Decibel #219 - January 2023

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January 2023 [R 219] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 10 metal muthas Home movies 12 low culture Don’t worry, be happy 13 no corporate beer Better together 14 in the studio:

spirit adrift

16 xentrix Thrash from the past 18 hoaxed Into the shadows 20 high command Extended universe

It’s electrifying

features

reviews

22 spiritworld Dressed to kill

71 lead review John Cobbett and Sigrid Sheie, with the help of friends old and new, unintentionally revive Hammers of Misfortune to release the much anticipated Overtaker

24 q&a: scowl Vocalist Kat Moss would love to see you pushing up daisies 28 the decibel

hall of fame Reeling from the departure of a core member but fueled by contempt for the war in Iraq, Hammers of Misfortune restructure to forge their tried-and-true classic The Locust Years

41 special feature:

the top 40 albums of 2022

72 album reviews Records from bands that know the best part of being a metalhead is not defending lazy tone-deaf tweets, including Celestial Season, Exhumed and Monster Magnet 80 damage ink Family matters

Intentionally biased against you

Rise Above COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY GENE SMIRNOV

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. © 2022 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.

4 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

STRIKER COLLECTION KRAMERGUITARS.COM

I was 20 when I started writing about music professionally. By “professionally,” I mean that someone was sympathetic enough to actually pay me to barf out pun-heavy Cannibal Corpse and Dissection reviews. As a broke college student who rarely had time to access the school’s 14.4 modem-adorned computer lab (this was 1996 after all), my often horribly misspelled editorial was also illegibly handwritten as a bonus.

Backed by that impressive résumé, I managed to convince my editor at the time—who now happens to be Decibel’s publisher—to assign me my first interview feature. My pitch was simple: This Finnish band was about to release a progressive metal masterpiece, which was a massive creative leap forward from their early, cavernous death metal beginnings. Who wouldn’t want to read about that in a free magazine given out by a local record store that featured a substantial polka music section?

I don’t remember much about my first Amorphis interview—and certainly guitarist Esa Holopainen will recall even less—but nearly three decades later, we’ll both celebrate much more about Amorphis: The Official Story of Finland’s Greatest Metal Band. Author Markus Laakso’s fully authorized band biography, released in Finland in 2015, has finally been granted a proper English translation, and Decibel has fully edited and redesigned it with exclusive new cover art as part of our bookshelfobliterating Decibel Books library.

So, thank you to Alex Mulcahy for letting me gush about Elegy 26 years ago. Thank you to the late Joseph Lechleider, pioneer of DSL internet service. And thank you, dear reader, for your continued support of our bound, printed endeavors.

www.decibelmagazine.com

REFUSE/RESIST

January 2023 [T219] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

alex@redflagmedia.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

albert@decibelmagazine.com AD SALES

James Lewis

james@decibelmagazine.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES ART DIRECTOR

Aaron Salsbury

aaron@decibelmagazine.com

Michael Wohlberg

michael@decibelmagazine.com CUSTOMER SERVICE

Patty Moran

COPY EDITOR

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BOOKCREEPER

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tim@redflagmedia.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

Albert Mudrian

DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Emily Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Addison Herron-Wheeler Jonathan Horsley Courtney Iseman Neill Jameson Kim Kelly Sarah Kitteringham Daniel Lake Cosmo Lee Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Brad Sanders Joseph Schafer Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

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Decibel subscriber service/change of address: 215.625.9850 x105 or contact@decibelmagazine.com To order by mail: Consult the subscription card To order by phone: 215.625.9850 x105 To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com VISA/MASTERCARD/DISCOVER accepted Subscribers: please alert us of any change of address 6-8 weeks before the date of your move. Decibel is not responsible or obligated to re-ship issues missed because of a move we were not informed of 6-8 weeks before the move took place.

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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 $29.95.

Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials.

Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia PA 19107.

Special thanks to Vinyl Altar for hosting our Undeath cover shoot.

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READER OF THE

MONTH

Andrew Grizzle Braselton, GA

Congrats, you are our first returning ROTM. You were last featured in the November 2009 issue (No. 61), so it’s been a minute. You’re still here—why?

Buckle up. Back in ’04, Old Man Gloom’s Christmas was your #3 album of the year. I was a fan of both Cave In and Converge at the time, but I had no idea of this “supergroup” until I read that year-end list. Christmas was some of the strangest and heaviest shit I had ever heard, and I was an instant fan.

Fast-forward to 2012. OMG goes on a short Northeast tour to surprise release NO. Virginia is the closest state to me that they would play; I planned for months to drive up for the show. My truck gets totaled by a semi the day before. I am concussed, get a rental, make the eight-hour drive, get blown away by the show, meet all the guys in the band when I get them

8 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

to sign the LP, eat falafel and drive back home with a splitting headache. Worth it.

I try to play this new, amazing album for my future wife; she says it is horrible, I am sad.

Fast-forward again to 2019. I convince my wife to accompany me to Las Vegas, make her watch this horrible band, she tells me she liked them after seeing them and is an instant superfan. I am elated! Now she is a straight-up metalhead, and I can now share all of this music that has meant so much to me for so long.

Fast-forward one last time to earlier this year, and she is just excited as I am when I have the honor of being tattooed by [Aaron] Turner. If it weren’t for dB, none of that would have been possible. That is why I am still here.

Your previous ROTM photo featured you standing on a giant windmill turbine, proudly holding an issue of Decibel. Are you still involved in that interesting line of work?

That job was great! It allowed me to travel the country, see some amazing shows in some amazing places, and opened up many doors. Life on

the road just wasn’t for me, so I moved on. Now I am a service engineer in the transport refrigeration industry. We deal with the temperature-controlled delivery of everything from pharmaceuticals to ice cream. Grim and frostbitten!

You’re still located in Georgia. Who is the best metal band from the Peach State that we don’t know about yet?

As you have seen, it is difficult for me to make a single decision. GA is ripe with great talent!

Check out Big Oaf, Lost Hours, Cemetery Filth, Dead Vibes Ensemble, and Canopy. If I gotta pick, I am going with Drifter, a power trio to be reckoned with. Get with them!

Thirteen years ago, we asked you for your fave album of 2009, and you answered Isis’ Wavering Radiant. Does that still hold up in 2022? And what’s your favorite this year?

Yep, I am unwavering in my support of Wavering Radiant; it was a perfect swansong. This year I have to go with Cave ln’s Heavy Pendulum. I was gutted when the news of Caleb Scofield’s passing came, and I was prepared to never hear any new material from Old Man Gloom or Cave In again. OMG’s two albums after were great and cathartic, but when I heard the first few seconds of Heavy Pendulum, I got chills and the same kind of feeling that I got when I first discovered all of those Boston badasses. For me, it is a perfect album.

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

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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 translated Finnish English into American English.

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

This Month’s Muthas: Jan Paterra Muthas of A.E. Paterra of Zombi

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m 71 years old and have been married to Tony’s father for 51 years. I’m an avid reader, like to cook and bake, and have had a lifelong love for the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.

You bought Dawn of the Dead on VHS for Tony when he was 12, kickstarting his affection for progressive electronic music. Did you enjoy that kind of music as well, or have any part in steering his interest toward drums?

Tony contributes to a series of classic rock covers with other extreme musicians under the moniker Zombi & Friends. Any favorites in the series?

During COVID, Zombi & Friends did cover songs featuring different artists like Barbra Streisand, Eagles, Dionne Warwick, etc., and I absolutely loved them all!

What is your favorite movie, and would it be improved if Tony scored it?

Honestly, I was never into horror films and didn’t quite know this style of music at the time. Tony always, from a young age, loved horror movies and would watch them with his aunt April, who lived next door, because I was too scared! (At the time, I loved Bruce Springsteen, Chicago and the Beatles.) I think through that [as well as] hearing the scores of those movies, [it] helped steer his interest to electronic music and the drums.

Moonstruck is my favorite movie. Those that have seen it know that the genre of music is quite the opposite of what Tony plays! However, adding his music would make some of the scenes very suspenseful.

Perhaps they could add it for a remake of the movie!

Be it Zombi, Majeure, Grails or anything else, which of Tony’s projects do you like the most?

Tony is a fantastic cook. He takes after his Italian grandfather, Emidio, and enjoys cooking for his family and friends. His marinara sauce is always the star of our Christmas Eve dinner. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

I would have to say Zombi. I’ve had more opportunities to see Tony play live [with Zombi] and I feel more connected to Zombi.

What’s something that most people would be surprised to learn about your son?

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Venomous Concept, The Good Ship Lollipop  SpiritWorld, Deathwestern  Eight Bells, Legacy of Ruin  Amophis, Skyforger  Eyehategod, Take as Needed for Pain ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  OFF!, Free LSD  Fu Manchu, In Search of  Farflung, A Wound in Eternity  Negative Approach, Negative Approach  Necros, Conquest for Death ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Undeath, It’s Time.. to Rise from the Grave  Kreator, Hate Über Alles  Ripped to Shreds, 劇變 (Jubian)  Black Royal, Earthbound  The Otolith, Folium Limina ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  End It, Unpleasant Living  Carpenter Brut, Leather Terror  Envy, Seimei  Undeath, It’s Time.. to Rise from the Grave  Lamp of Murmuur, Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Venomous Concept, The Good Ship Lollipop  Worm, Bluenothing  SpiritWorld, Deathwestern  Burnman, Notes For a Catalog For an Exhibition  An Albatross, The An Albatross Family Album

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Chris Morrison : m ot h e r o f g r av e s

 Carnal Ruin, Soulless I Remain  Tiamat, Clouds  Katatonia, Discouraged Ones  Flesher, Murder Sessions demo  Blasted Heath, Vela

PHOTO BY

10 : J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L

KRISTIE VANTLIN

METAL BLADE RECORDS 40TH ANNIVERSARY $19.82 LP SALE ▸ METALBLADE.COM/HOLIDAY

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BY COUR

“But You Forgot About…” elcome to the issue contain-

ing our most controversial feature of this (and every) year: Decibel’s Top 40 Albums. With the amount of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing it evokes, you’d guess we had Burzum on the cover with a sidebar rating the kiddie porn on the Inquisition frontman’s computer, maybe even a Metal Muthas interview with Bobby Liebling’s Fig Newton go-between.

Look, I recycle a lot of jokes, but it’s mostly because you guys keep forgetting this stuff actually happened.

These lists get all kinds of shit thrown at them. A lot of comments about labels paying publications for the inclusion of whatever record you think sucks, or the predictability of the top five—especially if there’s a new Napalm Death LP in whatever year we’re in (real shame they can’t stop making hammers after 40 years or however long they’ve been at this). But mostly it’s people griping that their personal list isn’t reflected in the list they’re reading. For a country that ignores democracy whenever it’s important, we sure love to think we’re all in this together when it comes to the last few weeks of the year.

I can’t pull together a cohesive narrative about metal as a subculture anymore, because we’re either “gatekeepers” or we’re begging for validation, like we’re in some Dickensian alley with a cup and cane. That can also count as a Christmas reference since we’re heading into that season. (There’s the “culture” portion of our program; I’m sure the rest will qualify for the “low” allotment.) Anyway, this is all fucking confusing. There is without a doubt a tradition of the self-satisfaction of being the coolest kid in mom’s basement. But if no one else validates your status as a neato person, then what’s the fucking point?

We could go on about what a special flower you all are, and I’m sure I’ve touched on it over 12 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

the years and will continue to abuse it like the kids on Dagon’s hard drive (callback!), so instead I’ll just talk about how special I am since the entirety of my existence is mostly based around my own obvious need for validation. (Therapy is going great, in case anyone was curious.)

Let’s start with how these lists are actually created, at least the one in the issue you’re shitting to. Emails start circulating asking for contributors’ lists sometime before the leaves start changing, which explains why a lot of the later-year stuff tends to miss a fair amount of these things. Each issue takes a lot of preparation, and this one seems to take the most since it’s cobbling together a year’s worth of shit into however many pages we’re looking at.

Before the “don’t hit ‘reply all’” rule was mercifully enacted, we could read each other’s lists, which generally was like listening to two dozen of us talking all at once. And if you think we missed your favorite records, don’t feel alone; we miss a lot of ours as well because there’s a lot of voices and this is how democracy works.

Eventually, sense is made of this and the donuts are made and delivered to you, the reader. And it’ll either taste lovely or like an unwashed dick on tour depending on your own taste in music.

Maybe unwashed pricks are your jam?

I barely submitted anything this year because most of what I’ve been into have been demos, reissues (Entombed’s Morning Star finally getting a new pressing was clutch) or a lot of late-year shit that I hadn’t even heard before the list went out. And it’s not even Halloween as I type this, so there’s probably a few yet that merit inclusion.

The two new Circle of Ouroborus records, for instance, are fucking amazing, but they weren’t out in time for me to toss them into the pile.

So, enjoy what you enjoy and we’ll do the same. Because none of this is a personal attack on anyone’s (poor) taste, and you’ll forget how upset you are by January.

The Hottest Collaboration In Craft Beer: Helping New Brewers Grow

C

ollaboration is commonplace in

craft beer, often geared at doubleor triple-dipping on multiple hype breweries’ appeal. But what if that collaborative spirit was more meaningful and longer-lasting? What if it helped build and nurture entire brands?

According to restaurant management platform Toast, the current average cost of starting a brewery is $500,000 to $1.5 million.

Survival is tougher than in recent years, too, thanks to supply chain shortages, inflation, and hard seltzer and canned cocktails stealing shelf space. Add the fact that women and people of color have a harder time securing loans and investors. In a period of growing awareness that craft beer needs to be exponentially more inclusive, a different plan of action is necessary to start encouraging people from underrepresented groups to make and sell beer. Enter: the incubator. Or, cooperatively owned brewery, or collective.

Collaborative brewing operations are a growing model. Brand new and/or tiny brands can rent just as much space as they need whenever they need it, instead of investing in their own. Or they can enter into a partnership with a handful of other brewers to share costs. Or they can enter an incubator program and get everything from space and equipment to marketing, business

 Making flights Thanks to Pilot Project’s Incubator Program, breweries like Funkytown are able to thrive without the crushing overhead

advice, and even a couple draft lines in a taproom. Pilot Project Brewing in Chicago, Twelve Percent Beer Project in Connecticut, Rocky Mount Mills in North Carolina, H.G. Fenton’s Brewery Igniter in San Diego, Black Star Co-Op in Austin—these operations are laying the groundwork for collective, cooperative, collaborative brewing.

Incubator Pilot Project has launched 13 brands since opening in 2019. Dan Abel comes from the music industry and wanted to apply that approach to craft beer. He and co-founder Jordan Radke considered the monumental barriers for would-be brewers, from building a facility to accounting, things that can keep creative people out of the industry.

“You would never ask a musician trying to get off the ground to go build their own recording studio,” Abel points out, “yet we do exactly that of brewers. We said, ‘Screw that.

Let’s build a recording studio for brewers.’”

Today, Abel says Pilot Project is more like a full-blown independent music label that can support its partner-brewers’ careers.

None of the brands they incubate have an existing brewery. They elevator-pitch Pilot; the next round is a phone call; finally, brewers meet with leadership to fully discuss not just their potential beers, but their concepts.

Partners get space, equipment, Pilot’s brewing team—including their knowledge, resources and guidance—marketing, financial and legal help, and distribution. Brewers also get their creations poured in the Pilot Project taproom, and benefit from the incubator’s reputation.

Even if patrons don’t know a new brewer, they know Pilot Project and trust who they select to work with and how they help these brands grow.

Pilot has worked with 13 breweries so far, notably including Black-owned Funkytown

Brewery, woman-owned Flora Brewing and Indian-heritage-and-ingredient-celebrating Azadi Brewing Company. Abel and Radke recently purchased Milwaukee Brewing Co.’s production facility to significantly increase the amount of brewers they can work with.

For this road ahead, Pilot Project now has another music veteran at the brewhouse helm: Powermad guitarist and former Surly and 3 Floyds brewer Todd Haug is Chief Innovation Officer.

“Right now, the focus is transitioning this brewery into what we need it to be to make the quality we expect of ourselves,” Haug says, listing lab, quality assurance and packaging fine-tuning among his immediate goals. “Then the innovation part will be more on the process. Is it efficient? Is it good for the beer? Is it making the best beer? Is it repeatable?” Haug adds that he’s excited about the role because his experience makes him a perfect fit, although there’s still plenty for him to learn.

Haug is also excited about the capacity an incubator like Pilot Project has to infuse the craft beer landscape with diversity. Opening the industry up to different people with different perspectives who may not otherwise have resources to start brewing also means welcoming more drinkers into the community.

“You wouldn’t think [the Pilot Project taproom] was a brewery by the diversity inside,” he says. “It might not be PC anymore, but we used to joke that beer festivals and metal shows used to be all guys.”

“We’re not efficient,” Abel stresses. “We’re not doing all of the things right. But what I love about what we’re doing at Pilot Project, and the craft industry at large, is we’re allowing independent ideas to muscle their way through.”

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2023 : 13

SPIRIT ADRIFT

STUDIO REPORT

you don’t notice the sign on the door, you might mistake Electrical Audio

ALBUM TITLE

like we put together an MVP TBD team,” Garrett says. for any other Chicago industrial building, not a world-class recording STUDIOS As for the music itself? If facility. Owned by recording engineer Steve Albini, the building’s origiElectrical Audio, 2020’s Enlightened in Eternity nal interiors were gutted to build out the two-studio complex, creating a Chicago, IL / was a much-needed metalrather unconventional layout. So, we’re greeted upon arrival, not just as a formalRed Nova Ranch, lic jolt of positivity, Garrett ity, but to make sure we don’t get lost in its labyrinthine halls and staircases.

Austin, TX says this material was born At the end of our path is Studio B, where Spirit Adrift mastermind Nate Garrett RECORDING DATES of the compounding losses and drummer Mike Arellano have just finished laying down drum tracks with September 22 he’s faced since he began Sanford Parker for their fifth studio album. At 800 square-feet, it’s not the largOctober 31, 2022 writing them. “It’s funny,” est space ever, but staring up at the 30-foot ceiling from the main floor, it feels as PRODUCER he says. “All five stages of imposing and cavernous as the heaviest music that’s been recorded here. And that’s Sanford Parker / grief are present on this exactly what the Texas metal juggernauts are going for.

Jeff Henson new album, and I didn't do “You come here for the character of that room,” Garrett says. “You can record LABEL that on purpose.” guitars anywhere. You can record vocals anywhere, but you use room mics on a Century Media That said, sometimes the drum kit for a reason: It sounds giant. When you’re listening to the record, it RELEASE DATE greatest rewards are the sounds like you’re in the room.”

Spring 2023 hardest won. “I always think According to Arellano, the quiet parts sound equally impressive. “You can hear the newest Spirit Adrift all that echo,” he says. “It can get a little trippy.” material is the best, but these are definitely This week is merely phase one of Spirit Adrift’s master plan. They’ve spent the better part of my favorite songs,” he says. “And without two years workshopping these songs and refuse to rush the recording process. Tomorrow they’ll question the best drums. So far it’s cool to get drive back to Texas, where, on Monday, they’ll enter Red Nova Ranch with Jeff Henson to begin to spend however much time you want making adding layers of instrumentation and vocals. Whenever they’re done—before or after their fall an album.” —JAMIE LUDWIG tour with Corrosion of Conformity—they’ll send it off to Zeuss for mixing and mastering. “It’s 14 : JA NUA RY 202 3 : DECIBEL

PHOTO BY JAMIE LUDWIG

IF

SPIRIT ADRIFT

XENTRIX

XENTRIX

British thrash veterans’ existence is far from shattered on their heavy metal-honoring sixth album

F

ollowing the release of 1989’s Shattered Existence and 1990’s For Whose Advantage?, Xentrix were widely heralded as Britain’s legitimate answer to prime Metallica. But as history has shown, the timing was atrocious, as the once-mighty genre became viewed as passé, with many established thrashers trying (and mostly failing) to mimic the commercial turn of the Black Album in a new world where grunge swiftly became the trendy musical movement. ¶ “It’s probably a fair comment that we came quite late to the party,” admits Xentrix riffmaster Kristian Havard. “We were jumping on that [thrash metal] bandwagon just as it was about to hit a brick wall. ¶ “Thrash metal was our youth music,” Havard continues, “and it kind of changed as it went into the ‘Pantera thing,’ this sort of groove metal. Thrash became a bit of a dirty word at that point in the ’90s for us, and that’s probably why we stopped. But now it feels like it isn’t a dirty word anymore; it’s quite a cool word now. I wear it like a badge of honor.”

16 : JA NUA RY 202 3 : DECIBEL

Xentrix returned to consciousness after over two decades of absence with 2019’s Bury the Pain.

The comeback record most noticeably featured a replacement for guitarist/vocalist Chris Astley in the form of Bull-Riff Stampede’s Jay Walsh. However, Seven Words is the first Xentrix LP that Walsh has contributed songwriting to. “[Jay] has written like, 99 percent of the words on this album, which I was more than happy to let him do,” Havard reveals. “Mainly because a) it’s one less thing for me to do, and b) I think it’s better if the singer in the band has written the words and he can put his emotion behind the [lyrics]. It’s more genuine, I think.”

Seven Words is a riff-and-hookladen affair, with classic Xentrix guitar progressions running roughshod and a greater emphasis

on memorable vocal hooks evident throughout. The results of which Havard notes as being a natural progression due to the band’s current chemistry, but also because of their fundamental style: “Some bands say, ‘We’re super fast, we’re extreme, we’re really brutal.’ If you want to listen to the most extreme, brutal metal, you probably don’t want to listen to Xentrix, ’cause there’s much more harder stuff out there! We’re a blend of thrash and heavy metal, and we will always try to put those little hooks in there.

We haven’t got a punk or hardcore influence. Our backgrounds are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest… I grew up on Rainbow, Michael Schenker and Scorpions, and those are my favorite bands that I bow down to. I wanted to take that sort of music and turn it up to 20. Just make it louder, faster and heavier.” —DEAN BROWN

HOAXED

Portland dark rock duo escapes indie indifference with Relapse debut

IF

you try to search for Kim Coffel or Kat Keo on Encyclopedia Metallum, you’ll draw a blank—odd for two industry veterans putting out their latest act’s fulllength debut on Relapse. That’s because the Portland duo served their previous time in indie rock outfits. You’d never know from their confident debut, Two Shadows. ¶ Keo sings and plays guitar (and sometimes bass), Coffel drums and plays the synthesizer (and sometimes bass). After 11 years making music together—Coffel was only 19 when she pulled Keo’s number off a flyer in a drum store—the lifelong metal fans are both excited to come over to the dark side. ¶ As Keo explains it, “It was always a challenge for me, in past bands, to write lyrics that weren’t either depressing or somewhat evil or very dark. To try to pull it into a happier realm was always a challenge. And in this one, it was like, let’s just do that dark stuff and the things that we’re into in our non-band lives. Now it’s part of our band lives.”

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Coffel adds, “When we started out, we were like, ‘Let’s do, like, Prodigy meets Metallica.’ It did not end up like that. But that was just what we started out with. And as we started jamming and playing, it sort of took form and we’re like, ‘Okay, I like this. But let’s keep going in this direction. Because it sounds sick.’”

Hoaxed wound up with horror movie-inspired dark occult rock that feels like the natural evolution of both the post-punk revival and the Wicker Man sounds of the Devil’s Blood and Blood Ceremony. One listen to witchy wonders like “The Call” and “For Love” and you’ll understand why agent Nick Storch (Ghost, Monster Magnet) passed their EP onto Relapse when he heard it—and why Relapse signed them immediately.

They’ve already wound up on high-profile tours with Uada, Amorphis and Sylvaine. The

experience made them glad they decided to follow their muses to metal. “I feel like winning over an indie crowd doesn’t give you any pleasure at all,” Coffel explains.

“Because when you’re winning over an indie crowd it’s like, okay, maybe people will shuffle closer to the stage. They’ll do a little shoegaze-y dance. And you’re like, ‘Nailed it, got ’em!’”

“They’ll post a bunch of photos on Instagram, that’s it,” Keo laughs.

“A metal crowd, when you win them over, they’re showing it,” Coffel continues. “They’re showing how much they’re enjoying the music and actually headbanging and shouting stuff and, you know, getting a little riled up, and then actually cheering once the song is over.

And then, yeah, coming up and saying stuff after the show that’s a lot more engaging as opposed to [affects hipster voice] ‘Yeah, that was pretty cool.’” —JEFF TREPPEL

PHOTO BY SHIMON KARMEL

HOAXED

...If you could imagine that I feel about to break...

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HIGH COMMAND

HIGH COMMAND

For upstart Mass crew, crossover and black metal coexist under a dual moon

E

ven at its most ubiquitous and metamorphic, thrash didn’t explore fantasy in lyrics or imagery much. The genre still veers more toward sociopolitical commentary and visions of nuclear annihilation. That goes double for the punk-aligned crossover wing of the genre, which steered clear of proggy song structures. ¶ Massachusetts marauders High Command bucked those conventions with their 2019 debut album, Beyond the Wall of Desolation, which highlighted dark fantasy lyrics and centered on knotty, sometimes extended song lengths. This year’s follow-up, Eclipse of the Dual Moons, furthers their narrative and immersive ambitions without sacrificing knuckle-dusting intensity. ¶ “Fantasy and metal is a bond as strong as steel,” says vocalist and lyricist Kevin Fitzgerald, whose bespoke mythic realm, Secartha, is the backdrop for all High Command’s songs. Think of it as the band’s personal Blashyrkh, though Fitzgerald’s inspirations predate Immortal.

“Artists like Dio, Candlemass and Iron Maiden are amazing at weaving mystical lyricism behind crushing intense music.

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I really like the idea of being able to dream and get creative while having limitless bounds on what you can write about.”

“We wanted everything to be bigger, faster, more grand, more punishing, everything to 11,” adds guitarist Ryan McArdle, who likewise pursued limitless bounds when writing Eclipse of the Dual Moons. “Kevin’s lyrical worldbuilding on this record is pretty intense, so we wanted the music to match that intensity. When a battle happens in a song, we wanted the music to feel like a spiked mace smashing you in the face.”

High Command maintains that war-hardened ferocity even on songs like “Imposing Hammers of Cold Sorcery” and “Spires of Secartha,” which approach the 10-minute mark. “Our writing style lends itself well to longer formats to feel actually ‘done’ in our heads.” McArdle cites Metallica and Mercyful Fate as crucial influences on their prolonged campaigns. “We usually like

to pick themes or motifs in regards to the riffs and have them circle back in different ways throughout the song to keep things interesting.”

McArdle and company went for both sonic depth and length on Eclipse of the Dual Moons, with vintage synthesizers and string accompaniment accentuating their battle hymns. “As we progress as a band, we are a lot more comfortable now exploring and incorporating some of our less obvious influences into our music,” McArdle says, listing ’70s proto-metal as a primary influence, alongside some more frostbitten touchpoints, including Celtic Frost and Summoning—all the better to transpose their listeners into the draconian times Fitzgerald sings about. “There are definitely more than a few nods to first-wave black metal with a lot of the synthesizers and auxiliary instrumentations we used. I think it lends itself well to creating a thematic sonicscape that puts the listener in the right mood.”

—JOSEPH SCHAFER

L SpiritWorld

’s stunning second act continues with the self-explanatory Deathwestern story by

JOS E P H S C H A F E R

J APN EC 22 : A RU I LA 2R0Y2210:2D3 E: CDI B E ILB E L

photo by

M A T T SCH R U M

as Vegas crossover cowboys SpiritWorld

hit the metal underground by surprise like a bullet from out of the blue sky when they self-released their debut album Pagan Rhythms in 2020. Mastermind Stu Folsom had quietly released a smattering of country-inflected punk before. Still, those recordings barely hinted at the grooving mix of death metal, thrash and Cleveland-style hardcore that the debut offered. ¶ Self-released debuts can be a dodgy proposition, but Pagan Rhythms showcased developed songs and a unique gothic-country aesthetic. While the record was produced by Sam Pura (Fallujah, Hundredth) and notably featured drum performances by Gospel Chops wunderkind Thomas Pridgen (Trash Talk, the Mars Volta), the songs and riffs were performed

by Folsom. ¶ Folsom’s word-of-mouth success led to a contract with Century Media before the band had played a live show as a metal unit.

Impending follow-up Deathwestern continues and clarifies the sound of Pagan Rhythms while signaling that while SpiritWorld came seemingly out of nowhere, the project is here for the long haul.

“About six months into getting sober, I was sitting at home instead of going out to social things, so I was playing guitar,” says Folsom, recanting the band’s origins. “I knew I was going to write a record, but I thought I was going to play some cowpunk stuff. I just woundup writing thrash.”

Folsom believed in those thrash songs enough to send them to Pura for feedback while also saving money to record and press the record himself. “I didn’t want to sit in a room and teach the music to other people; I just wanted to make it as close to what I had in my head as possible,” he says. That approach led to tapping Pridgen’s contributions as well as solos by Randy Moore, who now plays lead in SpiritWorld proper.

“I approached it like Steely Dan: You’re in the studio, you have the principal songwriters and the vision, and you bring in session players,” says Folsom of his m.o. “It’s a little different from how most metal and hardcore bands do things, but I didn’t think anyone would care or that we would ever tour, so I was just trying to make a great record that I was proud of.”

Folsom followed the same formula while recording Deathwestern, once again recording in Panda studios with Pura and Pridgen, albeit with more contributions from the live members of SpiritWorld. Repeating the process made sense, since Folsom began writing Deathwestern before working with Century Media, and recorded it piecemeal last year.

“Hopefully, the next time I do a metal record, it will be more of a collaboration,” Folsom says, acknowledging that SpiritWorld is no longer a solo effort. “Now that I’ve got a sick band, the future will be more representative of the collective.”

That collective has already made an impression as a live unit on multiple tours, including the 2022 Decibel Magazine Tour (not to mention their live debut at last year’s Decibel Magazine Metal and Beer Fest: Los Angeles). Onstage, they’ve turned heads thanks to SpiritWorld’s music and the matching custom western-style suits and jackets the band wears.

“I’m not afraid to say I like to dress up,” Folsom says about the band’s stage outfits, which were inspired by some of his favorite childhood artists, such as Dwight Yoakam and Porter Wagoner. The latter was known for wearing eyecatching Nudie and Manuel suits, a look later adopted by Robert Redford. “I like wearing a custom suit. I’m a grown-ass man. I don’t have to pretend that I like being broke and smelly.”

Folsom’s willingness to buck trends doesn’t end with menswear, either. “I love hardcore bands playing in basements and VFW halls, but I also love huge arena rock shows: Tame Impala, Mercyful Fate, Behemoth, whatever. So, as much as possible, I want to do something like that. If I can scale this out and have huge production, 100 percent that is the goal.”

Folsom is well on his way to accomplishing that goal with Deathwestern, which features hooky

additions to the band’s repertoire and an impressive roster of guest contributions—one advantage to the Steely Dan studio approach.

For example, “The Heretic Butcher” focuses on a punishing groove augmented by a solo from storied producer Jason Suecof. Elsewhere, lead single “Moonlit Torture” sports vocals from Integrity’s Dwid Hellion.

“That’s something everybody should get to do in music, have somebody from one of their personal legend-status bands email them a part to a song,” says Folsom.

Hellion’s appearance is a personal triumph for Folsom, who once booked an Integrity show on the band’s 2002 reunion tour. He claims Hellion borrowed a copy of Ringworm’s The Promise from him at that show and has yet to return it, but Hellion’s lent bellow is more than enough compensation.

As a further testament to Folsom’s ambition, Deathwestern is supported by a trilogy of music videos and a reprinted book of short stories that take place in the same narrative.

Folsom says a novel is also in the works, which will deepen the SpiritWorld universe.

“I have to challenge myself,” Folsom says, owning up to the maximalist instinct that took SpiritWorld from bedroom project to rising force. “I could present this band in all death metal longsleeves and it would look cool, but I want to push it as far as I can—I just want to push everything.”

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D E CDI B EC E ILB:EJLA:NAUPARRI L Y 2021 3 : 23

interview by

QA j. bennett

KAT MOSS WITH

SCOWL’s frontwoman on writing personal songs, touring with Limp Bizkit and quitting her day job

24 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

IT’S

been kind of a whirlwind of a year, to say the What about myself is pissing me off?

least.” That’s Scowl frontwoman Kat Moss telling Decibel about the 2022 she and her band have had. “I blacked out, it’s been so insane.” ¶ A quick recap: Moss quit her job at a Santa Cruz coffee company in March because Scowl booked back-to-back-to-back North American tours with Touché Amoré, Limp Bizkit and Destroy Boys, respectively, followed by a jaunt to Europe. And it hasn’t stopped. In fact, she and her bandmates— guitarist Malachi Greene, drummer Cole Gilbert and bassist Bailey Lupo—are on their way to their first-ever show in Boise when we catch up with her, as part of a tour that includes the Bronx, Drug Church and Aussie punks the Chats. “I think it’s gonna be a good night,” she says. “The whole lineup is bands I heavily fuck with, so I’m pretty hyped on it.”” ¶ Meanwhile, Scowl’s 2021 album, How Flowers Grow, continues to find new listeners. With super short, sharp songs about abuse, family problems and self-reflection, it’s not your typical hardcore record. Not with cartoon flowers on the cover and a strummed, horn-led hum-along called “Seeds to Sow.” But then again, Moss is not your typical hardcore frontperson. Whereas many ladies in hardcore bands tend to dress like their male counterparts, Moss will hit the stage in animal-print skirts, white go-go boots and feathered ’70s hair. And as a performer?

She brings it better than most of her male peers. We spoke with her about Scowl’s recent past and not-too-distant future.

You went on tour with Limp Bizkit. What was that like?

Touring with Limp Bizkit was the craziest thing I could’ve ever done in my life and that we could’ve done as a band. It was just so much fun.

Playing those huge venues and hearing that big sound was so life-changing.

Tell me about the first night of that tour. It must’ve been a strange feeling at soundcheck.

Our first show with Limp Bizkit was in Tampa, FL, at a Hard Rock Casino. It was the most fishout-of-water feeling rolling up to that—the biggest venue we’d ever played and the biggest show we’d ever played. We get there, and we’re going through the mazes of hallways and elevators, and I was kinda freaking out. I was having a little bit of a meltdown thinking, “Are we really doing this? Am I able to do this?”

We finally get to soundcheck, and Fred Durst is watching us. We met him and talked to him that first day, and from that night on, he’d watch our set. He was so cool and supportive. It was mind-blowing. I had the most nerves right before we got onstage that first night, but we had such a cool reaction from people who had probably never heard of Scowl before that. After that, I was super happy and excited. I felt like I could do it.

PHOTO BY BECK Y DIGIGLIO

What did he say to you that first night?

To be honest, I usually take the backseat when it comes to talking to people in a group setting with the band. I get a little bit anxious. But he was talking with Malachi and Cole and telling us that his favorite bands are Minor Threat and Pegboy. I remember he showed us his Exploited tattoo. He said he stumbled upon Scowl on the internet and really liked us.

What was your lyrical approach on How Flowers Grow? Did you have specific topics you wanted to write about, or did you let the music lead the way?

I’ve had a really rigid experience in the past with trying to focus on topics while writing lyrics. With that album, I took the pressure off myself a little bit and let myself fall into the verses, if that makes sense. I didn’t focus so much on catchiness or rhymes. I focused on the context of what I was talking about. Some songs had a pretty clear direction. With “Pay Privilege Due,” I wanted to write about the stuff that was going on in the world around me at that time.

I find it challenging to write politically, so that was cool to do. It’s a fun song about stuff that’s not so fun. But the whole record itself is about internal growth, about looking at yourself in the mirror and going, “What do I need to change?

What about the world and the people around me is pissing me off?”

I’m guessing that self-reflection theme ties in with the album title.

Exactly. We’d been using flower imagery since the beginning of the band, so I wanted to tie that into the album specifically. Then there’s a couple songs where I just had a lot of stuff go on in my life with friendships and bridges burned—a lot of young adult things, a lot of changes. I was angry not just at myself, but at the world around me, so I gave myself direction that way.

With the song “Dead to Me,” I let myself get a bit more metaphorical. The lyrics are very dark and aggressive and kinda gruesome. Obviously, I wouldn’t murder anybody, but I wanted to write from the perspective that I was hypothetically murdering this person that wronged me. I didn’t want to make it too specific, though. I wanted to keep it relatable.

You’ve said “Dead to Me” is about taking revenge on an abuser. Is it autobiographical?

It’s about something that happened to me, yeah.

I had a fed-up moment in my brain where I wanted to stop writing about this person, so that song was my last hurrah for talking about them.

I really dove into it, and I’m proud of myself for being vulnerable that way because at times I feel insecure and embarrassed about being vulnerable lyrically. It can be scary, but I really fullsent that one.

“Roots” is another super personal song about your childhood. Was it difficult to get to a place where you felt comfortable putting that out there?

Yeah, “Roots” is a song that we re-recorded for the album, but it was originally on our demo. I think it was actually the first song we wrote, and it was definitely the first song I wrote lyrically.

I wanted to talk about my childhood and stuff that happened to me growing up, but how I view that song has changed a lot. Playing it over the last couple of years has really changed my perspective on it. It’s about some pretty heavy stuff, but it’s a lot of fun to play live. I just can’t think about the lyrics too hard because I end up feeling kinda sorry for myself, and I try not to indulge in feeling that way.

Before you had a band, you memorized the words to Regulate’s Years of Rage EP and sang along to it in your car. You’ve said that was a defining moment for you in terms of wanting to become a vocalist. What about that record drew you in?

The anger and the creativity behind the vocals. I think Regulate specifically is such a cool band DECIBEL : JANUARY 2023 : 25

 Flower power

Moss is officially a full-time punk rocker and ready to see how far her boots can go-go up your ass

I’m guessing that the Runaways have influenced your personal style. I’m a big fan of them as well. What do you dig about them?

because they’re bouncy, they’re punchy—they’re everything I like in a hardcore band. It’s very colorful musically. It gets me going and makes me wanna run around the house. Vocally, I just love the ad libs and how the words roll off the tongue—and the lyrics are just so brutal. It’s angry and aggressive and I really related to that, like, “Yeah, I’m pissed, too!” They’re a straightedge band, and there’s a lot of straight-edge songs on that record. I’m not straight-edge, but I still relate heavily to the frustration. That record really helped get me into hardcore.

What are some of your other favorite singalongs?

Because we’re on tour right now with the Bronx, Drug Church and the Chats, “Weed Pin” by Drug Church is a big one right now. It’s such a good song, and lyrically it’s a story. I don’t know many people who could relate to that specific story, but the hook and the chord progression pull at your heart a little bit. It’s almost emotional, but it’s still a hardcore-leaning rock track. It gets stuck in my head, always. The Chats song “6L GTR” is fucking insane. It’s so aggressive and fast—everyone in the room is screaming it when they play it. And then, diving into hardcore, there’s tons of Drain tracks. My specific favorite is “Red Room Blues” off of Time Enough to Last. Sammy [Ciaramataro]’s screams have that cool vocal fry that kinda reminds me of Gorilla Biscuits. I just can’t get enough of it.

26 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

Your album covers and merch don’t look like typical hardcore stuff at all. There’s tons of flowers and clouds done in a cartoon style. What do you like about that dichotomy between the visuals and the music?

I just think it’s cool! I know that’s such a bland answer, but it’s kinda like that meme about the Cure—the music versus the lyrics, you know? The music is fun and light, but the lyrics are dark. I really like that idea. We’re an aggressive hardcore band, but we have fun and kind of feminineleaning visuals. I love that stuff because that’s who I am. It feels good to me. It feels authentic.

It’s the same idea as having fun songs with dark, personal lyrics. I like to see how far we can push that envelope and still get away with it.

You guys recently recorded some new material.

What can you tell us about it?

We just finished recording five songs in Philly with Will Yip in early September. What I can share is that we’re really leaning into some styles and concepts that we’ve kind of opened the door for a little bit. There’s definitely going to be some more melodic moments and some really cool, hook-driven songs that I’m really excited about it. It’s probably the most fun I’ve ever had recording, and the most confident I’ve felt while singing. I don’t have a timeline for when it’s going to come out, but we’re gonna pump them out as soon as we can.

You and Malachi are a couple. What are the pros and cons of being in a band with your significant other?

It’s definitely a really specific experience that not a lot of people can relate to. It’s got a lot of layers. It’s really cool because we’re on the road together, and there’s no jealousy. I know if he was on the road all the time and I wasn’t, I’d be super bored and jealous. And it’s fun to be creative with your significant other. It’s fun to scheme and come up with creative ideas. That’s something I value a lot. The other side is, you don’t get any time away from each other. [Laughs] Sometimes, when we’re home after being on tour for months, I have to just go on walks or read my book to make some space because we also live together. You just don’t get alone time on tour, regardless of whether your partner is with you.

But overall, it’s super cool. I always have my best friend with me.

You quit your job earlier this year to become a touring musician. That must’ve felt great.

I was about to leave on tour for a month with Touché Amoré, and we got the offer to tour with Limp Bizkit, which was basically gonna start like two weeks after the end of the other tour.

Then we had the Destroy Boys tour and the European tour lined up after that, so I had the realization that there was no point in keeping my job. I was just like, “Tomorrow’s my last day!” but they were pretty cool about it. I have to say it felt pretty awesome. There’s nothing quite like quitting a job.

PHOTO BY VINCE GUDAUSKAS

We’re an aggressive hardcore band, but we have fun and kind of feminine-leaning visuals.

I love that stuff because that’s who I am.

It feels good to me. It feels authentic.

I love the Runaways. I love Cherie Currie, and obviously Joan Jett is a fucking icon. Their outfits were so cool. I remember watching the Runaways movie, the one with Dakota Fanning, over the pandemic. Before that, I had my own style going, but I was kinda too shy to wear anything but sneakers at a hardcore show. After the pandemic lifted, I was like, “I’m gonna wear my go-go boots!” Debbie Harry is another favorite of mine. I love her style. So, I try to tie that stuff in with the ’90s looks that I like to do. But I’m a big fan of people wearing whatever makes them feel confident and sexy. If that’s baggy pants and a baggy T-shirt, great. And if it’s the opposite, that’s also great. Do whatever makes you feel good.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Watch the Stars Expire the making of Hammers of Misfortune’s The Locust Years JANUARY 2023 : 28 : DECIBEL

by

justin m. norton

S

D B H O F 2 17

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE The Locust Years CRUZ DEL S UR JUNE 26, 2006

Please hold your applause, though you may pause for genuflection

an Francisco is a hub for musical revolution. In the 1960s, it was the spiritual home of the hippie movement and the bands that provided the backing track for the counterculture, like the Great Society, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, it was one of the homes of the hardcore punk movement, and birthed one of its best bands, Dead Kennedys (inducted in issue No. 209 for their cultural touchstone Frankenchrist). In the early to mid-’80s, it was the birthplace of thrash with the assistance of East Bay bands like Metallica and Exodus. By the late ’90s and early ’00s, a new revolution was underway that had nothing to do with music or art. Technology began to usurp every element of Bay Area life. The changes, spiraling cost and widespread gentrification not only displaced the working class, but the artists and musicians that had long been the city’s spiritual anchor.

Hammers of Misfortune’s breakthrough album, The Locust Years, was recorded amid these changes, as well as the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the botched and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. Originally formed by guitarist John Cobbett and drummer Chewy Marzolo as Unholy Cadaver in the mid-’90s, Hammers evolved into one of the West Coast’s most idiosyncratic metal bands. Cobbett was also at the forefront of USBM with Ludicra, but Hammers were where he could take any risk he imagined and embrace his love of classic songwriting, vocal melodies and prog.

The band’s debut, The Bastard (2001), was well-received, but things changed during the recording of The August Engine (2003). Bassist and vocalist Janis Tanaka, also of L7, left to tour with Pink. Vocalist Mike Scalzi was still involved, but moved to Los Angeles. Cobbett and Marzolo looked for replacements and eventually added classically trained pianist Sigrid Sheie and powerhouse vocalist/bassist Jamie Myers, both new to the Bay Area.

With those additions, Hammers charted an entirely new course with The Locust Years—an album featuring keyboards, fierce anti-war messages, pianos and three-part harmonies that wouldn’t be out of place on a big-production ’70s album.

The album’s strengths are legion. While Hammers were still a metal band, they also embraced rock opera and bands like Queen. As a result, The Locust Years is one of the few albums that could be played next to Black Sabbath and the early ’70s musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Myers—who later worked with Sabbath Assembly and Wolves in the Throne Room—offered her career-best performance with standout vocals on songs like “Widow’s Wall,” and Sheie took the first steps in reimagining what Hammers became in later years.

The Locust Years is the moment when a group of former punk musicians conspired to create something far beyond their roots and succeeded with a timeless collection of songs. The album is a singular moment in time and a harbinger of further innovation from Hammers. While this lineup only lasted for one album, Hammers continued to innovate and push boundaries for the next two decades with albums including 17th Street, Dead Revolution and the recently released Overtaker, the first thrash album in their catalog. The Locust Years is when the many faces of Hammers of Misfortune—the experimentation, the melodies, the drum corps interludes, the focused songs—all worked together effortlessly in service of a grand vision. Welcome to the Hall of Fame, Hammers of Misfortune.

Shall we gaze into the sky?

DECIBEL : 29 : JANUARY 2023

D B H O F 2 17

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE the locust years

“The record’s title comes from the Bible, about an age of things going wrong.

I thought we were entering a period like that where CNN was a mouthpiece for the military and the NSA was spying on us.”

J OHN CO B B ET T Where were Hammers of Misfortune in the runup to The Locust Years?

JOHN COBBETT: The band had fallen apart during the making of The August Engine. Mike [Scalzi, vocalist] moved to Los Angeles, and Janis [Tanaka, bassist and vocalist] ran off to join the circus. She’d already been touring with L7 for a few years. Trying to replace someone who can play bass like Chris Squire and sing like Joni Mitchell is almost impossible. Where can you find someone that can do that? We didn’t know what to do. Janis was on break from the Pink tour and laid down all her bass and vocals in one weekend. Chewy and I finished The August Engine.

After that, we didn’t have a lineup. We spent about a year trying to remake the band.

CHEWY MARZOLO: The August Engine was kind of an awkward album. We were in a transitional phase with Janis leaving. John and I put that whole album together ourselves, which was a little problematic because we get nerdy with no one there to guide us. The August Engine was good, but there was a lot of prog flexing. There were stacks of dry-erase boards with all these acrobatics. [Laughs] It was about doing something for the sake of doing it, not the songs. We had to rope in our weird prog nerdiness and focus on the songs instead of showing off. I think the songs on The Locust Years are more honest. The August Engine was a dark period for us, and I’m glad we caught the rebound with The Locust Years.

Did you feel like part of the Bay Area metal scene, or was Hammers about creating your musical universe?

COBBETT: I was a big part of the metal scene because of Lucifer’s Hammer [a weekly metal night in San Francisco at a long-defunct club called the Covered Wagon]. We also shared a practice space with Weakling. We were part of [the metal scene], but we weren’t death or black metal. We didn’t fit into any niche. If we went straight black metal, we would have had a lot more people at shows. [Laughs] We had a pretty good crowd, although not as good as Ludicra.

Everyone came out to see Ludicra. Hammers never fit neatly in any specific genre, whether prog or traditional metal. We’ve never fit into a box, and that’s been consistent. It’s not a problem for us, but it’s sometimes a problem if you want to build an audience. It’s a cliche, but you have to follow your heart and make the music you want to hear. The only reason to do it is if it’s fun. If I want to write something like Iron Maiden meeting the Beatles, that’s what I’m going to do. I had to go with what I was interested in. Our fan base was small, and many people didn’t understand it.

Whatever, man. Listen to something else.

How did Jamie Myers and Sigrid Sheie join Hammers?

COBBETT: We were looking for a female singer and bass player. Sigrid came to audition. Her JANUARY 2023 : 30 : DECIBEL

bass playing was more than adequate, and she had a good singing voice. But it wasn’t the fiery lead vocal that we needed. We told her that her bass playing was great, but her vocals weren’t what we were looking for. Sigrid had just moved to the Bay and asked if she could play bass while we auditioned other people. She showed up to the next practice and had transposed all of our music into sheet music. We were blown away. Who knows how to do that in the punk and metal scene? This was someone we wanted in the band.

We got in touch with Jamie from the guys in Asunder who played with her band Like Flies on Flesh. She lived in Fort Worth and eventually decided to leave Texas and move to the Bay Area to join Hammers. We had Jamie on bass and singing, and I decided to create a role for Sigrid. I wanted her and her skill set in the fold.

She is a classically trained pianist, so I decided to add keyboards. I always loved how Yes used Hammond organs, and I wanted to add those sounds to our palate. Sigrid and I got our hands on a Hammond B3 organ and a Leslie cabinet and started writing on the piano. Suddenly, we were a five-piece with keyboards and that established the sound of The Locust Years. Some of my best memories of the time are sitting on the piano and working on songs with Sigrid and Jamie. I lived in a warehouse in Dogpatch [an industrial San Francisco neighborhood], and our roommates

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called it a sing-along hour. But it sounded great.

It’s how we wrote a lot of those songs.

MARZOLO: We started scouting around and almost by accident, there was a band in town called Like Flies on Flesh. John was promoting the show.

There were a few points in the set where this was melodic singing. After hearing a few songs, there was this sense that [Jamie] could gel with us. Sigrid tried out to replace Janis. It wasn’t that she didn’t make the cut; John just put her on her natural instrument and it worked from there. Sigrid was classically trained and we knew she could add formal direction.

MIKE SCALZI: Janis didn’t leave abruptly. The whole thing seemed pretty fluid. She recorded The Bastard with us and we played a bit. Janis was getting different opportunities, like L7. She was out all the time doing things with successful groups. She still wanted to be in Hammers, but we knew what would happen. The August Engine was mostly John and Chewy. Janis and I did our parts in pieces. When Janis left, there were big changes as John reformatted the band. We started bringing people in to try out for Janis’s job. Sigrid could play bass and sing well, and played with us a few times. John said a woman from Texas did extreme metal vocals, and I wondered if she could sing like Janis. One day I walked into rehearsal and Jamie was there. We got along immediately. But the concept of the band changed drastically. John started spreading the jobs out among people and it worked. It was like a whole new feeling.

JAMIE MYERS: A friend named Matt Shapiro was on tour with a band called Nigel Pepper Cock and in Texas. He said the bass player and singer left his favorite band and I should join. I didn’t think much of it. He went out to the van and had a Hammers CD. I was blown away by it, like, I want to play and sing [for Hammers]. The next thing I knew, I was on the phone with John. I said a guy on my porch said I should join his band. Like Flies on Flesh was touring a few weeks after that and had some shows lined up in the Bay. John and Chewy watched and asked me to join.

Janis is a powerhouse musician. I knew I needed to surround myself with better musicians to get into that orbit. Joining Hammers was exhilarating and sometimes grueling. It was a lot of work. But it was so well worth it. I knew moving to the Bay Area would immerse me in the process and allow me to be around musicians of a certain caliber that would force me to grow. I was self-taught, but had an ear for music. I think they saw some tenacity and a natural drive, but it was initially intimidating.

SIGRID SHEIE: I moved to San Francisco from Minneapolis after college. When I moved to the Bay Area, I played in some bands and someone introduced me to John. He was looking for

a singer and bass player. I went to practices around when they were recording The August Engine. I had bass chops, but I am not a lead singer. I thought it was super fun to play with them and decided to stay until they found the right person. John eventually asked me to play keyboards because I had a good work ethic and was willing to show up on time. [Laughs] John played me a bunch of old Yes, King Crimson, Queen, Genesis, Deep Purple and ’70s bands. He said, “This is what I am thinking of.” I failed the audition and just never left. [Laughs] Jamie was a kindred spirit. We both lived in Oakland and spent a lot of time in traffic on the Bay Bridge going to practice. We got very close because we were both new to the area. It was nice to have a friend and bond over shared experiences. I remember that time fondly—just exploring what was possible. Hammers hadn’t been around for 25 years and was still pretty new.

How did you start working keyboards into the Hammers sound?

I played the Hammond B3 like a piano. A lot of Hammond players would cringe at that. I got to know John’s guitar style and I notated a lot so I would remember shit. There was a lot of time spent at the piano going through things chord by chord and making sure the piano was doing something complementary. It was tedious. The hardest thing was getting the right gear. I only figured a lot of that out after The Locust Years. It was a learning experience and a lot of trial and error.

SHEIE:

Were there any discussions about how you wanted the material to evolve from The August Engine?

COBBETT: We wanted to get back to concise songs and bring songwriting to the fore. The best example of that is “Trot Out the Dead.” Many say it is one of our best-written songs—it all works together well. One song I was listening to over and over was the theme from the original Thomas Crown Affair called “The Windmills of Your Mind” [by Dusty Springfield]. It’s gorgeous. It was a big inspiration for the title track. We wanted to get back to the power of classic songwriting on The Locust Years. This record is a little slice of our history, especially if you consider the lineup fell apart after the album. But this record captures a nice moment. Those were good times.

MARZOLO: I tape-recorded almost every rehearsal. There were always bits and pieces of ideas floating around. I’d say 20 to 30 percent of the riffs for The Locust Years were written before we met the new band members. In rehearsals, we did go over ideas. One of the things about The Locust Years is that it relies on everyone’s strengths. John and I chose a jazz drum tone, which I think worked for this. We had to find our strongest points and accentuate them as much as possible. It was a bit of a gamble; we had these clean vocals and piano parts, and JANUARY 2023 : 3 2 : DECIBEL

John and I were dirtying things up behind them. The album sounds like how we sounded live. The Locust Years is a very pure record.

SCALZI: I wrote nothing except a few guitar solos. There was group arranging, like in the first song and “Trot Out the Dead.” John wrote the Hammers stuff with Chewy. I just came and played and helped arrange some of it. John was also in Slough Feg, so we would trade back and forth. It was a good tension where we tried not to step on each other’s turf. The first album had a lot of input from everyone else. It started out as a project that wasn’t even meant to be played live. It was a lot more collaborative. It became more of John’s vision as we went along, which was fine with me because I had my hands full.

MYERS: They were focused on The August Engine when I first joined. A lot of what Sigrid and I did first was many months of learning stuff from The Bastard and other songs and playing them live.

There was so much to do before there was any writing. I’m sure John had tidbits written, but there was a bit of time before we jumped in and a few tours. There was a lot of writing, rearranging and then stripping songs down [for The Locust Years]. Each one of those songs went through a cycle. Sometimes you need to build things up before you realize less is more. We were pushing things sonically where they hadn’t gone before.

We had three-part harmonies and two instruments competing for low-end frequencies—a Hammond organ and a bass.

SHEIE: We practiced a lot. We spent a lot of time rehearsing. The way I learned and helped write is to notate things. It wasn’t all memorization.

I had a certain way of remembering things. But the writing was very fun. There was a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.

You grew up in the D.C. area and were familiar with the Dischord scene and D.C. hardcore.

San Francisco has a long history of musical collectives, especially in the 1960s. How much of the Hammers aesthetic was cobbled from those two factors?

COBBETT: The scene model in D.C. has always stuck with me. I’ve always been fascinated with scenes. I’m a sucker for them. What’s that town in Norway called? Kolbotn! The Kolbotn thrashers union. Those things were in my mind when I was doing Lucifer’s Hammer. I saw an opportunity to create a scene. The punk scene in the [San Francisco neighborhood] Mission was collapsing, and people were starting to discover black metal. There was a small number of people excited about it. Lucifer’s Hammer turned into its own little scene and Hammers played there a lot. So did Mayhem and Enslaved and Impaled Nazarene. As far as what Hammers was doing, we didn’t fit into it exceedingly well. But Slough Feg was also around, and some power metal bands. We could play with Amber Asylum or a black metal band.

D B H O F 2 17

HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE the locust years lot of good ideas. Mike and I recorded separately.

John and I spent like two days hammering our vocals and working on vocal arrangements. We recorded our parts and then let John and Justin do their thing. John was the orchestrator, and we knew that, so you just trust the process.

SHEIE: I don’t remember much about recording except we did it in a live room and I did basic tracking. I did keyboards in a few days. The sessions were long and a lot of work. I was probably there for most of the tracking sessions, but I wasn’t there for all the guitars. I remember it was an important time, and we all tried to make it the best we could.

One of the most striking features of The Locust Years is the Myers/Scalzi harmonies.

When did you know this was something that really worked?

“It was a struggle initially because we had a shitty PA, and you don’t want to blow your vocal cords singing too loud. So, we decided to have parlor practices and strip things down.

That’s how Mike [Scalzi] and I came to sing together and find those harmonies—take the loudness out of the room.”

JA M IE M Y ER S What do you remember about The Locust Years sessions with Justin Weis at Trakworx in San Francisco?

COBBETT: We’d just rebuilt the whole lineup. We were in the honeymoon period. We did a few difficult tours and a bunch of shows, and got our sea legs with the new lineup. A lot of the material had been tested onstage. Songs like “Trot Out the Dead” and the title track were battle-tested and came out well in the studio. We were rehearsed and excited. I think you can hear it. Jamie and Mike had real chemistry between their voices that worked out well. And the songs were there. I dislike some things about the production, but I could say that about almost any album. We’d been there a few times before, but it was the first time we did a ground-up recording with Justin. He did a great job. I remember the sessions as fun, which is what you want. I have warm memories of that time. We enjoyed each

other’s company, the songs were good and things were going well for us.

MARZOLO: Working with Justin is always smooth and very professional. I don’t remember any huge complications or arguments. We also did all the Sims music there [ed.—Cobbett wrote music for The Sims video game franchise from 2003-2005, which featured many Bay Area metal musicians]. The center of all of this was Justin Weis’s studio.

SCALZI: It was pretty piecemeal for me. I came in after a lot of the music was done. It was John, the engineer and myself. Justin had been my engineer forever, and then John started doing Hammers records with him.

MYERS: The sessions were intense. There were lots of long rehearsals, practice individually, then recording. There was a discussion about capturing live energy. There is something to be said for trying to recreate that live vibe. Justin is very easy to work with and has a great ear and a JANUARY 2023 : 3 4 : DECIBEL

COBBETT: We gelled in practice, and then when we played live. Jamie rose to the challenge of being a foil to Mike, who has a charismatic and powerful voice. She could hold her own, and that’s where the chemistry developed.

SCALZI: I don’t remember any difficulty with it. She came in immediately singing songs I did with Janis, and we locked in very easily. We both came out of this extreme metal/punk scene to do this rock opera. Janis and I were able to sing together like Donny and Marie Osmond and would look at each other like we were on a talk show doing harmonies. [Laughs] It got us into this different character. When Jamie came in, we didn’t have to think about it. When it came to the new songs on The Locust Years, we locked in well and could team up on the recordings. And we might have looked at each other like I did with Janis. I was the cheesy, non-punk theatrical guy who wasn’t embarrassed.

MYERS: To get this job I had to be able to do harmonies. Plenty of people in the Bay Area sing, but John had a hard time finding someone who could sing, play [bass] and harmonize. It would have been a non-starter if I couldn’t do that. I love singing with other people. There is just a process of getting to know the timbre of someone’s voice. It was a struggle initially because we had a shitty PA and you don’t want to blow your vocal cords singing too loud. So, we decided to have parlor practices and strip things down.

That’s how Mike and I came to sing together and find those harmonies—take the loudness out of the room.

How did you end up with the drum corps material on “War Anthem”?

MARZOLO: I watched the movie Drumline and was influenced by drum corps stuff. I did drum corps in high school. John wrote the song and gave me the freedom to do a drum corps piece right in the middle of it. John was very busy, so I decided to record it at Bart Thurber [Recording] in Oakland.

I wrote the entire piece on staff paper. I was

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HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE the locust years

studying with a local jazz drummer named Pete Magadini, and we did everything on staff paper.

I enjoyed the challenge. I knew the feel of drum corps and that the tension should build. I’m still grateful to John for giving me the opportunity.

To this date it’s the only real royalty check I’ve received from BMI, because they played the song at Brazilian soccer games multiple times. The amount on the check was $1.32. But they sent the check to the wrong address. [Laughs] What were some of the themes and ideas behind The Locust Years?

COBBETT: Remember the whole Y2K scare? It turned out to be a red herring. Y2K happened, but it happened on September 11, 2001. I was glued to the news for weeks after 9/11. The record’s title comes from the Bible, about an age of things going wrong. I thought we were entering a period like that where CNN was a mouthpiece for the military and the NSA was spying on us. There were so many lies, like Saddam Hussein was involved [in the 9/11 terror attacks], which was complete horseshit. The lyrics on The Locust Years were more about that. The first dotcom bubble had crashed around then, and lots of websites were folding. Things were getting expensive, but what was bothering me was what I saw on the news. “War Anthem” is an example

of, “Hey, we’re invading Iraq. Why would we do that?” Even non-college-educated me was smart enough to realize that the leadership of Iraq was an entirely different denomination than the people responsible for 9/11. I started following the money. It was a sham that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Can you tell me about the relationships you had not just as bandmates, but outside of the rehearsal room?

COBBETT: We hung out at bars sometimes. But we were all really busy and had jobs and other bands. I was also in Ludicra the whole time and doing gigs with Slough Feg, and Chewy had a bluegrass band. It wasn’t like we were all living in the same house. Chewy and I were already in our early 30s. Sigrid and I hung out a lot developing the keyboard part of the band, which continues to this day. [Laughs] No one wants to date a band member, but we did start to develop feelings for each other then. We kept it out of the band room and we didn’t tell anyone. We were both single, and it developed over time, and we had to talk about it later.

MARZOLO: John and Sigrid was a bit of a surprise.

But it all worked out just fine.

MYERS: Sigrid and I were in the East Bay and got close. We also had a lot of East Bay friends that overlapped. We didn’t have much free time because we rehearsed so much. There were lots of late-night conversations and going through

“John [Cobbett] played me a bunch of old Yes, King Crimson, Queen, Genesis, Deep Purple and ’70s bands.

He said, ‘This is what I am thinking of.’

I failed the audition and just never left.”

S I GR I D S HE IE

JANUARY 2023 : 36 : DECIBEL

albums together. When you spend that much time with people, you get to know them and their families. John and Sigrid probably thought none of us noticed. [Laughs] SHEIE: It’s hard for me to separate the band from outside the band. We were in rehearsal a lot and we would see each other socially. We were all forging new relationships and making new friends. John and I got together during this period. I was young and it was a formative time.

When you are older, you can calcify to new experiences, but this was a prime moment to forge new relationships.

“Widow’s Wall” is one of the most affecting songs in the Hammers catalog. Can you tell me how it came together?

COBBETT: It’s a classic example of us sitting at the piano working on the chords and melodies.

It was sing-along hour! I wrote the initial chord progression on acoustic guitar and showed it to Sigrid, and she did it on the piano. The chorus becomes a metal part, and there is a solo thing at the end.

MYERS: You can hear the creaks of Sigrid’s chair in the little moments of that song! If you can isolate a piano and voice, it’s one of the truest ways to write. We were trying to create a moment. It was a vulnerable moment for each of us because Hammers can be loud and this song needed to be stripped-down. I liked to think about how Queen might do something. Just because it’s metal,

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 Catwalk out the dead A very fab Hammers of Misfortune, circa 2006

it doesn’t mean you can’t look at it through a different lens. We blended our love of vintage sounds with more contemporary music.

SHEIE: John sketched out a chord progression and I sat down and tried to figure out how I wanted to play on the piano. I sat around with Jamie and practiced the lead vocal, which is so great. At that point in Hammers, John was the songwriter and lyricist, but we would hash ideas out. In the records after that, John wrote parts specifically.

The Locust Years was more trial and error and us taking some of John’s ideas.

What is the legacy of The Locust Years and where does it sit in the band’s catalog?

COBBETT: I like it and stand by it. If I look at our streaming numbers on Apple, that album is the most streamed record. You’d think it would be The Bastard because people rave about it. But The Locust Years is the most streamed album. For a while, “Chastity Rides” was our most streamed song on iTunes. I thought that was so interesting. It’s a consistent album song-to-song. We focused on good songs and our songwriting game at the time was strong.

MARZOLO: I’d love to default and say The Bastard like others, but we were so inexperienced. John

and I mainly played in punk rock bands before that. So, for us to try to record a metal opera was super ambitious. As far as the best-sounding Hammers album, it’s The Locust Years. It has a very organic feel to it. All of the songs’ basics were done in one or two takes. Around 17th Street, things were much more technical. As a drummer, I also got to emulate Ian Pace and Cozy Powell for a little while. The Locust Years is an atypical metal record with jazz drums and piano. In a way, it’s sort of like a soft fuck you.

And it’s the album where John changed his style to include keyboards.

SCALZI: When I talk to people, they talk about The Bastard. But The Locust Years is an incredibly accomplished piece of music. People talk about the songs when they talk about it. It shines more than The August Engine production-wise and songwise. August isn’t as bright or as “hitty.” When I think of this album, I think of the people and how fun it was. The band became a hell of a lot more fun with Jamie and Sigrid.

MYERS: Everything we were screaming and singing about is still relevant—there are just different people in charge. I wish you could say we are watching a different television program, but we aren’t. We were trying to push boundaries and JANUARY 2023 : 38 : DECIBEL

bring in prog and older influences. Musically, it still sounds fresh and timeless.

SHEIE: I think I got better the more records I was on. It’s hard for me to say this was my personal best. But the spirit of the record is one of the best, and the camaraderie and collaboration were the best. There are some great moments and great songs.

Would you change anything if you could?

COBBETT: The guitar tones. I could not get the tone I wanted on The Locust Years. At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s a science. And if you don’t have any money or your own studio and only have a practice space twice a week, you can’t do a bunch of comparisons. I didn’t have the proper gear or the knowledge to get the tone I wanted.

MARZOLO: No. It popped into my mind that I would maybe change the length of “Famine’s Lamp.” But no—it’s what it’s supposed to be.

MYERS: Oh god, yes. But no. [Laughs] Sure, there are things I could change, but I’d rather just focus on doing it better the next time.

SHEIE: I didn’t achieve the sounds I wanted on The Locust Years or even knew how to achieve them. But the energy behind it was great and I might not be able to capture that again.

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OFFICE OF THE P H I L A D E L P H I A , PA REPORT ON

THE TOP 40

ALBUMS OF 20 hen Decibel's

long-suffering art director Mike Wohlberg designed a proof of this year’s Top 40 Albums of the Year section, he left in the intro text from several years ago as a design placeholder (I had yet to write this year’s introduction). For a moment, I considered just leaving the old text in there to see if anyone would notice. I mean, maybe I did. How would you even know without checking? Even the most deranged of Decibel sickos don’t memorize Top 40 intros!

A few things, however, have definitely not changed since we began this annual tradition 18 years ago: 1) The list is still a reflection of the diverse tastes of nearly three dozen members of the Decibel staff, and 2) at least one of your favorite albums from this past year is likely not included. I can confidently state the second point because a couple of my favorites aren’t here either. Unlike me, at least you can complain about it on the internet.

So, take a deep breath, disengage your Caps Lock and prepare to discover something new—unlike this intro from 2017. Just kidding. Or am I…? — A LB ERT M UD RIA N

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D E C I B E L : J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 : 41

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 40 Temple of Void CO M P I L E D BY

Summoning the Slayer

TOP 5 RECORDS THAT TIED FOR #41 41. Mo’ynoq, A Place for Ash, [ SE LF- RE LE ASE D ]

41. Goatwhore, Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven, [ ME TAL B LAD E ]

41. Nite, Kronian Moon, [ SE ASON OF MI ST]

41. Morbikon, Ov Mournful Twilight

39

[ TAN KCRI ME S] [ PROFOU N D LORE ]

TOP 5 ALBUMS THAT MAKE ME THINK IT’S 2002

BY DAN I EL L AKE

Stabbing Westward, Chasing Ghosts Placebo, Never Let Me Go Wilco, Cruel Country Porcupine Tree, Closure/Continuation Billy Howerdel, What Normal Was

TOP 5 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SECRETS FOUND IN THE BASEMENT OF MAR-A-LAGO

B Y K E V I N S T E W A R T- P A N KO

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Clear-cut evidence exposing songwriting links between Megadeth’s “We’ll Be Back” and Metallica’s “Whiplash” Full of Hell’s stolen van from 2019 The one dude on the planet who doesn’t believe Immolation are the nicest guys in metal 4/5-completed Eternal Nightmare Hall of Fame piece Mark Evans

TOP 5 DEATH METAL BANDS OF THE PANDEMIC

BY N ICK GREEN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Staycation Vaccination Blotation Disinformation Inflation

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: JA N UA RY 2023 : D EC I B E L

Gaerea Mirage

[ SE A SO N O F M IST]

Behind the sigil-adorned dark hoods of Gaerea lies a collective hunger for sonic evolution. Mirage, the black metal culto misterioso’s third studio album, finally cast aside any lingering backhanded comparisons to Behemoth. Here, Gaerea fully bloomed into a more melodically inclined, stylistically adventurous and dramawielding act. In fact, the “black metal” descriptor applied to 2020’s pandemic-lost Limbo may now be redundant when it comes to the panoramic post-metal Gaerea unveiled across this LP’s enthralling 53-minute run-time. With Mirage, Gaerea vibrantly splayed the limited dynamism of dissonance. — D E A N BROWN

41. Dreadnought, The Endless,

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

[ RE LA P SE ]

Nearly a decade into their reign of supernatural terror, the Motor City miserablists in Temple of Void continue hacking at death/doom’s crumbling partitions, down to the acoustic finale. Their approach to the subgenre remains menacing and captivated by eldritch horrors on their fourth LP. But when it’s not snarling through the cemetery, Summoning the Slayer further refines their lunar melodies.

The dark blood of goth rock surges through the album’s veins, and there’s a sly industrial churn turning the gears of this execution device. But it’s still a record that hinges on Alex Awn’s riff arsenal and Mike Erdody’s cauldron-curdling growl. — SE A N F RA SIE R

38

Sigh Shiki

[ P E AC E VILLE ]

Sigh have long since strayed from the left-hand path of debut Scorn Defeat (1993) to forge an identity both wholly unique and ultimately inimitable. Incorporating traditional Japanese instruments into their signature acid-soaked sound (with help from Kreator’s Frédéric Leclercq and Fear Factory’s Mike Heller), 12th long player Shiki masterfully continues this exploration of bandleader Mirai Kawashima’s darkened psyche. Ghastly shrieks, soaring guitar solos and eerie psychedelic soundscapes meld into a celebration of music itself. Here’s to hoping there’s plenty of life left in this project. — M IC HA E L WO HLBE RG

37

Still/Form

From the Rot Is a Gift

[ HE X]

It’s rare to hear a debut so fully realized and confidently ugly that it seems like the band’s been churning out records for a decade. But this is what Still/Form have done, combining the most depraved aspects of noise rock, sludge, mathcore and grunge into a half-hour experience that will suck you in… even if by the end you’ll wonder if something at lunch was expired. As the title promises, From the Rot Is a Gift. Accept it and be thankful. — SHA N E M E HLIN G

36

Midnight

Let There Be Witchery

[ M E TA L BLA D E ]

Comparing Midnight to Motörhead or AC/DC may seem lazy, and that’s because it is—but it’s also accurate. Athenar continues to hone his satanic magick attack with each successive album. Let There Be Witchery offers zero surprises, including how much blackened thrash tunes like “Nocturnal Molestation” and “Szex Witchery” rip. But they do rip—even on the 666th spin, which is how many times you’re gonna want to play this. — J E F F TRE P P E L

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 35 Doldrum CO M P I L E D BY

The Knocking, or the Story of the Sound That Preceded Their Disappearance [ K ATA FA LQ UE ]

I love black metal, but to be more specific, I love weird black metal. And Doldrum are certainly bizarre in that respect. Following a not-oft-tread path forged by Carl-Michael Eide, Yusaf Parvez and Hugh Mingay in the early ’90s, Doldrum’s discordant and grooving interpretation of black metal is as refreshing as it is historically accurate. Conceptually following a doomed party into the depths of a haunted mine, the folk horror that drives The Knocking shows a new path beyond the boring Satan and Vampire worship black metal can take. — J O N RO SE N THA L

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BY DAN I EL L AKE

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Retribution by All Other Creatures (with Bastard Noise) Merzbow & Arcane Device Animal Liberation Until Every Cage Is Empty Material Action 2 (N-A-M) Eternal Stalker (with Lawrence English)

Amorphis Halo

[ATOM IC F IRE]

The pandemic may have fucked up Amorphis’ plans to celebrate their 30th anniversary with an extensive Tales From the Thousand Lakes road show, but luckily for us, Plan B for the legendary Finns meant buckling down and cranking out yet another collection of melodic metal gems. Instant classics like “On the Dark Waters,” “Northwards” and the title track illustrate everything that has clicked for this band since they abandoned their gloomy death metal origins two-plus decades ago: big ol’ hooks, memorable guitar melodies and a seemingly infinite supply of songwriting acumen. —MATT SOL IS

33

TOP 5 MERZBOW ALBUMS YOU IGNORED IN 2022

Imperial Triumphant Spirit of Ecstasy

TOP 5 BANDS WITH NAMES TAKEN FROM OTHER WORKS 1.

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5.

Insineratehymn Schizophrenia Spirit Mortis Spectrum Mortis Conan

[CENTUR Y M E D IA ]

Imperial Triumphant are a lot like Jesus: They’ll save you, but only if you believe.

Believe in the bass clef, where most of this album’s tones roil in aeternum. Believe in dodgy snippets of old voice recordings. Believe in noisy, hookless, miasmal death metal (gallowed be thy name). Believe in New York’s downtown jazz scene, which birthed this music’s bones, if not its presentation. Some of this year’s best music just feels good; Spirit of Ecstasy requires a new spectrum of feelings altogether. —DANIEL L AKE

32

TOP 5 FLEXI DISCS OF 2022

BY ALB ERT M U DRIAN

Black Anvil Regenesis

[SEASON OF MIST]

While black metal bands come and go over the decades, Black Anvil just keep getting better. The band’s earliest work was marked by hardcore ferocity; come 2022, Paul Delaney and Raeph Glicken have evolved into two of the better songwriters in the genre. Regenesis doesn’t short on grandeur, but also packs a wallop with direct and memorable songs. Just like O.G. Fenriz, Delaney and Glicken imbue black metal with a working-class soul. —JUSTIN M . N O RTO N

31

Municipal Waste Electrified Brain

[NUCL EAR BLA ST]

We’ve seen Municipal Waste flex their crossover chops for the last (nearly) 20 years, but on Electrified Brain they push some of their trad metal/NWOBHM influences further to the forefront. You get Thin Lizzy guitar harmonies on “Demoralizer,” galloping rhythms on “High Speed Steel” and plenty of flashes of straight-up old-school speed metal. None of this comes at the expense of what they do best—mosh-instigating crossover—but along with the razorsharp Arthur Rizk production, it all adds up to this being one the band’s most entertaining records. —ADEM TEPEDEL EN

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Night Demon, “The Last Day” Rotting Christ, “Holy Mountain” Exhumed, “Sick at Heart” Misery Index, “Strategies of Manipulation” Lamp of Murmuur, “Beyond the Burning Star of Attrition”

TOP 5 YOUTUBE METALLICA/ KATE BUSH MASHUPS

BY SHAN E M EH LI NG

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STRANGER THINGS 4 MASHUP RUNNING UP THAT HILL & MASTER OF PUPPETS Running Up That Hill in the style of Master of Puppets What If MASTER OF PUPPETS Was RUNNING UP THAT HILL? master of puppets but when it ends it’s running up that hill Kate Bush & Metallica ‘Oneing Up That Hill’ D EC I B E L : JA N UA RY 2023 :

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THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 30 Castrator CO M P I L E D BY

TOP 5 TAKEAWAYS FROM AN EXCHANGE WITH SEBASTIAN BACH FOLLOWING DIO PANEL “DREAMERS NEVER DIE: THE ENDURING POWER OF METAL” AT SXSW 2022

Defiled in Oblivion

BY RAOU L H ERNAN DE Z

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5.

Zero recourse for the $65 I hemorrhaged on a vintage, used vinyl copy of Skid Row’s debut, because the “original sounds better” than the remaster.

Zero recourse for the $85 I hemorrhaged on a vintage, used vinyl copy of Skid Row’s spectacular sophomore record Slave to the Grind, because the “original sounds better” than the Record Store Day remaster.

Appraisal of vinyl box Skid Row: The Atlantic Years 1989-1996: (A shrug) Bach and Geezer Butler run neck and neck in the rock star department based on the equal amount of unique selfies they tolerated after the panel.

Bach’s a big rangy bastard you wouldn’t want to face across a line of scrimmage.

TOP 5 CASTING CHOICES FOR MARVEL’S ADAPTATION OF USBM

29

2.

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Chris Hemsworth as Blake from Nachtmystium Jeremy Renner as Neill from Krieg Tilda Swinton as Paul from Profanatica Josh Brolin as Jef from Leviathan Rocket Raccoon animation model as Scott from Xasthur

Daeva

Through Sheer Will and Black Magic... [ 2 0 BUC K SP IN ]

There is something about thrash that, when applied to black metal, it unmoors the fundamentalist extremist style from its ideological moorings and heads off into the sunset. And it’s exhilarating. That’s what the orgiastic full-length debut from Daeva does. This is black metal as carnival, a ritualistic, 360-degree swan dive into high-voltage insanity. Call it morbid if you will. Really, this is what living on the edge sounds like: intense, fucked up, prepared to burn, ready to die. Awesome. — J O N ATHA N HO RSLE Y

28

Ripped to Shreds 劇變 (Jubian)

[ RE LA P SE ]

Vocalist/guitarist Andrew Lee made the step he always wanted to make with Ripped to Shreds’ third album. 劇變 (Jubian) has him addressing gnawing issues of visibility and racism as well as saluting significant points in Chinese/Taiwanese history backed by a fully Asian-American roster (guitarist Michael Chavez is a recent, post-recording addition). That Ripped to Shreds’ mark is made with immaculate West Coast thrash/death galloping, seething solos and the tonal manifestation of the monstrous sea goddess gracing the cover not only elevates the band, but death metal’s overall IQ. — K E VIN STE WA RT- PA N KO

BY DAN I EL L AKE

1.

[ DA RK D E SC E N T]

It’s appropriate that The Woman King and Defiled in Oblivion came out in the same year. They’re narratives of women equaling—and besting—men at traditionally male games: war and death metal. This album harks back to when bloodthirsty degenerates prowled the East Coast, pushing sonic and lyrical boundaries. Only this time women aren’t objects of violence—they’re dishing it out. With a through line to the mighty Derkéta, this OSDM slugfest has heavy hands. — C O S MO L EE

27

Mother of Graves Where the Shadows Adorn

[ W ISE BLO O D ]

On their formidably promising debut full-length, Mother of Graves deliver gothic death-doom goods worthy of comparison to peak Paradise Lost and Katatonia. For some of us, this sound is absolute catnip. Nostalgia alone won’t keep you warm at night, though, and Mother of Graves know this—they offer formidable songcraft when their peers peddle aesthetics and little else. With rock-solid riffs and infectious melodies, Where the Shadows Adorn keeps the Peaceville flame burning bright after decades of primarily pale imitations. — J O SE P H SC HA F E R

TOP 5 CAMEO ACCOUNTS FOR SHIT-TALKING JOHN BUSH

BY SHAN E M EH LI NG

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Jonathan Donais ($15) Frank Bello ($60) Charlie Benante ($60) Scott Ian ($99) Joey Belladonna ($54)

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26

Eight Bells Legacy of Ruin

[ P RO P HE CY]

In a year plagued by darkness, Eight Bells saw fit to let some light in—but only a little. The album’s pervasive melancholia is twinned with a palpable musical curiosity; it’s prog, it’s doom, it’s psychedelic, it’s grim, it’s the sum of its parts, yet remains a beast of unknown origin. The level of skill at work here is obvious, but Legacy of Ruin is an easy, enveloping listen, its haunted choruses and languid pacing a balm. On this progressive doom masterwork, Eight Bells find the comfort—and beauty—in being sad. — K IM K E LLY

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 25 Tzompantli CO M P I L E D BY

TOP 5 BEERS OF 2022

BY COU RTN EY ISEMAN

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Fumé, Rauchbier, Montclair Brewery, 5% ABV Ploughshare, Altbier, the Drowned Lands Brewery, 4.8% ABV Cool Stache, Cold IPA, North Park Beer Company, 6.5% ABV Lil Grey Phantom, Grisette, Brieux Carre Brewing Company, 3.9% ABV Windrush, Smoked Helles-Style Lager With Jerk Spices, Wild East Brewing Company, 4.8% ABV

Tlazcaltiliztli

24

1.

Worm, Bluenothing, [ 2 0 B U CK SPI N ]

2.

End It, Unpleasant Living, [ FLATSPOT]

3.

23

Hulder, The Eternal Fanfare, Hekatoxen, Utter Darkness,

5.

Blood Incantation, Timewave Zero,

[ HE AD SPLI T] [ CE N TU RY ME D I A]

22 TOP 5 MOST CONCERNING MUSIC PR ADJECTIVES OF 2022 Bone-Snapping Bone-Crushing Bone-Shattering Bone-Rearticulating Bone-Vaporizing

TOP 5 ALBUMS THAT REASSURE ME IT’S NOT 2002

BY DAN I EL L AKE

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2.

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Greg Puciato, Mirrorcell Alanis Morissette, The Storm Before the Calm The Smile, A Light for Attracting Attention Brandon Boyd, Echoes & Cocoons Striborg, Lost in Between Worlds

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[ C E N TURY M E D IA ]

Escuela Grind Memory Theater

[ M N RK ]

Vanum Legend

[ P RO FO UN D LO RE ]

Black metal polarizes between the progressive and reductive to produce a transcendent aria of catharsis and rage finely wrought from the crudest impulses.

Ex-New Mexico/now-New York black metal four-piece Vanum manage as much on their third full-length. Modern, polished and radioactive, Legend’s five vast tracks conduct a rounded and rumbling mass of USBM past, present and future, timelessly nihilistic in propulsion, but blood red in fervor. Melodically purple passages meet orange cymbal napalm and black-heart baring. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

BY SHAN E M EH LI NG

1.

2.

3.

4.

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Deathwestern

Escuela Grind are the musical equivalent of a savage back-alley brawl: confrontational, violent, undaunted by a few bruises, black eyes and broken teeth. The band’s politically charged sophomore full-length emits a sound that’s brazenly merciless—a gargantuan grindcore/powerviolence excursion that delivers every bulldozing riff, snarl, blast and shriek of its barely 22-minute runtime with the grace of a wild badger. It’s all swathed in an ominously trippy, Technicolor cover you can stare at for days, making for a supremely heavy package that will surely be referenced as “awesome” for years to come. —LIZ CIAVARELLA-BRENNER

[ 20 B U CK SPI N ]

4.

SpiritWorld Nevadan nightmares SpiritWorld rode out of the Wicked West in 2019 wielding six-shooters loaded with some of the most vicious riffs this side of the Rio Grande. Their debut raid was so successful Century Media rereleased it, but their first fresh foray for the label doubles down on the demonic cowboy theme and cements their status as the new marshals of the territory left vacant by Power Trip in the wake of Riley Gale’s death. Prepare the pit, pardner. — J E F F T R EP P EL

TOP 5 EPS OF 2022

BY ALB ERT M U DRIAN

[ 2 0 BUC K SP IN ]

Tlazcaltiliztli arrived via a social media recommendation on Bandcamp Fridays. I let go of a few bucks and clicked spin, and holy fuck! This album would slot in beautifully as the backing music to the goriest and most primal scenes in Apocalypto.

The combination of leering doom dirges, Asphyx galloping and Mesoamerican themes is like nothing else in death metal. Doing something original in DM is exceedingly hard; Tzompantli do that and honor the great death metal masters at once. — J USTIN M . N O RTO N

21

Satan

Earth Infernal

[ M E TA L BLA D E ]

Earth Infernal once again confirms what we’ve understood to be true for decades: Satan makes you feel good. Also, Satan will spoil you. The volume of consciousnessexpanding riffs revealed one directly after the other is bewildering, and should embarrass their contemporaries. How can Satan afford such extravagance? Perhaps it’s best not to ask. This still sounds like classic NWOBHM, only constructed with the choicest materials. Charming, wild and fast as fuck. Embrace Satan.

Embrace this arguably perfect record. — FO RRE ST P ITTS

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 20 Mizmor + Thou CO M P I L E D BY

Myopia

TOP 5 MID-ATLANTIC MUSIC FESTS OF 2022

BY DAN I EL L AKE

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Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Philadelphia V Maryland Deathfest XVIII Maryland Doom Fest VI Maryland Folk Metal Fest VI High Zero Experimental/ Improvised Music Fest XXIV

TOP 5 MOST UNNECESSARY SEQUELS AND REBOOTS OF 2022

BY N ICK GREEN

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3.

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Thor: Love and Thunder Tom Brady Halloween Ends New episodes of Frasier not starring Sean Frasier Metal II by Annihilator

19 18

Song of Salvation

[ 2 0 BUC K SP IN ]

Phobophilic

Enveloping Absurdity

[ P RO STHE TIC ]

Unlike some of their crepuscular contemporaries, Phobophilic’s modus operandi revolves around writing barbaric riffs that will pound your skull to soot instead of primarily focusing on summoning an aura of iniquity. Interestingly however, by intensely birthing some of the most atavistic death-extremity around—where flashy technique is eschewed for Asphyx/Grave/Bolt Thrower-esque brute-force groove ‘n’ growl—the Fargo-based fiends still managed to (Love)craft an atmosphere akin to a sulphuric bellow from the abyss on the ludicrously heavy Enveloping Absurdity. — D E A N BROW N

BY DAN I EL L AKE

JK Flesh, New Religions Old Rules Pale Sketcher, Golden Skin Exit Electronics, Learn the Hard Way Final, It Comes to Us All JK Flesh, Veneer of Tolerance

Dream Unending Everything about Dream Unending’s second album feels big—overwhelming emotions, extra-long songs, widescreen compositions, huge Floydian leads. Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore went back to the “dream-doom” well they dug in 2021 on debut LP Tide Turns Eternal and came back with an even more singular, spectacular bounty. Song of Salvation echoes Skepticism and Anathema, as well as less obvious influences like King’s X and the Gathering, but really, it’s the sound of Dream Unending figuring out how to sound only like themselves. — BRA D SA N D ER S

TOP 5 JUSTIN BROADRICK ALBUMS THAT STILL AREN’T GODFLESH 1.

2.

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[ GILE A D M E D IA ]

In the annual tradition of Walter Hoeijmakers fantasy-booking his way into the FOMO Hall of Fame, Myopia was conceived as a Roadburn-exclusive collaboration between two of the most compelling noise purveyors that modern extreme metal has to offer. And like Converge/Chelsea Wolfe and Oranssi Pazuzu/Dark Buddha Rising before them, Portland’s Mizmor and Baton Rouge’s Thou made good on their end of the deal by crafting 73 minutes of abyssal sludge/doom that expertly showcases both projects’ strengths (Thou’s slithery riffs, Mizmor’s inhuman vocals) while spawning a monstrous din all of its own. — M ATT SO LIS

17

Negative Plane The Pact...

[ THE A J N A O F F E N SIVE ]

Eleven years after their iconic sophomore album, America’s best black metal band finally returned. Rather than forcing new music to appease their fans, Nameless Void—the mad sonic architect behind Negative Plane—laid low and waited for inspiration to come to him. “As it was, it again will be.” The result, yet another captivating hour of Negative Plane’s inimitable heavy metal-influenced BM slayings, in which the concept, lyrics, ’70s prog band production, and overall pulp horror ambience combine for a heady and timeless work destined to stand a thousand years. — D UTC H P E A RC E

TOP 5 SHOWGOER INJURIES (15-35 AGE GROUP)

B Y K E V I N S T E W A R T- P A N KO

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Dropped crowdsurfer paralysis Errant mosh pit fist to face Crushed ribcage (after a night spent being pressed into stage barrier) Stagediver’s knee Alcohol poisoning

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16

Sumerlands Dreamkiller

[ RE LA P SE ]

Since Arthur Rizk produced two of 2022’s undeniable totems, Kreator’s Hate Über Alles and Muni Waste’s Electrified Brain, who better to join ’em? “When it came time to make a record, I wanted [it] to be more album-oriented rock, like a Foreigner record,” the Sumerlands crier told dB in October. Or Dio, the Philly heshers’ second full-length Dreamkiller channeling “We Rock” in gallop, imagery, lyrics.

Huff classic 1980s in Meatloaf moment “Heavens Above” and the slapdown title track atop its Lynchian solo. — RAO UL HE RN A N D E Z

ALIENS, CLOWNS AND GEEKS SPECIAL EDITION

An out-of-work actor stumbles upon the key to the universe and is drawn into intergalactic war between clowns and aliens.

PUPPET MASTER 3: CREATURE FROM TOULON’S REVENGE BLACK LAKE 2-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION

A mystical toymaker creates living puppets that help him get revenge on the Nazis that harmed his wife.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

AVAILABLE ON 4K ULTRA HD

THE GHOSTS OF MONDAY

THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS

A filmmaker travels to Cyprus to make a TV show about a haunted hotel finds himself the target of a supernatural conspiracy.

A woman has gruesome visions and begins to suspect that someone or something wants her dead.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

LIBIDO When a boy witnesses his father kill a woman during an S&M session, he’ll grow into a disturbed young man tormented by images of violence and madness.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

COLLECTOR’S EDITION

Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo tour the kinky realm of little King Fausto (Herve Villechaize) and his queen (Susan Tyrrell).

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

MANSION OF THE LIVING DEAD When four women arrive at a deserted resort, they unlock a perverse netherworld of lesbianism, sadism and unholy violation by a zombie religious sect.

PLAYING WITH FIRE Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Playing with Fire (Le jeu ave le feu) was a commercial success due to to the appearance of Emmanuelle star Sylvia Kristel.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

HALLUCINATION Based on true events, this cautionary tale of drugs was one of the first films to deal with the influence of LSD. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

PIRANHA WOMEN

GHOSTWATCH

An experimental medical treatment turns women into blood thirsty piranha creatures.

BBC reporters performing a live, on-air investigation of a house in Greater London, at which poltergeist activity was believed to be taking place.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

There’s a hairy humanoid beast lurking in the Louisiana swamps, and two college grad students try to unravel the mystery of the mythical creature.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

FORBIDDEN ZONE: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

TRANCERS

2-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION A cop from the future time travels to modern Los Angeles to stop a psychic madman and his zombielike minions.

SUPER Z The adventures of a family of genetically modified super-zombies.

AVAILABLE ON DVD

AVAILABLE ON 4K ULTRA HD

NOW AVAILABLE AT MVDSHOP.COM

DAMON’S REVENGE While partying a group of friends are attacked by an escaped convict, a copycat killer and the return of the terrifying masked killer Damon.

AVAILABLE ON DVD

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 15 Terror CO M P I L E D BY

Pain Into Power

[ P URE N O ISE ]

Man, the last few years have been so bad that even Scott Vogel is struggling to see the bright side. Pain Into Power welcomed former Terror member and current Nails mainman Todd Jones back into the fold to produce, and it shows. Album number eight is their shortest and angriest yet, the result of being forced to sit still. Twenty years into their career, Pain Into Power is proof positive that Terror are still the kings of fist-pumping hardcore. — E M ILY BE LLIN O

TOP 5 SHOWGOER INJURIES (40+ AGE GROUP)

B Y K E V I N S T E W A R T- P A N KO

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Blinded by light show eyes Waiting in line lumbar misalignment Throwing horns wrist Winded from climbing stairs to get to venue’s balcony Alcohol poisoning

14

BY J EFF TREPPEL

Final Light, Final Light Carpenter Brut, Leather Terror Dance With the Dead, Driven to Madness We Are Magonia, Triangle Unicode Master Boot Record, Personal Computer

13

TOP 5 REJECTED BEERS AT METAL & BEER FEST

2.

3.

4.

5.

Karl Sanders signature porter that requires an ancient, cursed emerald to open NSBM IPA: the first pale ale that actually tastes antisemitic A keg of Natty Ice the clown from Slipknot banged on Pornogrind-themed stubbies covered in lube Earache Lager: great at first, but by end it’s utter dogshit

[ C E N TURY M E D IA ]

Chat Pile

God's Country

[ THE F LE N SE R]

The full-length debut from Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile is a detour through povertyravaged backwoods and badlands. Self-described as “death-grunge,” their approach to noise rock and post-punk pairs Dazzling Killmen’s jagged attack with the wily nihilism of Nick Cave’s the Birthday Party. God’s Country rips the necrotic skin from Norman Rockwell’s Americana portraits and reveals the maggots breeding beneath. It’s at once unhinged, yet hyper-focused. As vocalist Raygun Busch conjures David Yow with his acerbic tirades, Luther Manhole’s riffs turn everything to rust. This is the sound of a world corroding, leaving only industrial sludge and a black stain behind. — SE A N F RA SIE R

BY SHAN E M EH LI NG

1.

Syncro Anarchy

After The Wake, it seemed Voivod would choose to explore a more theatrical path going forward. That would’ve been fine, but for those of us hankering for a heavier, unvarnished, yet equally ingenious Voivod, Syncro Anarchy will cure your soprosetta. More technical than ever, it’s also surprisingly resourceful, like Angel Rat thrashed-up and passed through the sieve of a quadratic equation.

It’s a startling headtrip. Voivod’s spirit does not weather. It speaks through its members. It is not its members. — FO RRE ST P ITTS

TOP 5 NEON METAL ALBUMS 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Voivod

12

Wake

Thought Form Descent

[ M E TA L BLA D E ]

It’s a remarkable achievement when a band finds its way to a more dynamic and fully realized sound without compromising its core strengths. Calgary extreme merchants Wake have honed their unrelenting intensity beyond simple aggression, and have added both color and melody in a way that feels authentic and unforced on their sixth full-length. Blackened death metal in spirit, Thought Form Descent offers its rage with washes of beauty. The band’s first album with the same lineup as its predecessor has clearly paid dividends. — A D E M TEP ED EL EN

TOP 5 ALBUMS OF JAZZY WEIRDNESS FOR METALHEADS

BY DAN I EL L AKE

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

TAL, Sapiduz Tigran Hamayasan, StandArt Titan to Tachyons, Vonals Koby Israelite, Jacob’s Dream High Castle Teleorkestra, The Egg That Never Opened

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11

Oceans of Slumber Starlight and Ash

[ C E N TURY M E D IA ]

Houston’s Oceans of Slumber transformed entirely on their fifth full-length. So groundbreaking was the band’s sound that there was a brief time where a name change was considered. That didn’t come to pass, but what did was Starlight and Ash, a worldly, magical, heartbreakingly scenic collection of songs. Fronted by the supremely talented Cammie Gilbert and an equally skilled band, Oceans of Slumber produced a stunning array of emotionally charged singles off Starlight and Ash. The five songs so far merely scratch the surface, however. The well runs super deep here, folks. — C HRIS D IC K

DECIBEL : JA NUA R Y 2 0 2 3 : 51

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 10 Mortuous CO M P I L E D BY

Upon Desolation

TOP 5 ALBUMS OF 30 YEARS AGO

BY ALB ERT M U DRIAN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Helmet, Meantime Darkthrone, A Blaze in the Northern Sky Paradise Lost, Shades of God Rollins Band, The End of Silence At the Gates, The Red in the Sky Is Ours

9

BY DAN I EL L AKE

3.

4.

5.

A beer costs $17 at a metal show Amon Amarth are no longer opening for Deicide There’s a whole book about Icelandic black metal I have teen children who are obsessed with rapper NF There are more bootleg Green Day tees than Green Day fans

8

BY SHAN E M EH LI NG

2.

3.

4.

5.

Have to resume applying corpsepaint where the N95 had been Decreased availability of hand sanitizer when meeting noise musicians “Global pandemic” no longer excuse to wear the same Deicide sweatsuit every day Post-COVID likely another terrible microgenre Friend’s band that started during pandemic is now playing a show, and you’re on the list

7

BY N ICK GREEN

3.

4.

5.

The witching hour Early enough to take advantage of Black Friday doorbuster specials at Walmart After a well-balanced breakfast of oatmeal, fruit and an allergen-free nut butter About an hour before sundown, adjusting for Daylight Savings Time, in order to get the very best lighting for Instagram photos Extreme o’clock!

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[ A RTO F FACT]

Kreator

Hate Uber Alles

[ N UC LE A R BLA ST]

Nechochwen Kanawha Black

[ BIN D RUN E ]

Kanawha Black refers to a type of flint found throughout modern-day West Virginia, used for centuries by the area’s indigenous tribes in crafting arrowheads. For Nechochwen’s Aaron Carey, that title also represents the black cloud that’s hovered over his home state for generations. There’s a lot of darkness on the band’s fourth full-length, but there’s also the powerful sound of resilience. These are the stories of Carey’s people, rendered in scorching, melodic black metal and aching acoustic passages. Sit around the fire and listen. — BRA D SA N D E RS

TOP 5 TIMES… TO RISE FROM THE GRAVE 1.

2.

Null

For at least the second time, German thrash icons Kreator have rejuvenated their career with a record so vital and vitriolic that it practically challenges every other active metal from the ’80s to a duel. Hate Über Alles lays down the gauntlet with white-knuckle mosh anthems “Strongest of the Strong” and “Killer of Jesus,” but also shows their versatility with more contemplative fare “Dying Planet” and “Midnight Sun.” More than an excellent Kreator record, it might be their finest hour. — J O SE P H SC HA F E R

TOP 5 WORST IMPACTS OF COVID RESTRICTIONS ENDING 1.

KEN mode For sonic debridement of the soul, it’s hard to get more enjoyable than KEN mode. The Canadian band drags knuckles over a very specific and rich kind of gravel—early Swans, Converge’s You Fail Me, Today Is the Day’s more unhinged moments—applying a field dressing of disciplined, if oblique, structure. It’s music that “goes there,” and it’s the cathartic bloodletting we need after two years of losing our minds. Sax and violence never felt so good. — C O SM O LE E

TOP 5 MORE THINGS THAT REASSURE ME IT’S NOT 2002 1.

2.

[ CA RBO N IZE D ]

In addition to the putrid stench of charred bodies left in its wake, Mortuous’ incendiary second LP also reeks of perfection. Primary songcrafter Mike Beams and his death metal cohorts effortlessly forged extremity from all-out OSDM hellfire to funereal passages of doom-death—the latter with the kind of grandiosity My Dying Bride illuminated in the early-to-mid-1990s. Yet, Upon Desolation was no mere throwback; there’s contemporary power to its incandescent musicianship, brimstone atmospherics, resounding production and punishing tempo shifts courtesy of Necrot drum-terror Chad Gailey. — D E A N BROW N

6

Soul Glo

Diaspora Problems

[ E P ITA P H]

No other album on this list sounds like Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems. The group’s caustic blend of hardcore punk, hip-hop and noise is potent, heightened further by vocalist Pierce Jordan’s shrieked poetry and rapped verses. Songs like “Gold Chain Punk” are catchy, melodic and heavy, complemented by tracks like the explosive “Fucked Up If True.” Album closer “Spiritual Level of Gang Shit” makes it clear: Soul Glo are two steps ahead of anyone else playing hardcore or metal right now. — E M ILY BE LLIN O

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THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 CO M P I L E D BY

Immolation [NUCL EAR BL AST]

mmolation's latest exercise in exquisite death metal darkness, Acts of God, does not lack for action: riffs from Bob Vigna that pin you to the floor, stormclouds of blasts and the sort of physiologically stimulating frequencies that get the head banging. But maybe, with a little more time to stew in the morbid, ambient funk of the past couple of years, it has taken on a complexity that rewards repeated listens, pulling you into something that makes you feel a little, y’know, changed after listening to it. Its predecessor, 2017’s superlative Atonement, was a little like this and, tonally, spiritually, this feels like a sequel. ¶ Acts of God goes deeper, with bassist/frontman Ross Dolan digging around in the antiquity and depravity of religion for thematic inspiration, giving the album an End Times vibe that is so very on brand for 2022.

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Dolan, who joins us over Zoom (with longstanding lieutenant Vigna on an adjacent chat window), explains that Immolation were still searching for new sounds right up to and during the mixing process, all to booby-trap the recording with flourishes that warp the audience’s mood over time.

“It is always the growers that are the albums that stick with me the longest,” says Dolan. “It is important to have an album and keep discovering new things about it on subsequent listens. Atonement has a lot of things like that on it. We always shoot for that, all these little embellishments… another guitar part, just to accent it a little more, to give it a little more depth, another dimension. That’s always fun.”

Death metal, like any other art form, needs imagination, lest it dry up and die. Dolan says the scene has never been in a better place, with a new generation of bands

reinvigorating it. That said, sometimes there is no substitute for experience.

“After doing this for over 30 years, you get a better idea of what works, what doesn’t work, and the sounds and the feelings that you’re striving for,” reckons Vigna. “We always had those feelings inside, that excitement for the dark side of things.”

Vigna and Dolan still have loads of fun doing this. They collapse in hysterics at the thought of being called legends. They acknowledge that experience is one thing. Most importantly, you’ve got to keep your inner teenage self on your shoulder, like Jiminy Cricket, calling the plays.

“I will come up with a riff and instantly I’ll be like, ‘Wow! That’s gonna be something big,’” says Vigna. “I’ll call up Ross and be like, ‘I’m sending you a file. Check this out!’ ‘That sounds sick!’ It’s like we’re 15! It’s this passion, enjoyment. It’s what we love.” —JONATHAN HORSLEY P H O T O BY A N D R E W D O E N C H

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 CO M P I L E D BY

or a one-man black metal band, Jon “Sgah’gahsowáh” Krieger’s nature-oriented Blackbraid project is remarkably collaborative. While this year’s fully formed debut album springs almost entirely from Krieger’s interpretation of the world around him, he shares the realization of those songs with session drummer and recording engineer Neil Schneider. ¶ “When it comes to writing drums,” Krieger informs us, “it’s a bit of both of us, but he is definitely pulling most of the weight, by far. I met Neil in the smoking section of an Opeth show last November. Since then he’s become one of my best friends. I told him I had been working on some black metal songs and needed help with drums.

I sent him some scratches later that night. I think we ended up starting the official recording of the Blackbraid material maybe a month or so after that. ¶ “When he and I first met,” he continues, “I had finished ‘Barefoot Ghost Dance on Bloodsoaked Soil’ and ‘The River of Time Flows Through Me,’ and was still piecing together the concepts for the rest of the album. By the time we finished those first two singles, I had written the rest—for the most part—and we were able to finish everything up. He is an amazing drummer, and I usually defer to his judgment on most things.

P H O T O B Y W O L F M O U N TA I N P R O D U C T I O N S

Blackbraid [ SE LF - RE LE A SE D ]

I usually give him a rough idea of what I’m looking for in certain riffs, but then I let him add his own flair as a drummer and make it his own.

Once he has a drum skeleton down, we just play with it until we are both satisfied.”

Still, we’re only talking about one primary songwriter and one likeminded friend, working out some of the most stunning 36 minutes of music available in this genre right now. Blackbraid I is immediately gripping, as it blasts, blossoms, ebbs and flows in lockstep with the music’s every momentary emotional need.

“Nature and our relationship with her is heavily entwined within Blackbraid,” Krieger assures. “The rivers are intertwined in my songs.

You can hear the mountains in the others. The wind, the dusk and the dawn… it is all a part of Blackbraid.

“We recorded the entire thing in [Neil’s] bedroom. It was very informal. I think we were both a little impressed at just how awesome those first two songs came out when we had finally finished mixing them. Things just kind of snowballed from there, and now I’m halfway through the second album and we are still doing everything in his bedroom. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The new songs are very much an expansion of the sound I started to develop on the first album, but maybe a bit more intricate.

The second album is definitely going to be longer.” — DA N IE L L A K E D EC I B E L : JA N UA RY 2023 :

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Sonja [CRUZ DEL SUR]

he genesis of Loud Arriver is irrevocably tied to USBM outfit Absu, which chose to jettison guitarist Melissa Moore (known as Vis Crom in Absu) in 2017 rather than accept that she was transgender. Absu’s loss is the metal world’s gain, as evidenced by the remarkable debut by Moore’s new band, Sonja, formed with Absu touring drummer Grzesiek Czapla and former Tombs bassist Ben Brand (who was also in Woe with Czapla).

The music the Philadelphia-based trio plays, however, belies its members’ musical roots, and honestly, the eight-song debut actually—ahem—arrived as a breath of fresh air. The album is filled with much light and shade, channeling both the sexual energy and sound of ’80s L.A. metal, as well as more modern gothic influences. ¶ “We don’t offer make-believe fantasy,

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but rather fantasies that can become reality (for a price),” explains Moore, who also handles vocals, via email.

“It’s darkness without any purpose [other than] to provide genuine entertainment and forbidden pleasure.”

Produced by Dan Kishbaugh, with an assist from Arthur Rizk, Loud Arriver is a remarkable first effort from a trio not short on collective musical experience, but maybe lacking the road-testing new bands usually use to hone their material. Moore, for one, is not surprised. “The musicians [in] Sonja are only the finest and most talented,” she says, “possessing combined decades of skill in providing the highest quality metal. We take meticulous care of the smallest details and put each musical moment through a rigorous process so you, the listener, can simply relax and enjoy. Sonja is only satisfied when you are satisfied.”

Though Loud Arriver was released in 2022, Moore and her mates have

been crafting and perfecting their sound since her dismissal from Absu. Asked if this is now the blueprint for the Sonja sound for future albums, she promised this: “We will always be at the forefront of developing exotic new upscale sounds and sophisticated techniques so we can offer a truly unique euphoria. You will never hear exactly the same thing twice, but there will always be something familiar about the vibe that you can only find here.

Creating musical pleasure like we do is an active process, and we will always be working hard to bring you to the next unforgettable moment. The only limit is what we can imagine together.”

And her reaction to Loud Arriver finding its way to one of our critics’ top picks of 2022? “We are truly humbled. We are so glad you’ve enjoyed the album. It's been a true delight to share it. We hope to see you all soon.” — A D E M TE P E D E LE N P H O T O BY D O N V I N C E N T O R T E G A

THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 CO M P I L E D BY

roducer] Kurt [Ballou] and I talked about this before we ever really started working on the record,” begins Cave In bassist Nate Newton. “About how if Cave In was going to make another album without Caleb, it had to be really good. We couldn’t leave any room for people to be, ‘They shouldn’t have done this.’” ¶ That Cave In’s seventh album has captured the second spot on our annual list of categorical definitiveness, besting the 179,999 (give or take) other albums released in 2022, demonstrates success achieved for the Massachusetts veterans in not only paying tribute to their fallen brother, bassist/vocalist Caleb Scofield, but returning with a storming collection loaded with firsts, extremes and ineffable emotion. ¶ “This record had to be really special,” stresses Converge’s Newton, who without hesitation filled Scofield’s spot.

And Heavy Pendulum is home to some of Cave In’s heaviest moments (“New Reality”), doomiest moments (“Blood Spiller”), the longest composition of the band’s history (“Wavering Angel”) and some of their biggest big riffs. It may be the lengthiest album of their discography, but it keeps rapt attention with an epicurean, dynamic buffering of metallic hardcore, prog and alt/indie against classic rock, grunge and foot-ona-barstool pensiveness, all culminating in rejuvenation. ¶ “[Guitarist/vocalist] Steve [Brodsky] shared some ideas he had P H O T O BY H R I S T O S H I N D O V

Cave In [ RE LA P SE ]

been working on,” recalls Newton. “I don’t know if he had been focusing on writing a new Cave In record, but when he played me an early version of ‘Blinded by a Blaze,’ I immediately told him, ‘Dude, this is really good!

This is what I’ve wanted to hear Cave In do forever.’ From there, everyone got excited, and from an outsider’s perspective, I saw three guys [surviving members Brodsky, guitarist Adam McGrath and drummer J.R. Conners] go from being burned out, grieving and sad to enjoying each other’s company and making music together again.”

Given the tragic cloud hanging overhead, Heavy Pendulum understandably addresses loss and grief.

It not only presents as a collection of killer riffs and finely crafted songs, but has inspired listeners able to tap

into and connect with their own trauma via the band’s use of art as a method of coping and healing.

“There have been quite a few people who’ve approached us about how they’ve lost someone special,” Newton notes, “how this record has helped them through it and that they think the album is a beautiful tribute to Caleb. And a lot of people, myself included, are happy to see Cave In operational, enjoying what they’re doing and being inspired by something beyond just writing guitar riffs. As a fan—not even as a member—it makes me happy to see them moving forward, progressing and getting better. It’s the record we all knew they could make, and I’m glad to be a part of it, though ultimately I wish it could have been Caleb instead of me.” — K E VIN STE WA RT- PA N KO D EC I B E L : JA N UA RY 2023 :

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THE TOP 40 ALBUMS OF 20 CO M P I L E D BY

Undeath

It's Time... to Rise From the Grave [ P RO STHE TIC ]

S T O RY BY C H R I S D I C K • P H O T O S BY G E N E S M I R N OV

SCREAM BLOODY MORE ndeath's It's Time... to Rise From the Grave ascended to the apex of Decibel’s 2022 Album of the Year list through good songwriting, hard work and a killer attitude. It sung… er, growled to us from the moment we heard it. Bellwethered by two formidable demos and a putridly good debut album, it was a matter of polite destiny that Undeath would end up capping our 2022 Top 40. Lured by the quintet’s likable stench, Los Angeles-based Prosthetic Records signed the Rochester, NY natives in 2019. The label that had unearthed and then ushered to greatness the almighty Lamb of God saw something special in the upstaters. ¶ “Undeath released two pretty killer demos in a short period of time,” Prosthetic’s A&R guru Steve Joh says. “I reached out to them, we chatted a bit, and I think they were signed a few weeks later. They make incredible music, work their ass off to promote it and are having a blast doing so. I could tell they’d be like that from the first time we spoke.

That’s the type of band you dream of working with.”

The group’s debut album, Lesions of a Different Kind, hit mid-pandemic in the fall of 2020. In absence of gigs, socials paved the way to Undeath’s neophyte acclaim. They were hacksawing persuasively through death metal’s digital echelons, virtually nobodies in an ocean of somebodies. Much the same way that Hurricane Andrew morphed Cynic in 1992, COVID-19 had altered Undeath’s beast. When It’s Time... arrived on April 22, the public at large were simply ravenous after lead single “Rise From the Grave” battered their crude brains months before. Described as a “riff apocalypse” by penman Shawn Macomber in Decibel No. 210, Undeath’s second album is nothing but fantastically good death metal stewardship.

There was, in fact, a little bit of fortuity involved, too.

There were no big-name producers or fixers gummed to the loutish gold that is It’s Time… Hype stickers and press releases had nothing to cite. Producer Scoops Dardaris had previously tracked Lesions, but the New Yorker-turnedPhiladelphian was hardly a mortician’s friend. Having cut his teeth

in indie rock, he wasn’t Scott Burns or Colin Richardson. However, Dardaris’ inexplicable involvement in Undeath’s rise to power is pertinent. He, like Undeath, was from upstate New York, had an agreeable personality, understood his trade well and possessed an indefatigable work ethic. That he was able to capture the injurious electricity of Decibel Flexi Series track “Diemented Dissection” in four punk-rock hours is telling enough.

Undeath were swinging for the mausoleum rafters. The group’s smattering of East Coast gigs had set the tone, but it was their monthlong run with the Black Dahlia Murder in 2021 that prompted prodigious tongue-wagging and bet-wagering. The new denizens of death metal had arrived grotesquely au courant and more infectious than you-know-what.

With a flexi in the proverbial coffin, the trajectory to Undeath’s sophomore sicko reads like a battle plan designed by fiendish tacticians and executed upon by way worse. One by one, Prosthetic bearer-ed the pall of director Errick Easterday’s videos for D EC I B E L : JA N UA RY 2023 :

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“Rise From the Grave,” “Head Splattered in Seven Ways,” the Doom-themed “Necrobionics” and “Defiled Again” to kids who were alright, but needed their Undeath fix. The (dead) red carpet had rolled out for It’s Time… to morbid plan. Of course, this is de rigueur, but it’d be all for naught had the boys not written great fucking songs, the kind that have, with all the subtlety of a tobacco smoke enema, goo-ed them together as our keystone album of 2022.

“We took a step back to look at what makes a really good record,” says Undeath guitarist and songwriter Kyle Beam. “We had to make good songs, and that they were different from one another. Each song had to convey a particular mood. I learned a lot from listening to Judas Priest, as well as other traditional heavy metal.

It might not be obvious, but I was really influenced by all that. Heavy metal was hugely important. I think we were just trying to refine the direction that we were already going in. It was a natural next step.”

Certainly, while no beginner or aging zealot will hear Judas Priest’s “The Sentinel” (one of Beams’ favorites) or Iron Maiden’s “Invasion” in Undeath’s frenzied chock full o’ guts, it’s there.

Of course, as students of Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Autopsy and Bolt Thrower, they’ve gleaned much from the classics. “They’re our north star in a lot of ways,” Undeath frontman Alexander Jones says. “Not just in terms of the music, but the way they approached their songwriting. Everything was very hooky, and what that did was the songs had a lot of repeatability. We definitely looked to those bands for a lot of inspiration.”

Yet, the sanguine significance of Undeath’s lookback is balanced by what’s happening in their midst. Peers like Fetid and Cerebral Rot—both of whom had Decibel’s hand and heart early on—also vie for the group’s mindshare. “When we first started, and this still carries on, we [were] very inspired by our peers,” adds Jones. “When we were first getting together, we obviously bonded over ’90s death metal, but we also love the new bands. We sit in the middle ground, where the inspiration is coming from not just the past, but the present as well. We then make it our own.”

ABOMINATIONS OF INNOVATION Prosthetic’s “dream band” got their start in 2018. Birthed by Beam out of the necessity to create death metal, the fledgling Undeath nabbed drummer/illustrator Matt Browning off Instagram and purloined Jones “out of the blue” while the spitter was on laundry duties. The trio plied the DIY trenches perpetually, playing shows whenever it made sense (not often), wherever they could (like Hamtramck, MI) and with their homies (like Sanguisugabogg), sans bassist.

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They were doing the Pig Destroyer thing but weren’t entirely feeling it. Jones says most fourstring candidates in and around Rochester were already triple-timing it with other bands anyway and felt poaching would be an uncool move. So, it was on a fateful ride home from Ohio when he cracked open Facebook to find Tommy Wall banging four strings out to an Atheist song.

“The first post [I see] is a video of Tommy shredding Atheist,” Jones says. “I knew he played guitar, ’cause that’s what he plays in his other band, Tomb Warden. I had no idea he was that sick of a player, nevertheless a sick bass player. I think if you listen closely to Tommy’s playing on It’s Time…, he could easily be playing a root note, but instead he’s doing a crazy riff. Tommy is the biggest Steve DiGiorgio fan, so that tells you what you need to know. I gave him the offer right there. His playing elevates the songs for sure.”

Beam, however, was also interested in a sideman, a straight shredder he could partner with to flesh out Undeath’s offal. Freshly out of college and ready to slay, Jared Welch, an old friend of Beam, was quickly embedded into the fold.

“Fiend for Corpses,” “Rise From the Grave” and old dog “Enhancing the Dead” showcase the twosome’s penchant for fly brutality and punchy rhythms. Just as Cannibal Corpse’s Jack Owen and Bob Rusay or Suffocation’s Terrance Hobbs and Doug Cerrito put down hideously great grooves in the early ’90s, on It’s Time…, Beam and Welch hit the floorboards hard.

“Jared and Kyle have known one another for a couple of years,” says Jones, who remains supremely impressed by Welch’s cutting-edge soloing. “We had been trying to get Jared in the band for a couple of years. When he finally settled in Rochester, we immediately got him up to speed on the new material.”

Officially a five-piece as of 2020, Undeath’s new configuration—Beam (guitars), Browning (drums), Jones (vocals), Wall (bass) and Welch (guitars)—offered fresh opportunities to buff the template “discovered” on Lesions’ snappy title track. Certainly, It’s Time… wouldn’t be where it is today without the cemetery shake of “Fiend for Corpses,” the Wall-penned “Bone Wrought” or the insalubrious burl of “Rise From the Grave.”

“It’s about the ‘cool riff’ for sure,” Beams reveals. “Typically, I really don’t think about writing riffs to be homages to anything. I just don’t get why more people don’t play death metal in 6/8 with double kick. It’s so much fun to play.

I kind of go a little by the book of how pop songs are structured. We’re trending toward shorter songs in terms of the music that’s being consumed on a mass scale, so I think about that, too.”

All of this wouldn’t be a reality if it wasn’t for sheer doggedness of the collective. Day and night, Undeath rehearsed, sleep and sanity

sacrificed upon the altar of Nietzsche’s nowcliché but apt aphorism, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” They forged not only a tighter band bond, but turned the screws intensely on their to-be oeuvre. To wit, not long after Lesions was recorded Undeath were ballsdeep into our Album of the Year. Beam’s mantra is to write rapidly and as often as possible—he’s a woodshedder—so when Undeath inked their Prosthetic deal, they already had 50 percent of It’s Time… in the can.

“We’ve always moved at a faster clip,” says Jones. “I don’t know if there’s a specific reasoning behind it. Maybe it’s the way we’ve worked since the beginning. It’s almost force of habit to us. When we started, we put out our first two demos in a year. By the time we were done releasing the second demo, Sentient Autolysis, we had at least half of Lesions written. We’re all excited about making music, and [we’re] writing together all the time.”

In short order, the Rochesterians got, according to Jones, “tighter and better,” things Decibel can vouch for. Cases in point: “Fiend for Corpses,” “Defiled Again,” “Enhancing the Dead” and B-side beginner “The Funeral Within.” Death metal of repute isn’t complete, however, without a gruesomely illegible logo and sufficiently off-putting cover art. Browning, who also designed the group’s “heaving mass” badge, continued where he left off (thematically) on Lesions. His über-violent piece started as a sketch and was painted in with acrylics against a wood panel. The 18 x 18-inch work is part of a ghoulishly expansive vision.

“I love Matt’s art,” Jones enthuses. “There’s so much detail. We didn’t want our cover to look like an algorithm created it. There’s far too much of that in death metal already. It all takes place in the same world, so if you look closely at the It’s Time… artwork, you can see the cave from Lesions in the background. We’re trying to create a universe where all the gore and shit on our covers are taking place in this cursed realm. We jokingly refer to Matt’s artwork as the ‘Undeath Expanded Universe.’ Believe me, when we start talking about the next album, our ambitions are pretty grand.”

“With Undeath, and this goes back to the Sentient Autolysis demo, we always try to have as much of the lyrics on the cover that make sense,” Beam adds. “The head splattering seven ways is from ‘Head Splattered in Seven Ways.’ The lightning—or thunder—is there from the title track. And the priest guy in the middle is the character from ‘Defiled Again,’ which talks about heads exploding after reading certain books.

The undead armies are from ‘Necrobionics’ and ‘Enhancing the Dead.’ There’s a line in ‘Necrobionics’ that says, ‘Target optics… and a gun’; [it] had to get in the cover. Skeletons with guns? What’s not to love?”

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When we were first getting together, we obviously bonded over ’90s death metal, but we also love the new bands.

We sit in the middle ground, where the inspiration is coming from not just the past, but the present as well.

We then make it our own.

A l e x a n d e r J o n e s U n d e at h

Lyrics in death metal are often overlooked.

They can be puerile, vapid and formulaic. Death pillar “Zombie Ritual” illustrates these maddeningly humdrum qualities: “Revengeful corpse, out to kill / Smell the stench, your guts will spill / Vomit for a mind, maggots for a cock / With his axe, the corpse will chop.” But that’s the DNA, the fantasy of horror movies, pulp comics and good old-fashioned American street violence realized in prose. They’re imbued so deeply into death metal tradition they’re verifiably six feet under. Nobody asked Undeath to carry this forward, but they did. And it’s all Beam.

“Just as we wanted the songs to ‘sound’ different,” says Beam, “we wanted the tropes we love so much to be different. For example, there’s two songs about necrobionics, which are obviously ‘Necrobionics’ and ‘Enhancing the Dead.’

They have a sci-fi redline, ’cause they’re about the same thing, but the rest of the songs, they’re all different shit related to blood, guts and gore.

I will say that we tried to keep the sci-fi stuff about zombies. Most of the time sci-fi is about spaceships. And yeah, that’s no fun.”

While the album title It’s Time… to Rise From the Grave materialized without much consideration—the original title simply featured the prefix It’s Time…—the numerological Easter egg Undeath have put into “Head Splattered in Seven Ways” is beyond cool. The central figure to Browning’s cover has his head blowing up in

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seven different directions and the song timing is in 7. Our Rottenchester heroes aren’t just proficient at scratching lizard brains. They’re damned proficient at suffusing their profane creation with just enough depth to make things almost neatly scholastic.

LEFT HAND WRATH The blast of new-generation American death metal didn’t originate out of thin air. That’s probably obvious, but there’s a host of killer bands putting out career-defining work—much like Obituary did with Slowly We Rot or Cannibal Corpse did with Butchered at Birth during the Jurassic Period—with same caveman acumen and DIY work-hardened ethic that Undeath applied to It’s Time…. Not saluting Frozen Soul’s Crypt of Ice, Sanguisugabogg’s Tortured Whole, 200 Stab Wounds’ Slave to the Scalpel—as well as this year’s battering rams in Mortuous’ Upon Desolation, Phobophilic’s Enveloping Absurdity and Ripped to Shreds’劇變 (Jubian)—would be like citing the best Stockholm death metal without Left Hand Path and Into the Grave. If American death metal was great before, it’s greater now.

The groundwork for the feculent savagery on topic was laid in earth well before our litany of revivalists unfurled them. Perhaps it started in Europe with Denmark’s Undergang a decade ago, but the routeway to here hasn’t been downward.

It’s horizontal—to punk and hardcore. This

isn’t a tale of terror or some fabrication of time and place to make the current narrative work.

There’s precedent: Autopsy’s brown-eyed punk on their 1995 gross-out Shitfun, while Jeff Walker infected Carcass with American punks Millions of Dead Cops in his earliest of days. Death metal may position itself a funeral away from hardcore and punk, but the truth is they’re closer cousins than either side openly admits.

Devin Swank, vocalist for Columbus, OH mutants Sanguisugabogg, says the reasons are myriad, but the gateway into hardcore and punk boils down to a common denominator: access.

“Lots of DIY hardcore shows you can walk into at any age or any walk of life,” he points out. “For a lot of us, that’s what got us hooked to heavier music and wanting to play in bands. I think aesthetically what we rep that hardcore also does is that we’re a community. We’re for everybody, and everybody is welcomed. I think why most of us have origins in hardcore is because that was our first exposure to heavy shows.”

Undeath’s Jones and Beam also got their VFW Hall credentials going to hardcore and punk shows. “Kyle and I both grew up going to shows in Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo,” Jones says, adding that the entry barriers were easier and without the upfront costs associated with death metal. “The scene here has always thrived; lots of really great, dynamic bands. When I was growing up, I specifically used to idolize a killer

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Rochester hardcore band called Achilles. Hunted Down and Oak & Bone were also killer. That’s the stuff we used to go and see constantly. I was also a big Every Time I Die fan in high school.”

Chad Green, of Fort Worth, TX’s Frozen Soul, was in hardcore outfit Vulgar Display before coughing up blood for Los Angeles-based Maggot Stomp, one of several labels on the bleeding edge of American death metal. Chief undertaker Scott Magrath started spewing his underground gunk from the gutter in 2018, but has risen to the challenge of business proper, hooking nascent death metal bruisery (Grave Ascension, et al.) like a true fan. That said, Magrath also grew up in the crosshairs of Decibel Hall of Famers Judge and the head-punch of fabled Long Islanders Internal Bleeding. The bridge has always been there for those willing to cross it.

“I grew up listening to hardcore and death metal in the early ’90s,” he says. “Hardcore is definitely a gateway to death metal. With Maggot Stomp, I wanted to bring attention to newer bands that I liked and played a style of death metal that I like. Sure, they might have hardcore elements to them, but the common trait between them is they’re heavy. I’d like to think the bands that I put out are, in a way, the stepping stone between hardcore and death metal.”

Magrath’s weak knees for the ground ‘n’ pound of hardcore blending into the dizzying brutality of death metal has given him a roster of hopefuls, some of which—like Frozen Soul—have been purloined by deeper-pocketed labels like Century Media. That said, Maggot Stomp hasn’t stopped provoking the status quo with Bodybox, Mutilation Barbecue and, especially, Clevelanders 200 Stab Wounds. “When I heard 200 Stab Wounds, I knew they were going to blow up,” he says. “They had everything that I liked: Slayerfast thrash, Cannibal Corpse lyrics and Internal Bleeding breakdowns, all blended perfectly.”

The recent breakout from hardcore and punk was probably, as it had been decades earlier, preordained. The drivers are likely obscure, varied and sonically oriented, but the pursuit of (heavy) superlatives is always supreme. We’ve all been there. Most vectors are easily traceable. The journey from Metallica and Slayer to Sepultura and Morbid Angel isn’t unthinkably severe. Steve Buhl, guitarist/vocalist of 200 Stab Wounds, also got his stripes in hardcore, having shared bands with current mates Lance Buckley (guitars) and Ezra Cook (bass). Though still strongly allied with thrash and punk, Buhl found death metal’s, uh, “flexibility” appealing. “You could be as fast as you want,” he says. “As slow as you want; as heavy as you want; as technical or not technical as you want. It’s a pretty wide variety of things you can do in death metal without people absolutely losing their shit.”

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The bitching is there, though. Undeath’s Jones hears it all the time. Even with purists pitchforking, his view is that the lines need to blur more, and that there’s no harm in unifying extremes.

He says, “Why not bring everyone under one tent? Metal guys love waving their hair around and hardcore kids love kickboxing, but at the end of the day both tribes can get down with a pair of baggy Dickies and a dope riff. Didn’t Maya Angelou say that we’re all more alike than unalike? Hardcore, death metal, deathcore, symphonic black metal, whatever—who gives a shit?! Come to an Undeath show. Let’s party.”

I think aesthetically what we rep that hardcore also does is that we’re a community.

We're for everybody, and everybody is welcomed.

I think why most of us have origins in hardcore is because that was our first exposure to heavy shows.

D e v i n Swa n k Sanguisugabogg

There are always outliers, of course. Not all of these bands had kickstarted hearts in hardcore and punk. Though Andrew Lee, mainman of California-based death metal combo Ripped to Shreds, is a fan of Bay Area hardcore—he often cites and supports fellow Asian-American hitters Gulch, Sunami, Hands of God and Spinebreaker— his musical skillset radiated from a world away.

Our man’s actually a fan of Dream Theater ace John Petrucci. Perhaps similar to how guitarist Luke Skeels, formerly of the Boneless Ones, was a protégé of guitar god Joe Satriani, Lee found solace in Petrucci’s prowess, though with less direct fretboard-to-person exposure.

“I was into the popular [metal] stuff before,” Lee says. “Mallcore-era In Flames, Nightwish, DragonForce and [Children of] Bodom. Then I started moving away from metal, getting into prog, jazz and fusion. I wanted to be a jazz guitarist. I’m a huge fan of Allan Holdsworth. So, I practiced my jazz, blues and two-fives a lot. I eventually learned I wasn’t inspired by it. When I heard Horrendous and Dead Congregation, I thought, ‘Oh fuck!’ They sounded totally different from the mainstream stuff I was familiar with.

They made me think I had to try to make my own music, specifically death metal. What Petrucci taught me, in that framework, was how to be a better soloist, how to better recontextualize melodic themes, and the possibilities of superlong songs, like my ‘Sun Moon Holy Cult’ series.”

Quoting Petrucci in a death metal context may not be clever, but when Decibel interviewed him for Liquid Tension Experiment’s third album, he dropped this nugget: “I always try to play the song better than I had played it before.” This little axiom not surprisingly also applies to Undeath’s hammer-smashed “Fiend for Corpses” and Phobophilic’s serrated “Cathedrals of Blood (Twilight of the Idols),” as it does Sanguisugabogg’s Troma-battered “Menstrual Envy” and Frozen Soul’s powderburned “Wraith of Death.”

PACTS OF THE UNSPEAKABLE This isn’t a new wave of anything really. Though we tried mightily in Decibel No. 58 to suggest something—the New Wave of Old-School Death (or NWOOSDM), in fact—to the contrary, American freshers, starting with Undeath, don’t see it that way. It’s a rally to death metal, done at the hands of a younger set with similar aspirations to create savagery and play it live. It’s no more complex than that. Tagging this thing New American Death Metal (or NADM) is probably hubristic at best. “When I think of death metal,” says Mortuous (and Necrot) drummer Chad Gailey, “I don’t think of old school or new school.

I think there were originators, who were death metal. Everyone else followed on as death metal.

“This term that’s been thrown in to categorize the wave of death metal bands—like OSDM—is one way to classify it,” he adds. “With Mortuous, we don’t classify ourselves as OSDM. We’re death metal. We’ve been listening to death metal since we were kids. We’ve been putting in the work— not just with Mortuous—for 15 years. It’s not a revival to us. It’s what we’ve been doing.”

SOULSELLERRECORDS @SOULSELLERRECORDS

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Of course, there’s no denying the sinuous connection to death metal’s forebears. It’s just the present cadre of enforcers don’t want to bathe exclusively in the italicized myopia of death metal’s foremost tenets. “When I think of old-school death metal, my mind goes to the late ’80s and early ’90s,” says Josh Poer of Fargo’s Phobophilic.

“I wouldn’t say we’re straight-up old-school death metal by any means, but the foundation of what we do as a band starts there. At the same time, though, we’re influenced by a lot of stuff that’s come out after death metal’s golden era in and outside of the genre. We like to try and keep an old-school ethos while not limiting ourselves to strictly that influence.”

Also, fast to not pigeonhole Sanguisugabogg’s felching filth, Swank quips, “I’d say we moreso play a little of what we like to listen to more than just playing tribute to an era of death metal. We love all kinds of different extreme bands from any era, so you can definitely hear what we like to listen to in our music. A lot of bands stay true to their certain style or era of sound, and that’s all really cool, but our tastes individually are so all over the place. We can never commit to a style like that.”

Undeath’s “go Dutch” turn of mind started with tiny fires before they blazed into a crosscontinent conflagration. The rampage was collectively initiated. Bands that tour together, want and support parity, and pull one another up are central to what’s happening in death metal at present. Not to say that didn’t happen in Tampa or Buffalo or New York City back in the day. It most certainly did. The difference is likely that the world is considerably smaller and quantifiably faster in 2022 than it was in 1990. Indeed, the onramp to brotherhood is often paved with the blood, sweat and tears of others. That each band in the spotlight sees the other in an equal—if not more reverential—light says tons about what’s going on in American death metal now. Respect is mutual, and success, as relative as it is, means more than Spotify numbers and social media KPIs. “We all roll to each other’s shows when we’re in town,” says Undeath’s Beam. “And [we] talk to each other online all the time. We’ve all known each other for a little while now.”

Tommy Wall thinks the shared bond stems just as much from their respective DIY backgrounds as it does sharing stages, beers and, most importantly, death metal. This attitude is confirmed not just by Frozen Soul’s Green and Phobophilic’s Poer, but also Buhl, of 200 Stab Wounds, who looks upon his fellow death-dealing Americans as “friendly” coopetition.

“We love seeing our friends do amazing things,” he says. “Every time one of our friends’ bands gets out there and does an amazing tour

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or puts out another great record, I’m always like, ‘OK, fuck! That’s really fucking awesome!’ It’s now our turn to do something great—the cycle continues.

It makes for really fun and interesting ways of reaching goals, as opposed to just going through the motions of playing show after show, tour after tour, record after record. It makes it fun when you have bands you are friends with that are actually great at what they are doing and working their asses off just as much as we are!”

The macro-economic adage “a rising tide lifts all ships” is particularly apt since most of the bands involved crawled out mutilated tombs in, around, or after 2016; which is, of course, only one data point in today’s death metal humangenerated algorithm. Which makes Lee, of Ripped to Shreds, skeptical of single-origin assertions.

“I don’t think there’s a single impetus here,” he argues. “It’s coincidence. Everyone has been thinking of death metal, attempting bands, trying to rise up. All this didn’t just happen.

It’s been bubbling under—and now over—for a while now. Suddenly, we see the bands getting bigger and blowing up. It’s been a bit of a long road to get here.”

RIVEN WITH DISEASE The pandemic put the brakes on everything. The brunt of lockdowns, isolation and life-change was thoroughly felt by all involved in this thing we call (death) metal. Realistically, knowing what we know now, there was nothing we, collectively, could have done differently. Infectious disease calculus isn’t something most of us profess knowledge of or understand how to interpret. Nor would we want the burden. The impact of it, however, couldn’t have been greater.

“The way everyone portrayed it, 2020 was going to be the biggest fuckin’ year of everyone’s lives,” says Mortuous’ Gailey. “Then it all came crashing down. We laid low. In 2020, we barely did anything. When 2021 came along, we finally figured out that we had time to write. I think if COVID hadn’t happened, we’d be on the same cycle: shows, more shows. We wouldn’t have had the time to write Upon Desolation. Plus, I got injured while out with Necrot in 2019. I think COVID gave everyone a chance to sit back and organize a bit.”

Michael Munday says Frozen Soul had just inked their deal with Century Media and were set to road-dog hard in support of Crypt of Ice when everything came to an abrupt halt. “It left us with a lot of uneasy feelings and uncertainty,” he says. “In a weird way, it was kind of good for us in my eyes, because it gave us a chance to kind of take a step back and look at the bigger picture of everything. At the time, I was extremely burnt out from working so much at my job at the time and writing songs every night. It was very mentally taxing for me, and the lockdowns

allowed me to take a break for a little bit and reflect on everything. We put more energy into the things the band needed, and I think that ultimately helped us.”

Nevertheless, we (bands/Decibel/dear readers) persevered, our decades-long story endured to live another day. What the pandemic also spurred, however, was more interesting than vax rabbit holes or rampant blame-gaming. According to Metal Archives, there were 1,178 death metal releases that qualified as a full-length album between February 2020 and December 2021, a four percent increase over the same period before the pandemic. Clearly, once-touring bands were forced to refocus their energy and newly formed ones only had limited outlets. Writing music, refining process and rethinking operations was the only way to go. So, not only did death metal continue, but in a small way, it thrived.

The pandemic relieved the cruelty of vicious album cycles. So much so that Undeath were able to “luxuriate” in the writing process for It’s Time…. Since Beam and his bandmates couldn’t do much else, they hunkered down.

Using the time to reconstruct their gore-soaked Frankenstein, they zeroed in on the things that mattered: hooks, refrains and choruses. Undeath call it “infinite replay value,” which is gamer speak for the addicting, mind-flaying goodness of “Rise From the Grave,” “Human Chandelier” and “Necrobionics.”

“Thanks to the pandemic, we had a lot more time to think about the songs,” says Beam. “We had already started writing, but having the extra time gave us the opportunity to make the songs even tighter and bigger-sounding. I’d like to believe we achieved that. That was our modus operandi. We didn’t write about the pandemic, though. That wasn’t in our heads or part of our goals with the new album. More power to other bands that did do this, but that’s not what It’s Time… is about. We didn’t want to be that cheesy.”

Phobophilic’s Poer says his band was on similar footing, but unlike Undeath, who are in the business of rapid song delivery, the North Dakotans absolutely ruminate over their bleached bone compositions. The group’s new album, Enveloping Absurdity, might not even be here yet if the pandemic hadn’t descended upon and horrified humanity. “COVID-19 had positive and negative effects on the band,” he says. “[COVID] ended up giving us time to shift our focus to writing. Having that extra time to write and practice was really beneficial to us.”

In the crucible of disease, (mis)information, and unfettered disquietude, we’ve come out of the ass-end of the pandemic nastier, unsated and definitely bigger. This is, it seems, the death metal way. While the hunger for uncomplicated death metal in (or after) complicated times

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accomplish the same goals as you and help you do it via touring together, posting about each other, or just being friends.”

Camaraderie (and a humble attitude) comes up again with Undeath’s Beam, but it’s more than that. “People are into all these bands right now because they all fill a different specific niche,” he says. His band does that.

Sanguisugabogg and 200 Stab Wounds do, too.

Historically speaking, we’ve prognosticated prudently. In Decibel No. 154, we proclaimed 2017 as “The Year of Death Metal.” It was unquestionably great, but what we’ve seen recently and are in front of now are the years of death metal.

They’re upon us, a layer cake of brutish gnash and bewildering contrast. Indeed, what started

has been with us since Baphomet issued The Dead Shall Inherit in 1992—OK, before that—it’s definitely at a fever pitch now. “There’s totally a feeling of making up for lost time going around now,” says Undeath’s Jones. “Everyone is hitting the road hard as fuck because we don’t know if and when the opportunity to do so is gonna be taken away from us again.”

“We first came out right when the world shut down,” Buhl, of 200 Stab Wounds, says.

“It fucked us, but also helped us. We couldn’t play our original first couple of shows because of it, but I also think that due to people being so stressed out and not being able to go see live shows, they were seeking out new music more than ever. And I think that’s the position we found ourselves in. We were pretty popular before ever even playing our first show. And yeah, I guess we could call this the COVID wave of death metal, but I think we’ve earned our stripes and worked hard enough to be a part of the real world.”

It could be FOMO or whatever, but there’s a palpable sense that our little patch of slime ‘n’ grime might vanish once more in the foreseeable future. PTSD is real. With monkeypox in all 50 states and the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing “health alerts” for Ebola, which requires,

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at present, an experimental vaccine, we could very well be pear-shaped and sitting on our dicks again. Shit’s scary.

As Autopsy once puked “Stricken with a horrible disease / Mankind falls victim to doom / Festering plague spreads across the earth / Rotting death… Morbid curse” on “Ridden With Disease,” we’re all an Aztec two-step away from looking like an Ed Repka cover. You know the one.

When I think of death metal, I don’t think of old-school or new-school.

I think there were originators, who were death metal.

Everyone else followed on as death metal.

Chad Gailey Mortuous

DAWN OF PROGRESSION Where death metal goes from here is really anybody’s guess. Some will argue that the ambit is here and now. That the “primitive brutality” movement is oversaturated or that the hardcore lean into death metal is square-toed. But that’s not the shared feeling folks on the ground have.

They see positivity, mutual goals, new generations getting involved, enthusiasm and bands playing their asses off. Mortuous guitarist Colin Tarvin sees everything in cycles, and that’s partly true. Death metal’s “world serpent” has been predictable, but this time—we’re sure—it’s different. Extreme conditions and all.

“Everyone supports each other,” says Frozen Soul’s Green. “All these bands are doing tours together because they all love one another’s music. We all get along great. It’s nice to have support from other bands that want to

off with a bang three years ago has only gotten magnitudes louder since, and it’s this year when 1990 finally gives up the ghost. Ripped to Shreds are fresh off late-year stunner 劇變 (Jubian), while both Mortuous and Phobophilic invoked and then exorcized death metal’s zeitgeist with Upon Desolation and Enveloping Absurdity, respectively. So, 2022 has been insanely great. And if we’re gonna say it, we’re gonna cantillate like genuine oafs about Undeath’s springtime hammer and our Album of the Year, It’s Time… to Rise From the Grave. It changed the shape of American destruction. And here’s why…

“We’re just fans at the end of the day,” says Undeath’s Jones. “We just love death metal. We love that whole world of music. From the beginning, we’ve been focused on serving the genre that we love so much.”

GOD WAS CREATED

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INSIDE ≥

72 BLOODCLOT The cheaters and the cheated 74 EXHUMED Splatter platter

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

76 IN THE WOODS... Heart of the ageless 77 LAST IN LINE Evil, not divine 78 UNGFELL Demolition listen

Over Under

Long-running progressive metal collective HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE reconvene for a thrash-inspired reboot

JANUARY

9

12

What about...?

10

LOL, it’s not even December

5 1

Label advertising once again taking precedence over what were actually the best albums year

No Belphegor?

GTFO!

L

et’s consider how much the extreme music world has changed in the 20-plus years since guitarist John Cobbett unleashed the first Hammers of Misfortune album, HAMMERS OF The Bastard. (Though Cobbett wasn’t the only musician on that MISFORTUNE album, he’s the connecting factor to the band’s now sevenOvertaker album discography.) We’ve seen any number of genres/styles/ SELF-RELEASED subgenres find favor and disfavor; we’ve seen legacy bands produce some of their finest work; we’ve seen a broadening of the extreme music umbrella as a whole. It’s been a wild ride, but the end result is simply that our nook of the music world is as creatively vital as it’s ever been. ¶ Hammers of Misfortune in 2022 are the personification of that assertion. Though Cobbett, who relocated from the Bay Area to Montana in 2016, didn’t initially imagine the material that comprises Overtaker would actually be released under the HOM moniker, it makes complete sense that it is. The stylistic genesis, in fact, for these tunes lies in Cobbett’s work with Vhöl, the thrashy side project he indulged in with his multi-instrumentalist wife Sigrid Sheie.

After that band’s 2015 album Deeper Than the Sky, Cobbett was inspired to follow a similar path creatively, with no specific intention for it to be a Hammers or Vhöl album.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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However, as he wrote the material and later brought in some ex-Hammers (vocalists Jamie Myers and Mike Scalzi) and Vektor’s former rhythm section (drummer Blake Anderson and bassist Frank Chin) for the recording, it made sense that it should be the long-awaited followup to 2016’s Dead Revolution, in spite of the almost complete lineup turnover from that album.

Only Sheie and Cobbett return here, but Scalzi and Myers’ participation connect solidly to the band’s past. Overtaker, however, is unsurprisingly forging forward musically, not looking backward.

That’s not to say that the influences present—prog, thrash, power metal, crossover—are fresh, per se. But the way Cobbett and his co-conspirators have swirled them together in the 10 (mostly) concise, yet complex songs is a wonder to behold. Cobbett calls it “psychedelic thrash,” which only pays lip service to the weirdness of it all, not so much the virtuosity and beauty of it. Each track is a marvel to behold, with unexpected twists at every junction. Myers handles most of the vocals—no easy task given the intricacy of the music—with an assertive fierceness, while Scalzi offers a stylistic counterpoint that's more earthy and trad-based.

Cobbett’s expert-level chops are all over this, but his musical compatriots follow whatever bizarre passage he throws at them. The frantic arrangements are punctuated with synths and Hammond B3 organ, offering, for instance, a brief Yes vibe to a track like “The Raven’s Bell.”

Though thrash tempos permeate most of the album, rarely do tracks go where one might expect. The aptly titled “Outside Our Minds” gallops aggressively before veering off into a psychedelic wonderland.

As weird as it may sound, there’s a sense of joy and fun in the arrangements, which seem to defy the expected and manage to both challenge and reward the listener. For as ostensibly “difficult” and progressive as it is—there are a lot of notes being played here—Overtaker never feels like anything other than a total blast. The songs aren’t simply about showing off chops; they’re well-conceived constructs to marvel at. Overtaker is a fine example of extreme music’s vitality and the continuing creativity present in our musical sphere. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

BLOODCLOT

6

Souls

U P S TAT E

Advanced age of quarrel

Bloodclot (a.k.a. Bloodclot!) is the longtime project of former Cro-Mags frontman John Joseph. Started in the early ’80s with rotating members, it took until 2008 for an actual record to emerge. Souls is 72 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

only their third release, with another completely new lineup, and it’s the most impressive one yet.

Unfortunately, John Joseph is still around.

First off, on guitar there’s Tom Capone.

Despite recent personal issues, he was in Quicksand and Handsome and knows how to write some riffs. He’s backed by longtime Sick of It All bassist Craig Setari and drummer Darren Morgenthaler from one of the better Madball records. The six originals here have a nice variety of hardcore, with straight-up thrashy metalcore, pounding old-school and ’90s groove, all either passable or pretty good. But then there’s the vocalist.

Now, Joseph still has a great voice for hardcore, and when the band plays Slayer parts, he seriously sounds exactly like Tom Araya. But then there are the times where he tries different vocal approaches and it’s absolutely fucking terrible. Whether he’s outright singing, doing a weird raspy whisper or goofily emulating H.R. on the closing Bad Brains cover, it should have been quickly shitcanned for the sake of the music.

Joseph has recently been legally prohibited from using the Cro-Mags name to promote himself or his projects. It’s fortunate then that Souls is decent enough to earn Bloodclot (a.k.a.

Bloodclot!) some traction. But considering his track record with bandmates and people in general, he better hope these guys stick around.

—SHANE MEHLING

BONECARVER

6

Carnage Funeral UNIQUE LEADER

Top hats, tails and teardrop tattoos

For its first seven years, this Madrid-based quartet was a “technical deathcore” band known as Cannibal Grandpa. Come 2020, something happened behind the scenes that saw a moniker switch and an approach alteration. Whether it was a pandemic-motivated change of heart, isolation-induced boredom or the realization of life’s fragility after someone’s grandpa was actually cannibalized, we don’t know. What we do know is that reinvention under the Bonecarver banner occurred, and these dudes not only got obsessed with symphonic black metal/epic soundtracks, but went out and tracked down every effects simulator, software packet, keyboard sampler and anything else deemed useful to elevate their original crabcore breakdown thunder to the realms of the symphonic and philharmonic.

Did it work? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason the collision of Dimmu Borgir’s classical lushness with Ingested and Vulvodynia’s

death-slam doesn’t happen very often, and Bonecarver haven’t solved that conundrum.

The orchestration simulations are voluminous and noticeable, though sometimes overwrought and domineering. There are times when the baroque layers, dynamic swells and symphonic crests pair effectively with the (probably) eight-string djent and typewriter kick drum rumble—the ridiculous caveman breakdown that closes “Pillars of Tragedy” and fades into the opening cinematic squall of “Morgue Desecrator,” for instance. Other times it’s like they’re filling space with what they think John Williams might do.

As a result, Carnage Funeral lands smack dab in the middle of being a poor man’s Fleshgod Apocalypse and a rich man’s Inanimate Existence. In that sense, only you know what your bank balance is holding and how much you’re willing to part with in order to dive into this sometimes clumsy, sometimes audacious rendering. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

CELESTIAL SEASON 8 Mysterium II

BURNING WORLD

When every little bit of hope is gone

Resuscitated doom metallers Celestial Season have had a prolific 2022. First, the group teed up Mysterium I, the follow-up to comeback stunner The Secret Teachings, to sate the moper contingent. This was, to some degree, a nod to 1993 debut album Forever Scarlet Passion. Now Mysterium II hits, and it tracks with the Dutch outfit’s ’90s run. That is to say, if the three sunless tracks on Promo 1994 struck a chord—recently compiled by Vic Records on The Merciful—then the second part of the Mysterium trilogy will wither proverbial flowers.

Throughout the Season’s newest effort, they go to great lengths to conjure rainy days, funeral parties and frilly shirts. The violins of Jiska ter Bals and cellos of Elianne Anemaat are immediately identifiable on opener “The Divine Duty of Servants.” They combine throwback style with the crushing chords and crestfallen lines of guitarists Olly Smit and Pim van Zanen. But the strings are where it’s at in Celestial Season, and at 31, they’re making the most of them on Mysterium II. Neighboring track “Tomorrow Mourning” coruscates wonderfully against Stefan Ruiters’ quavering howls. The little atmospheric guitar bridge that leads into the swelling, fuzzed-out dual solo(s) is a really nice touch. By the time “The Sun the Moon and the Truth” and “Pictures of Endless Beauty Copper Sunset” land, it’s not hard to fault Celestial Season’s downward procession.

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EXHUMED, To the Dead

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The gore the merrier | R E L A P S E

To the Dead is a viscera-laden love-in between Exhumed members both past and present. Joining the gore metal maestros’ current lineup of Matt Harvey (vocals, guitars), Ross Sewage (vocals, bass), Sebastian Phillips (guitars) and Mike Hamilton (drums) are four lifers with an extreme metal lineage that stretches across time like disentangled intestines laid across a serial killer’s murder room: Matthew Widener (Cretin, Liberteer), Leon del Muerte (Impaled, Murder Construct), Mike Beams (Mortuous) and Bud Burke (Scarecrow).

These songwriters of sickness have all contributed to Exhumed’s critically lauded legacy over the band’s three decades of rotting ‘n’ rolling, from 1994’s Horrific Expulsion of Gore demo to 1998’s splatterwork classic Gore Metal and modern aural massacres such as All Guts, No Glory

Certainly, they own this space, even down to the ’90s production aesthetic. Odds are the sonorous coda to Mysterium II is the nadir. Next, they’re gonna groove hazily to tambourine shakes and bell-bottomed riffs. —CHRIS DICK

CHROME GHOST

8

House of Falling Ash SEEING RED

Warm yourself with a house fire

Doomy post-metal trio Chrome Ghost started haunting the stages of Sacramento back in 2015. Their debut album and initial EPs revealed an approach to fuzz and sludge that tilted towards the ethereal. But their dreamy melodies are always a second away 74 : J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L

(2011) and Necrocracy (2013). On paper, such a collaborative guild is enough to get the juices flowing for even the most glutted DM fanatic. And in reality, To the Dead eviscerates your highest expectations. The uncouth collective deep-dives into Exhumed’s bloody history and, surprisingly, sounds quite sentimental here, as though they took stock of their voluminous output and wrote a collection of badass tracks that span the goregrindin’ motherfuckery they helped pioneer (as well as the more melodic DM or thrashrippin’ sounds explored in later years).

To the Dead might appear overly reflective to some begrudgers, but an album that draws from every era of this cherished extreme metal act is totally welcome right now—and especially as a stylistic compendium to enlighten newcomers who’ve crossed into DM’s putrid abode thanks to exposure to contemporary killers such as Undeath, Tomb Mold, Cerebral Rot and so on. —DEAN BROWN

from demolition. Sophomore record The Diving Bell culminated in four immersive tracks spanning nearly 40 minutes. The band’s comfort with compositions crossing the double-digit threshold continues with their third album, the vastly textured House of Falling Ash. Fourteen-minute opener “Rose in Bloom” captures the band’s formidable dichotomy. The gentle passages feel like a time lapse from a flower’s bulb to the vibrant blossom. But when the distortion crashes down, it’s with the power of a seasonal change. Eleven minutes in, the track’s heaviest turn feels like a withering frost.

Kindled with Opethian harmonies and warmth, “The Furnace” incinerates its own fragility with bouts of sludge and heavy psych.

Vocalist/guitarist Jake Kilgore creates an equilibrium of beauty and harshness, supported by

the impeccable engineering of Patrick Hills.

In one breath, Kilgore’s feather-light croon conveys fragility and poetry. In the next, his growls chase preciousness away with a tide of mud.

In the album’s least threatening track, “Where Black Dogs Dream” offers sanctuary with harmonized licks and vocal harmonies befitting a Yes record. While incorporating Ennio Morricone’s sun-bleached flourishes, the track crescendos to soulful lead guitars. But the closing title track immediately summons storm clouds with a tortured snarl. The song unfurls like a nocturnal woodland walk lit only by stars and a distant fire. Chrome Ghost invites you to venture through the forest and watch the inferno until your eyes burn. —SEAN FRASIER

CULT OF YOUTH

8

With Open Arms H O S P I TA L

… and closed fists

Cult of Youth haven’t been heard from since right before America elected a game show host to its highest office, but surprise! New album, new label, same acoustic apocalypticism. With Open Arms continues Sean Ragon and company’s attempts to fuse ’80s goth with Prophecy Productions-style neofolk, which often means it just sounds like ’80s goth—bands like the Mission and Fields of the Nephilim were no strangers to grampa guitars. Still, the quasiunplugged approach reaps some unexpectedly satisfying harvests.

Ragon’s Eldritch/Murphy/McCoy/Colemanstyle baritone howl certainly invites comparisons to his forebears on early doom-bringers like “Green Cross” and “Shadowforce,” as well as late-album Cure-alls like “Outside, in Reality.” Weirdly, it’s once the hour-long epic gets into its middle section that it gets interesting. That’s because it’s the quieter tracks that stand out—“Flowers of Essence,” “Barking Without Dogs” and “Awakening I and II” do a much better job bringing the listener to a pagan bonfire. “Final Kingdom” starts with ritualistic chanting, creating a truly oppressive atmosphere that builds to militaristic fervor via its mantra of “Wage war!” The songs that weaponize repetition work best overall (see the syncopated rant of “Beyond Self”).

This is probably Cult of Youth’s gothiest record to date, and it’s a look that fits them well. They really figured out how to make their whole vibe work over the hiatus. It’s resulted in some of their best songs—despite wearing similar robes, each member of this particular cult makes the whole stronger. —JEFF TREPPEL

PUNK//METAL//HARDCORE & MORE

PORTLANDDISTRO.COM @PORTLANDDISTRO

DECIBEL : JANUARY 2023 : 75

FOEHAMMER

6

Monumentum SILENT PENDULUM

Break me, shake me

The list of extreme metal duos that have endeavored to push around air with the intensity of full bands is long, illustrious and sure to grow.

Cobalt. Anaal Nathrakh. The Body. Savage Garden. Alternately, the list of extreme metal duos that sound exactly like two people crushing it as hard as they can is even longer, and their general lack of illustrosity means we will not be listing them here, save one: Foehammer.

Founder Jay Cardinell has been grinding at this sludgy, doomy wheel for nearly a decade, and this album marks his first recorded collaboration with longtime drummer Ben Price.

Fuzz fiends and tone worshippers: Get on this one. More than a set of songs, Monumentum is— as the kids say—a whole vibe. Read another way, it’s possible we’ve just said that Monumentum lacks real songs. Except that’s not entirely fair. The first 24 minutes, inhabited by “Orm Embar” and “Oblivion of Sand,” are more exercises in laboriously chiseling stone(d) stairs toward the great furnace below than thoughtful compositions, and mid-album cut “The Disk” threatens to raise the pulse to near-living heartrate levels before delving similarly sour depths.

But incredibly, the album’s second half finds a real voice, and the two gargantuan tracks that make up “The Great Cortege” take up the slack and turn everything around. Here, Foehammer shine. The tactics haven’t really changed, but treble accents add light and warmth that were absent earlier, and some truly electric ideas shed heft in favor of clarity and textural variety. The most enticing bits remind us of YOB or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and only in the best ways.

We’re definitely interested to see Foehammer follow this particular funeral procession and find out what lies further down that road.

—DANIEL LAKE

HEKATOXEN

8

Utter Darkness HEADSPLIT

Classic death metal from start to Finnish

Since it’s always cool to be terrified that parsing a band’s “sound” will make it seem like you’re a poseur cribbing from Encyclopedia Metallum reviews, let’s look at some classic Finnish death metal. Hekatoxen’s debut EP, Utter Darkness, is a four-song ode to the old-school of their homeland, and it’s a near-total success.

The trio creates fairly epic songs that are able to maintain your attention by sticking with 76 : JA NUA RY 202 3 : DECIBEL

much of what the microgenre’s pioneers relied on: blackened fast parts, instantly memorable guitar lines, mid-paced breakdowns, woeful death-doom and an overall eeriness. All of this is throughout the EP and sometimes even in the same song. Parts never overstay their welcome, and the dynamics are constantly shifting. And while there is some looseness here and shunning of studio polish, the overall production is pretty fantastic, balancing everything that’s going on.

With that in mind, if there’s anything that could be improved, it would be a stronger focus on the density and layers the band is so good at.

Their sparse use of synths hint at the potential to create something even more interesting and expansive. While it’s true that some of their countrymen also tried to expand death metal (Amorphis, Sentenced) to the point where it stopped being death metal at all, it’s probably still worth the attempt.

That can all wait until a full-length, though. There is enough on Utter Darkness to enjoy for now, and Hekatoxen are, I’m pretty sure, a worthy heir of this classic sound.

—SHANE MEHLING

IMPRECATION

7

In Nomine Diaboli DARK DESCENT

Still in league with you know who

Just one cursory glance at any Imprecation band shot will tell you all you need to know. Covered to the tits in spiked gauntlets, light bouncing off the upside-down crosses around their necks, a collection of deepset grimaces on their faces—these Texans stand tall for Lucifer, and their occult death metal hits harder than the bucking obsidian back hooves of the Fallen One. In Nomine Diaboli is the band’s third studio album since their reformation in 2009, and for anyone familiar with the band since 1995’s Theurgia Goetia Summa compilation, not much has changed, despite Dave Herrera’s blasphemous bark being the only constant. Imprecation play loose, thrashy, nasty, Christ-piledriving OSDM, the kind that summons the horns from the unwashed horde that grew up on Deicide, early Slayer, Incantation or Morbid Angel. This album is full of Baphomet-worshiping tracks, from the churning syncopations of malevolent opener “Reborn in Fire” to the divebombing deaththrash of “Agnus Dei (Spill the Blood),” and onwards to the infernal doom-grooves of “Thorns of Hate” and “Stigmata Wounds.”

In Nomine Diaboli is also the musical epitaph for drummer/keyboardist Ruben Elizondo, who

sadly passed away in 2021. Elizondo’s creepy keyboard touches give the record an ’80s horror feel, but his drums pound with the same gusto as Pontius Pilate’s soldiers when nailing Jesus to the cross. What Imprecation sacrifice in progressiveness they more than make up for in relentless anti-religious ire—and the market for that kind of extreme metal will exist until the day religion doesn’t. —DEAN BROWN

IN THE WOODS...

8

Diversum

SOULSELLER

Rearrange in stereo

After two albums with British busy bee James Fogarty (Pure, Cease the Day), Norway’s In the Woods… unveil one-time Susperia frontman Bernt Fjellestad. Fans split in half with Fogarty, and I’m sure there will still be comparisons to Ovl. Svithjod, though he’s not been part of the band for twoplus decades. Emotions die hard, it seems.

Diversum leads off with “The Coward’s Way,” a dark amalgam of arboreal death-ish metal and whatever genre In the Woods… created for themselves on their landmark Omnio. Fjellestad is brighter in tone compared to his immediate predecessor. He comes out of his shell on “Moments,” as guitarists Kåre André Sletteberg and Bernt Sørensen trem ‘n’ chug like they’re some otherworld version of Øystein G. Brun (Borknagar) and Pepper Keenan. “A Wonderful Crisis” and “The Malevolent God” are mid-album burners that somehow manage to expertly navigate between AOR-isms and Evergrey’s pantywetting metal.

When In the Woods… aren’t trying to thread 10 needles, the tracks that eventually settle are the bookends, “The Coward’s Way” and “Your Dark.” While Sólstafir are out trying an Icelandic version of Five Leaves Left and Manes have jettisoned well beyond eyesight on Slow Motion Death Sequence, finding the right notch with Diversum is expectedly arduous. Then again, what transpired between Heart of the Ages and Strange in Stereo isn’t explainable either. It just kind of rules. —CHRIS DICK

INFERION

7

Maternity Ward to Crematorium S C H E M AT I C M U S I C C O M PA N Y

What kind of tryst is this anyway?

The clarity surrounding this release is murky at best, but what we’ve been able to piece together is as follows: Multi-instrumentalist/vocalist

Nick “Thor” Reyes has masterminded blackened deathsters Inferion since 1995. He’s also a former mail order employee at Miami’s Schematic Music Company, described as “an electronic music label specializing in techno, electronica and various forms of dance music.” After regaling his workplace with tales of touring high adventure, the folks at Schematic gathered some of their roster to put material from Inferion’s discography through the remix wringer. The result is a release that harkens back to that ’90s window of Prong, Pitchshifter, Fear Factory and Godflesh remix records, as well as latter-day agitation by avant-garde experimentalists Scorn, Painkiller and Praxis.

Not being at all familiar with the source material creates a disadvantage in knowing just how much slicing and dicing has happened, but it’s safe to say that aside from “Weakness (Dim Past Remix)” and “Lament (Wintereve ‘Dying Souls Remix’),” there’s little overt black metal remaining throughout the 15 remixes here. There’s everything from twisted techno (“Firewar (Ed Matus Remix)”), lilting bouts of Latin melody (“Grendel (Blush Response Remix)”) and ambient dub (“Contempt (Black Ant Remix)”), all of which have banshee-like vocals as the remaining sign of metallic life. On the harsher side, there’s pure noise/power electronics in “Wasted Landscape (Nerikatsu Remix)” and more traditional industrial metal stomping in “Dolore - Death Oceans (Real of Solitude Remix).”

Remix albums haven’t been a thing for a while, and they haven’t been cool for longer than that, but Maternity Ward to Crematorium is a neat collection of noises to throw on if you want to experience a dynamic rollercoaster ride. Even if you have no idea who Inferion are.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

LAST IN LINE

3

A Day in the Life EP EARMUSIC

The only way is down

It was no doubt with the noblest of intentions that guitarist Vivian Campbell, drummer Vinnie Appice and bassist Jimmy Bain formed Last in Line as a tribute to singer Ronnie James Dio, who died in 2010. But when your apparent goal is to celebrate the musical connection you had backing the greatest metal vocalist of all time, the decision of who to get to front your endeavor is kind of an important one. Unfortunately, with this consequential personnel choice Campbell/Appice/Bain failed miserably by enlisting Andrew Freeman.

Freeman is a competent vocalist, the kind you can find by the dozen in L.A., and as evidence of

his “competence,” he has fronted Great White, Lynch Mob, Snow, FireHouse and Hurricane, among others over the years. He is the antithesis of Ronnie James Dio, a man who possessed perhaps the most distinctive and powerful voice in metal. Freeman can sing, but his voice is as indistinct and nondescript as it gets. This, we imagine an insulted Dio raging from the afterlife, is who those jackasses chose for a band named after one of my greatest songs?!

Bain’s passing in 2016, just prior to the release of Last in Line’s debut, Heavy Crown, spared him the ignominy of being further associated with this project, but ex-Ozzy bassist Phil Soussan was all too ready to step into his shoes. On this new EP, the quartet metal-up the Beatles psychedelic classic “A Day in the Life,” and offer one new song, “Hurricane Orlagh,” alongside a pair of live tracks from their first two albums (“Devil in Me” and “Give Up the Ghost”). The playing is superlative—there’s no denying Appice and Campbell’s skills—but that old saw about “you’re only as good as your drummer” might need to be amended with an allowance for a generic vocalist, because not even Appice can take the stink off this. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

MONSTER MAGNET

8

Test Patterns: Vol. 1 GOD UNKNOWN

Do not attempt to adjust your dial

Here’s a fact: Monster Magnet’s m.o. circa 1989 was simply to fuck with people. Maybe that meant entertaining them, as well, but pissing them off was preferable.

Because there was nothing less cool at the time than playing 30-minute jams and channeling whatever weird space rock these dudes were ingesting. If you could bear to sit through a performance by guitarist/vocalist Dave Wyndorf, guitarist/bassist John McBain and drummer Tim Cronin, you were probably much higher than they were.

Somehow Monster Magnet coalesced into something coherent—drawing from a lot of the same influences as grunge—with the lineup that recorded Spine of God in 1991, but prior recordings were, shall we say, loose and experimental.

That’s where Test Patterns: Vol. 1 is drawn from. A simple two-tracker, this offers up the song “Tab” in its original 1988 demo version, as well as an updated 2021 remix. For what it’s worth, the difference between the two is notable and appreciated. It’s the same 25-minute head-fuck drone, but the original has a shitty factor that feels more antagonistic. The 2021 version sands off the nastiness and just floats around in a chemicalinduced haze like an extra-long Spiritualized

remix. Both have their charms; neither resemble anything post-Spine of God. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

MYTHOSPHERE

7

Pathological CRUZ DEL SUR

This one sparks a lot of joy

Post-millennial metal has been so preoccupied with sounding as loud and extreme as possible that it feels as though extremity comes at the expense of heaviness, especially on record. There’s plenty of room for restraint, yet it’s still a big surprise to hear a new metal record in 2022 that takes that theory to heart. Upon hearing “Ashen Throne,” the first track on Mythosphere’s confident debut album, you’re immediately struck by how there’s actual space between the instrumental tracks. The music breathes instead of assaulting the listener. Morphing from Opeth-esque progressive rock to more deliberately paced doom, the song sounds so stripped down that it’s jarring. Yet, at the same time, the heaviness is never compromised. In fact, the visceral impact of the band is so much more palpable because of the clarity. It’s as though Marie Kondo went into a kitchen-sink mainstream metal album and removed all the annoying clutter.

The brainchild of guitarist/singer Dana Ortt and drummer Darin McCloskey—both formerly of terrific Maryland doomsters Beelzefuzz— Mythosphere cleverly blend the comfy, groovy thud of classic doom metal with just enough prog melody and nuance. If that wasn’t enough, they’re aided greatly by former Fates Warning guitarist Victor Arduini, whose leads add plenty of color to standout tracks like “Kings Call to Arms” and “Through the Night.” But the title track is where Mythosphere show the most promise, its dynamic, hard-charging pace perfectly complementing Ortt’s Michael Kiske-style lead vocals, benefitting immensely from its nononsense approach. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

SÉPULCRE

6

Cursed Ways of Sheol INVICTUS

The cords of Sheol surrounded me, the snares of death confronted me: Psalm 18:5

If you cotton to debut-era Grave and Entombed, you owe it to yourself to check out Sépulcre’s Ascent Through Morbid Transcendence demo.

Sure, scads of no-goodniks already terrorize that particular city block, but what sets Sépulcre apart from their peers is urgency (read: looseness, à la Death Strike), riff-craft and DECIBEL : JANUARY 2023 : 77

an interest in creating deeply macabre atmospheres. This doesn’t read as play-pretend; it sounds somber ‘n’ cruel.

Now, what sets this debut EP apart from the demo is its high-toned, piercing guitar sound, as well as drums that shamble back and forth from incompetently recorded to “solid enough.”

Super weird. However, there’s also been noticeable growth as far as Sépulcre’s compositional acumen is concerned: the melodic counterpoint that the band allows to absolutely devour the rest of the riff at the close of the title track; the wanderlust that compelled them to push beyond the four-minute mark and deliver a nearly 10-minute (largely successful) epic; the achievement in evoking the ambience of classic European horror films. All of this attests to a significant amount of development. I still believe that this band has some teething left to do. I don’t mind sloppiness when the riffs are bangers, but pretty-please sort out that production.

Also, Sépulcre seem to have exceptionally short attention spans. They’ll frequently abandon a stellar passage to bolt off into a completely alien direction just as they seem to be settling in.

Learning to trust the vibe—and their audience’s ability to focus—will go a long way towards the creation of a spectacular death metal record.

And don’t get too hung up on the middling score.

I have faith that these gallic nightmares will reemerge soon enough with a more scarifying blueprint, sharpening their claws on their cemetery’s yews and wondering what’s for dinner.

—FORREST PITTS

SOEN

7

Atlantis S I LV E R L I N I N G

Swimming upstream

Glinting off singer Joel Ekelöf’s gleaming dome, Soen emote big and grand: stately, emphatic, vulnerable. Trawling the storied Atlantis Grammofon Studio in Stockholm (whose Hall of Fame includes ABBA, Opeth and Entombed), the Swedish quintet fused with an eight-piece orchestra to frame its co-founder’s powerfully clean tenor in metallic neo-romanticism. Trans-Siberian Orchestra fanatics, all aboard!

The audio document for an 80-minute live DVD viewable on YouTube, Atlantis rearranges the running order of the original session, whose static visuals limit Soen’s expansive vision.

How Ekelöf manages to sing that well stuck on a stool bears its own wonderment, the frontman’s arched eyebrows and dramatic expression pulling focus. Freed from such intense concentration, the summit’s soundtrack soars.

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Reworking 14 tracks from three of the band’s four full-lengths—nothing from 2014’s Tellurian, the majority of song selections pivoting on Lotus (2019) and Imperial (2021)—Soen’s S&M (strings ‘n’ metal) adds the new “Trials” to its tribulations. Opeth alumnus and band co-founder Martin Lopez beats through the orchestral wall of sound to keep it rock-hard, not Hallmark.

Canadian Cody Lee Ford’s Stratocaster leads ring and sting (“Trials”), all his touches landing: steely, stinging, eloquent (“Illusions”). Bassist Oleksii “Zlatoyar” Kobel bridges band and symphonic bandstand.

Seven-minute opener “Antagonist” resounds like a Scando testosteron-ization of Adele, low tenor intensity replacing the Brit’s hormonal highs. “Monarch” enhances the melodrama as much through Ekelöf’s accent/non-accent as the lyrics: “I’m a walking corpse who abandoned humanity's cause to become the god of harm.”

The sawing string solo on “Jinn” hints at “Kashmir,” but the centerpiece here spotlights an impassioned cover of Slipknot’s “Snuff,” bleeding second axe Lars Åhlund’s acoustic guitar and piano. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

UNGFELL

7

Demo(lition) EISENWALD

Black Metal Demo Team, go!

All right, so if you’re even a marginally underground black metal fan at this point, you should have heard of spooky Swiss folk heroes Ungfell. Part of the equally mysterious Helvetic Underground Committee—which boasts bands like Ateiggär, Dhakma, Goifer, Kvelgeyst and many, many other band names that sound funny when Americans say them— the Committee's flagship band has spent the better part of the past decade crafting intriguing riffs and folk-tale-inspired songs to bring the Swiss countryside’s surprisingly archaic lifestyle, customs and stories into the forefront of a new age.

I know what you’re thinking: They called their demo Demo(lition), and that is pretty lame, but what if I told you it was actually pretty, pretty, pretty cool? What do you think about that? Sure, I mean, it’s a play on words, but demolishing stuff is pretty awesome, and that’s exactly what Ungfell did when they initially released this demo on Graceless Recordings in 2015. Sharp, melodic, folksy riffs are the name of the game here, and this duo—comprised of drummer Vâlant and vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Menetekel (a pretty swell biblical reference)—brings their riff A-game here, especially

on this earliest material, which is by far their strongest.

Reissues are a tough thing to get right, mostly because there is so much going on (especially in the black metal world) that things get lost.

Luckily, it’s been a (relative) while since we last heard from Ungfell, and their last album Es grauet was actually pretty sweet. Go figure that German label Eisenwald would want to shine a light on this band’s earlier work (for your information, their entire back catalog was reissued, but we’re just talking about the demo here), and this demo is easily the best.

The remaster, though? It’s fine, but ultimately unnecessary. I like my Ungfell like I like my steak: raw. —JON ROSENTHAL

VISCERAL

6

The Tree of Venomous Fruit SELF-RELEASED

Look, but don’t taste

Death/black metal newcomers Visceral display plenty of promise on their full-length debut. The Portuguese band is at its best when leaning into austere, almost industrial-sounding movements, mechanized by juddering blasts. Drummer Menthor Serpens plays with pinpoint precision and takes a lead role in dictating the direction of many corrosive riffs, which is not a surprise for anyone who has witnessed his martial power on albums such as Enthroned’s Cold Black Suns, Lvcifyre’s The Broken Seal or Nightbringer’s symphonic BM opus Terra Damnata.

Serpens locks tight with bassist Bruno Correia, and this duo gives Visceral a monstrous low-end, which is very audible in the mix, the results of which sounds like Portal gorging on Godflesh during highlights “Anxious Chaos” and “Thought Trench.” On these tracks, the vocals suit the music’s pounding discordance: a jabbering, deep, dry growl, devoid of humanity. When Visceral strictly stick within the confines of this cohesive style, and peel off some contrasting lead work—as heard on “The Sight of Nothing” and “Upborne With Indefatigable Wings”—the band rigidly holds attention.

However, in order to move to the next level, Visceral have to cut the needless atmospheric segues throughout; maintain one cohesive style (some riffs come too close to Swedish DM—see: “Fever Fruit”—which doesn’t work with the industrialized dissonance); and rein in the vocal dominance on each track, as the incessant acrid growling suffocates the music at times and loses impact, becoming pretty irritating on multiple spins due to repetitive phrasing. —DEAN BROWN

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

SOMETHING STRANGE HAPPENED

AT SOULCRUSHER A

menra, Ihsahn, Cave In,

Gaahls Wyrd, and the names go on and on. This was just the tip of a much more gooned-out iceberg that was Soulcrusher 2022, a festival in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Now, I’m no stranger to festivals, and have in either Oxbow or Buñuel played Supersonic, Roadburn, Dour, Kilbi, Muddy Roots, Amplifest… again, the names go on and on.

Once, after playing Roadburn with Black Sun, I read a review that made me laugh. I had sung a few songs for Black Sun, the crushkill-destroy upgrade to early-stage Swans, and then they gave me the floor to just do some talking. I’d call it “spoken word,” but this was nothing like Jim Morrison ever expected. It was a grisly piece about being raped. Not the bullshit Hollywood rape story where it goes all Red Shoe Diaries on you, but the real and horrible deal, and much more specifically, man on man.

Later, basking in the feeling of a show well done, I read a review and laughed when the critic, though a fan of the show, made a claim that I roached his buzz. That I harshed his

80 : JANUARY 2023 : DECIBEL

mellow. That I had, beyond a shadow of a doubt, upended his enjoyment of a festival that, in his mind, was all about a certain element of family.

I laughed because festivals had always been enjoyed by me from the business end. Family was family, but business was business, and I was confused at his identification with the former.

Confused, but now paying attention since the word keeps coming up. Again and again.

And yet, for me? Nothing.

But at the end of several months of touring with Buñuel, we pull into Soulcrusher, geeked. Stand around and bullshit with the guys in Cave In. Try to track down Colin H. van Eeckhout from Amenra, unsuccessfully. Same with Chris Spencer from Unsane. But the vibe all around feels totally what the Germans call Gemütlichkeit. Just… comfortable.

Good food does that; and the company, of course; and the fact that it is well-run.

But as I’m pacing behind the main stage curtain, minutes from heading into about the 40th show Buñuel have done this year, definitely the third festival, the “last

show” weight starts to weigh on me.

I can see I’ve forgotten to take my cellphone out of my pocket. I can see this because I am getting a text from my daughter. I am getting the kind of text from my daughter that you don’t ever want to get if you have a daughter, or a son.

It was precipitated by a casual social media interaction with a friend of mine where he feigned ignorance that she was a world champion equestrian, which she was. She was angry that he hadn’t known this, and thus uncovered a tremendous wellspring of resentment toward my chosen parenting style. Specifically, the same one that would be in evidence if you’d ever read a single lyric I had ever written.

That is, my unyielding and unforgiving take on both myself and the rest of humanity had made her feel that my love for her was conditioned on her not being weak or wanting, which is why she had excelled. The idea that I would reject her for being either had driven her into a life-threatening depression, and she was needing me to validate not whether she was right or wrong, but just that she felt

angry, depressed and disappointed in me for not being kinder. Gentler.

The band kicks into the opening strains of “Hornets” off Killers Like Us, and I tear into the set with a vigor renewed. My War All the Time m.o. having failed me as a father would more than compensate on the stage side, and the set ends to rousing applause. But post-show I am depressed and disappointed in myself, and wander out to the bar where a friend of mine, Torsten, is hanging out with a guy from Istanbul. I’ve met neither of these cats face-to-face before, but when they ask “how it’s going,” I tell them exactly how it’s going.

And then something crazy happens. They listen, buy me a drink and gift me some version of, “bro, things will be just fine.” A kinder, gentler response I could not have asked for, and then I finally understood. Like 360-degree understood: Family is everywhere. Just let it be so.

Next stop, some family therapy, which I will try to get through without telling the therapist that mental health has been pimped out to Big Pharma. Wish me some version of “luck.”

ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

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