

Ghost doesn’t write songs per se. From the 10-minute “The Antimatter” to “Departure: Everlasting Dream,” our Canadian man is into movements or movie score-like conformations, for which there’s a hat tip to Hans Zimmer in the form of bonus track “Cornfield Chase” (from Interstellar). There are some truly beautiful, nostalgic moments on A Pathway to the Moon.

“The Antimatter,” “The Starforger” and “Void Essence/Frozen Tears” are full of ideas ranging from djent and Devin Townsend-like ephemera (think Terria) to Emperor-like night-sky vastness and guitar heroics. Cue in Ghost’s mix-buried screams and dulcet coo-coos, and it all starts to feel… disconnected. There isn’t a center, just continuous thistledown plays to sentimental hearts, and while that’s fine (and typically in my wheelhouse), it’s entirely confusing unless you’re absolutely vested in Ghost’s groundless aesthetic. —CHRIS DICK

VACUOUS

7

In His Blood RELAPSE

Caring and killing

If you’re a dumbass American like me, it can be humbling to look at England on a world map and contemplate the staggering quantity and influence of extreme music—heavy metal itself, new waves thereof, mutant strains like industrial music and goregrind—borne out of a country not much larger than Pennsylvania.

Zoom in on London and it sure looks like the members of Vacuous have spent the last few years personally ensuring that the city has an active underground metal scene with a host of black and death projects that also include Bastard Mycosis, Vaticinal Rites and the excellently named Gorgon Vomit. Vacuous play death metal, and their second full-length, In His Blood, is distinctly urban in the same way that some black metal is rural.

These dudes are avowed fans of Converge and the Cure, and indeed, there’s some hardcore

stomp peeking through the opening title track, and heavy use of gloomy clean guitars throughout “Hunger” before the track ends in melodic frenzy. Birmingham is just a couple hours from London, and the trademark bleakness of prime Godflesh and Utopia Banished figures heavily here (check closer “No Longer Human”). That vibe is underscored by the lyrics. No spooky Satan stuff from Vacuous; songs like “Stress Positions” and “Immersion” paint a world of exploitation and grim violence mediated through empathy-eroding screen time that lets toxic ideologies flourish, all delivered via frontman Jo Chen’s despondent roar. (Great, now I’m bummed that Assück didn’t have a chance to be lyrically mad at the internet before they broke up.) The recording is beefy and heavy with atmosphere, the riffs are mean and the real world is cold.

—ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ

THE WATCHER

8

Out of the Dark CRUZ DEL SUR

The gold that falls

When the first track of a debut full-length quotes two different eras of Black Sabbath, it ain’t too difficult to figure out which part of the Southern Cross the band’s Planet Caravan hails from. The Watcher may be located in Boston geographically, but they call the smoke-choked skies of mid-20th century England their spiritual home. Two-thirds of the members also played in black metal practitioners Malleus.

They bring a similar love of metallic history to this project, so you won’t find much in the way of innovation here. If that isn’t a factor, the question is how well do these neon knights gather the generals at their masses?

Out of the Dark runs to the light with a skip in its step. Of the various Sabbath iterations, this feels closest to the Dio years—much more charging than plodding, including a nod to the classic Maiden gallop in “Kill or Be Killed.”

Like fellow Bostonians Magic Circle (RIP), you can tell the instrumentalists have a blast playing classic metal with no frills or pesky evolutionary developments to spoil the fun. They’re damn good at it, too. P. Reed, meanwhile, has a voice somewhere between the Sword’s J.D. Cronise and pre-heroin addiction Bobby Liebling, leaving him well-positioned to tackle multiple aspects of the sound. He handles cavalry charges like “Strike Back” equally as well as epic gothic dramas like “Thy Blade, Thy Blood.”

The Watcher certainly prove themselves worth watching here. Sometimes you just need a light in the darkness. —JEFF TREPPEL

CDs AND CD-Rs FROM THE SEEDY UNDERGROUND AND EVEN SEEDIER INTERNET

BY DUTCH PEARCE

Angle of H’Zazel THY YOKE RETURN

The Gnashing

FORSAKEN SANCTUARY

Thy Yoke Return, Angle of H’Zazel’s latest EP, is three tracks of atmospheric and noisy black metal backed by an oscillating and relentless drum machine, and filled with scathing, high-pitched screams piercing the barrage of “black devotion.” That Angle belong to the mysterious Unseen Predation Cult probably won’t help you imagine how this sounds, but perhaps the fact that Perverse Homage put out this CD-R will set you off in the right direction. Ultimately, far more engaging than droning, and not nearly as brutalizing or trauma-inducing as other purveyors of electronic black noise tend to be. Strangely comforting, actually.

Canadian solo act the Gnashing’s sophomore full-length Forsaken Sanctuary perfectly encapsulates what’s so appealing about looking for new music in oftenignored places. These eight tracks of black metal/doom/dark ambient are so refreshingly unpretentious they’re like a tolerance break without actually taking a break. Forsaken Sanctuary is so far beyond the rat race it might as well be from a different planet. Here, the songs write themselves without a second glance at the black metal code of conduct.

Just pure expression of pain, longing, misery—in short, exactly what it should be and nothing more.

Khazurvaal

Chephreon

UNYIELDING SHADOWS Unyielding Shadows, the debut EP from Melbourne’s Khazurvaal, comes outta nowhere, and from an unlikely source: a guitarist of a death-thrash band who also (co-?)hosts a metal podcast called The Metal Podcast. The dude behind Khazurvaal is a half-century old and his riffs sound like he’s ignored any black metal records released after 1994.

Equal parts Master’s Hammer and Gehenna, yet the man behind it credits Quorthon most of all. Apparently the result of a “prophetic dream” after taking in hours of Quorthon interviews, Unyielding Shadows is an inspired work of long pentup black metal brilliance.

Lucemortis

HELLUCINATIONS OF INFERNAL PSYCHOSIS West Coast readers may recognize the name Lucemortis, as the San Diego-based black/death trio have made quite a few live appearances already, opening for legends like Demoncy, Imprecation and Nunslaughter. Listening to their filthy and obscenely hostile six-track home-duped demo CD-R, it’s easy to hear why they’re in demand. Hallucinations of Infernal Psychosis, Lucemortis’ debut, could go toe-to-toe with early material from the likes of modern black/death elites like Wrathprayer or Teitanblood and hold its own. So, don’t be surprised when these guys blow up like a beached whale carcass.

DARK TALES FROM THE DEEP LAKES First, a caveat: If you don’t like the Finnish-style Donald Duck vocals, you’ll probably hate this. For those of you still reading, Dark Tales From the Deep Lakes brings to the table seven melodic blackened speed metal tracks with heaps upon heaps of killer guitarwork. I’m talking like Mercyful Fate-level leads and solos. Their promo pictures are goofy, their logo’s not great, but man they can shred, and that’s all they do for 40-minutes straight on Dark Tales. Won’t earn you any scene cred, but Chephreon are worth your time all the same.

Merged in Abyss AVE EXITIUM

Merged in Abyss were a Slovakian melodic black metal duo—emphasis on “were,” as apparently, they’ve broken up—and Ave Exitium is their last fulllength after a six-year run that saw the release of three previous full-lengths and several EPs. Just goes to show ya: You can play killer metal with catchy riffs, solid compositions and real drums, and most of the time the majority of the world will have no idea. Meanwhile, for those of you out there who love a hidden gem, Ave Exitium is a moody and well-produced CD-R with the perfect blend of vicious blasting speed and ominous atmospherics.

DECIBEL : MARCH 2025 : 63

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

THE ENDURING POWER OF

METAL LOVE the

imagery, as has been

spelled out in any number of judicial inquiries connected to things like school shootings (Sick of It All), suicides (Judas Priest, Marilyn Manson) and actual murders (AC/DC), or even attempted murders (Tim Lambesis), congeals around metal being the music of mental disturbance.

Chicken-and-egg style, it’s unclear if prosecutors believe that the music makes good guys bad, or that it’s just bad guys that like the music that’s a reflection of their badness; but the defense has been successful, if a little weak.

That is, attorneys have managed to duck the causal connection between musical art and felonies, but they’ve done so in a way that tells fundamental untruths about metal.

This they do by making some sort of parallel between horror movies and the musical mise-en-scène of metal. In other words, don’t take it too seriously.

This, despite the fact that there have been studies that suggest that emotional distress might indeed be soothed by sounds that are seemingly less than soothing. Which is 64 : MARCH 2025 : DECIBEL

why, on the cusp of Valentine’s Day, it seems that metal deserved a love letter. Like Frank from Blue Velvet says, right from the fucking heart.

I saw people stabbed on the dance floor at hardcore shows in East L.A. I saw girls get gang-beaten at a Red Hot Chili Peppers Show.

In San Francisco, no less. I saw a guy trying to bring a sword into a hip-hop show.

And this is not just anecdotal: I have gotten into fistfights at Jimmy Buffett (to be fair, I also almost got into a fight at a late-night showing of Schindler’s List). Squabbles at the Chemical Brothers, and the Indigo Girls. But realistically, outside of the riot that ensued after we played a show with King Diamond, my time in metal has been amazingly without violence.

Even when long-haired metal dudes stood a healthy chance of getting their asses kicked at hardcore shows, I could go, as a hardcore dude, to a metal show without incident. In fact, my one metal show event of high emotionalism had nothing to do with violence. Not physical violence, or any other kind, and everything to do with a wellmeaning metalhead shoulder to sob

on right after some traumatic shit went down and I staggered into the bar area only to be straightened out by a metal publisher friend of mine.

And I’m no stranger to pulling guns out of friends’ mouths. Hanging around bodybuilders on crazily high amounts of pharmaceuticals will put you in places to do so, but bodybuilders are usually so focused on bodybuilding goals that they have scant time for… helping out another bodybuilder.

But I’ve never had someone in metal tell me that they didn’t have the time—or even interest—in helping. I’ve never had what comes even a little bit close to a negative experience. When I interviewed Phil Anselmo, I sort of expected the worst. But I brought that energy to bear, didn’t pre-judge, and after about an hour, I realized we spent about half of it talking about old R&B. Not at all so when I interviewed Samuel Jackson, who, I suspected, if he thought he could have, would have tried to kick my ass.

No, and not to get all maudlin here, though my experience in metal, standing as it is with my first show in 1977 (the Plasmatics were

metal enough for back then), has been about nothing but love. And over the years it’s shown itself in couches to sleep on, showers I could use, a change of clothes, rides, even in one rare case that I won’t go into detail on, a willingness to hide a gun, with no questions asked.

“The most fascistic music I’ve ever listened to was metal,” said an aging hippie to me at some party. “Everyone chanting and raising their right arms in the air.

In unison.”

Whatever, man. People see what they want. Which I guess he could say about me. But I’m not just seeing what I want. I am seeing charity, concern, kindness and a willingness to let it all be in the face of great, and sometimes greater, difficulty.

Only other place that I’ve experienced this as categorically as I have in metal? In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu communities. Which is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, populated with people who could kill you. But they won’t and they don’t, and, like metal, very few in the outside world will understand this.

But we do. And that’s all that matters.

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“SLEEPLESS EMPIRE” Italian goth metal legends Lacuna Coil return with their 10th studio album

Incl. singles “Never Dawn”, “In The Mean Time” (feat. Ash Costello of New Years Day) and “Hosting The Shadow” (feat. Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God) Available as CD Digipak, Ltd. Deluxe CD Box Set, LP [available in Ultra Clear, Silver, and Black], and as Digital Album.

OUT 2/14 ON CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS