DEATHRACE KING
DENVER 2022 METAL & BEER FEST BREWED & REVIEWED
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BOB
NALBANDIAN 19 65- 2 0 22
SANGUISUGABOGG MEMORIAM INSOMNIUM CONTRARIAN NARROW HEAD ULTHAR EYES ZULU STABBING ANCIENT MASTERY
MARCH 2023 // No. 221
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upfront 8
obituary: bob nalbandian A true metal insider
10 news: savage lands A product of our environment 12 metal muthas Whole lotta love 14 exclusive:
decibel magazine metal & beer fest denver 2022 review
20 contrarian Technically not death
28 stabbing Killer be killed
22 zulu A better tomorrow
30 insomnium The really, really Dark Ages
24 ancient mastery A powerful new chapter 26 narrow head Rocking the boat
32 eyes Getting their hooks in you 34 ulthar Double downers
Smooth sailing in the Rocky Mountains 18 low culture New year, same you
features
reviews
36 sanguisugabogg For immature audiences only
65 lead review Sanguisugabogg continue to revel in sex and violence with sophomore release Homicidal Ecstasy
38 q&a: memoriam Vocalist Karl Willetts soldiers on in the face of the great Eastern Front 42 the decibel
hall of fame Gassed up by youthful vigor and the support of their label, Swedish outsiders The Crown put the pedal to the metal on their fourth full-length Deathrace King
66 album reviews Records from bands that still date their documents with “1992,” including Eucharist, In Flames and Obituary 72 damage ink Light makes right
19 no corporate beer When beer cans become beer can’ts
Through the Deadly Black Hole COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY JUSTIN BORUCKI
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. © 2023 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.
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March 2023 [T221] PUBLISHER
Alex Mulcahy
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Albert Mudrian
albert@decibelmagazine.com AD SALES
James Lewis
james@decibelmagazine.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES
tor Shawn Bosler was seriously hurt in a car crash, resulting in a horrific list of injuries, including a broken back, femur, sternum, jaw, nose and orbital bones. His shattered body required multiple surgeries, forcing him out of work for months. In early 2027, I organized a benefit show for Shawn in Brooklyn—semi-cleverly called Bozzfest—at Saint Vitus, who graciously donated the room. Without a second thought, Newburgh, NY legends All Out War agreed to headline the event for free, allowing us to donate 100 percent of the proceeds to Shawn’s young family. And when I offered to pay for the band’s gas and tolls, their label at the time, Organized Crime, stepped in and picked up that tab. If you know the All Out War dudes and the folks they keep close, you’ll find none of this surprising. Of course, All Out War aren’t on the cover of Decibel simply because they are fine folks. It’s because they are one of the best metalcore bands of all time. Mind you, we’re talking metalcore before a generation of bands with good cop/bad cop vocal approaches made the genre tag so ineffectual that Wikipedia currently lists both Deadguy and Attack Attack! as “metalcore bands.” All Out War, of course, have always been more Carnivore than crabcore. In fact, it was the devout Slayer-isms of their 1998 breakthrough, For Those Who Were Crucified, where I felt they first, um, nailed their sound. Over the course of 25 years, they’ve continued to push the metal side of their sonic hybrid, culminating in Celestial Rot. The road to the heaviest, nastiest and clearly most black metal-inspired record of the band’s career—along with details of their long struggle with a certain hardcore label—is chronicled this month in Kevin Stewart-Panko’s excellent cover story. So, if you prefer backing underdogs over bulldogs, and are more likely to attend Bozzfest than a mid-’00s pay-to-play second stage at Ozzfest, we got your new (and possibly old) favorite metalcore band right here. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief
ART DIRECTOR
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Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph
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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 Jamie Ludwig Shane Mehling Tim Mudd Justin M. Norton Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Brad Sanders José Carlos Santos Joseph Schafer Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 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. Copyright ©2023 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA
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ALL OUT WAR PHOTO BY DANIELLE DOMBROWSKI
At the end of 2016, Decibel contribu-
Aaron Salsbury
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Kent Diimmel in This Moment
Tim Yeung Lone Wolf
´ davier perez
great american ghost
Richard Christy
Death - Charred Walls of the Damned
ddrumusa www.ddrum.com
The lines are drawn
Reibstein shares his artistic talent via a self-portrait
As best as we can tell, you’ve been a subscriber since 2010. Do you recall what led you to take the plunge and sign your life away to us?
I think it was through the Blackened Music Series that I went to see Repulsion/Pig Destroyer/ Brutal Truth [Precious Metal book release show] at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, and I think there was a some kind of mini promo mag for the collected Decibel Hall of Fame book, or maybe there were free copies of Decibel. The show was one for the ages (Jeremy [Snevil] from Pink Mass flooded the bathroom with vomit, Pig Destroyer slayed). I came away from the show buzzed and bludgeoned, and of course wanted to read the Decibel mag I grabbed. I got hooked and bought the book, and I think I subscribed at the same time. You might have the receipt?
Leonard Reibstein Brooklyn, NY
You’re an artist. How would you describe your work?
Can you actually make a living off of this gig? If not, what’s your day job?
I use symbols from various subcultures (punk, metal, comics, art history, kink) to show the absurdity of social hierarchy and the sublime power of feeling. I work loosely with oil paint and sumi ink because I want to lure people in with a sensuous handling of materials while I challenge them with the imagery. I want it to look the way the music I love sounds. People can see more of my stuff on Instagram @Hellreibstein.
At the moment, I can’t. I work as an art handler to pay the bills and am interested in teaching at the college level, though those gigs seem harder to get than art sales. I don’t love the work, though it does afford me opportunities to meet collectors [and] bigger artists, and get up close and personal with amazing artworks (and a lot of overpriced trash). And if/when I do start teaching, there’s only adjunct gigs, and I make more handling.
6 : MARCH 2023 : DECIBEL
The Crown’s Deathrace King is the Hall of Fame in this issue. Are you backing it, or do you prefer your Swedish death/thrash delivered by someone else?
I definitely back it; that album slays and is a stone-cold classic! That said, if we’re talking Swedish death/thrash, nothing compares to the O.G.: Merciless and their first album The Awakening. It’s a beefed-up version of early Sodom/ Kreator. A Scandinavian response to Possessed’s Seven Churches.
Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novels Black Metal, Vol. 1, 2 and 3 . For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com
OBITUARIES
BOB
NALBANDIAN 19 65- 2 0 22
M
etal fans are never short on passion. That passion can be directed
in several ways. Some learn instruments and form bands. Others write about the music or direct films and videos. Some are publicists or managers. Bob Nalbandian did all of it at the highest level. And while many of his peers rested on their laurels or only thought of metal in the past tense, Nalbandian built a bridge between the formative metal of his youth in the ’70s and ’80s and metal in the 21st century. ¶ Nalbandian, who died in late December from mantle cell lymphoma, started in the music business young: At just 17 he was the publisher/editor-in-chief of the seminal heavy metal fanzine The Headbanger and covered then-unsigned bands like Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Armored Saint. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Nalbandian was a contributing editor to magazines including Metal Rendezvous, the original Creem, Music Connection and Hit Parader. “Bob was at the ground level and epicenter of the true and earliest L.A. heavy metal scene,” says Forbidden guitarist Craig Locicero. “For all of Bob’s influence, he didn’t have one ounce of pretension. All he ever wanted was kindness and good music.”
In the mid-’80s, Nalbandian managed the Orange County metal band EDEN, signing them to Enigma/Restless Records in 1984. Nalbandian might be best known for landing guitarist Marty Friedman in Megadeth. He was then hired in the West Coast office of Roadrunner 8 : MARCH 2023 : DECIBEL
Records, working with bands like Sepultura and Type O Negative in their creative primes. “Bob was only at the label for a year, but it began a friendship that only got stronger with the passing of each year,” says Monte Conner, former senior vice president of A&R for
Roadrunner, now with Nuclear Blast. “We both loved the same bands from the ’70s and spent endless hours debating and discussing the merits of these bands and many others. Bob was such a huge metal fan. Everything he ever did was purely for the love of the music.” Most recently, Nalbandian directed and coproduced the Inside Metal documentary series and the Band vs Brand documentary film, and founded and produced two metal podcasts. “Bob was one of about a dozen elite U.S. metal gurus, someone who was there at the beginning of American independent metal who never wandered or lost the faith,” says Bazillion Points publisher Ian Christe. “When someone like Bob passes away, we all lose a walking library of firsthand knowledge of bands, connections and lore.” “He was there with so many of us at the beginning,” adds Nalbandian’s friend Tim Healy, now a San Francisco promoter and manager. “His smile brightened up any room he walked into. We will never see that smile again, but many of us have it permanently as part of our consciousness.” Thank you for blazing the path and staying on the trail, Bob. Rest well. —JUSTIN M. NORTON
SAVAGE LANDS
Screaming trees (from l) Sylvain Demercastel and Dirk Verbeuren, along with Lamb of God drummer Art Cruz, need your help to save the environment
THE WORLD NEEDS
SOME HEROES
Megadeth drummer Dirk Verbeuren and Sylvain Demercastel protect Costa Rican forests via explicitly metal nonprofit
C
SAVAGE LANDS
hances are you own at least one (but probably more) created Savage Lands to make
album that Dirk Verbeuren drummed on. The lanky, bearded Belgian did a decade with Soilwork, has worked on dozens of albums and EPs as a session musician, and has a list of “active” bands on Metal Archives so long you have to actually scroll down to reach the end. The dude is a force of nature behind the kit, so it’s no surprise that he’s leveraging his current fame holding down the Megadeth drum throne to do good things for nature and the environment. Verbeuren, along with his former bandmate in French thrashers Artsonic, Sylvain Demercastel, have launched their new nonprofit, Savage Lands, to raise money to fight deforestation, encourage reforestation and protect wildlife in Costa Rica. ¶ Why Costa Rica? Demercastel’s been living there for nearly two decades and has long been involved in environmental activism in his adopted home. He saw firsthand how rapidly land was being bought up and forests were being cut down, to the detriment of not only the native flora and fauna, but the planet. The environment needs more trees, not fewer, so any efforts toward that goal are a win for all of us, not just Costa Ricans. So, Demercastel and Verbeuren 10 : M A R C H 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L
the metal community aware of their cause. “There’s a lot of environmentalism happening [in the metal world],” says Verbueren. “It’s not necessarily that all the bands talk about it in their lyrics, but a lot of people care. And we should; it’s a critical time. It’s a time where we really need to step up. And every small step we can make is important.” In their quest to engage metalheads in their environmental cause, Verbeuren and Demercastel are tapping their fellow musicians to help promote Savage Lands. “We have a bunch of the people who are involved with the project right now working on music together,” Verbueren says. “There’s going to be a band formed around the whole Savage Lands concept, with the goal of giving something cool to people and hopefully raising some money. If we can rally the metal world and
bring [Savage Lands] some visibility, it seems like the kind of thing where we can see actual results.” There’s talk of a Savage Lands metal festival in France—hopefully in 2023—and they recently partnered with Dunable Guitars on a “Lottery of the Trees” initiative that featured custom-made guitars and tickets to Hellfest as possible prizes for those who bought lottery tickets. Though Verbeuren is leaning into his extensive metal connections, he emphasizes that the star power is really just the hook to get metalheads on board. “This is not about us as people in any way,” he notes. “This is about the planet we care so much about. It feels really nice to be able to, in the position I’m in now, use my position to benefit something I believe in, that I’ve always believed in. I feel like I’m making good use of this quote-unquote fame.” —ADEM TEPEDELEN
NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while teaching children to worship Satan… the band.
Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell
This Month’s Muthas: Marlene Vallee Muthas of Artie White of Ready for Death
Tell us a little about yourself.
I spent most of my life on Long Island. I now live in California with my dog Lola, my cat Mr. Binks, and 11 chickens. I fell in love with California when Artie was 18, and moved here in 1993. I’ve since retired and enjoy gardening and spending time with my grandchildren and my critters. Artie says you got him into Zeppelin and Sabbath when he was a kid, and your pot dealer got him into Dead Kennedys and Sex Pistols. Please elaborate!
Oh my goodness, that was news to me that our friend Carl exposed Artie to pot! Me, Carl and a couple of others tried to start a band when Artie was around 12. I played the saxophone and Carl played bass. I remember blasting Black Sabbath once to get Artie and his friends stoked for Halloween. Artie would get frustrated that we were so loud because he was trying to do homework or read his comics. Your son went to punk, hardcore and metal shows all around New York as a teenager in the ’90s. Did you ever worry that he wasn’t going to come home in one piece?
In his teenage years, I learned that Artie was going to shows in New York City. I remember quite a few times he was dead tired, but he pushed through the school day. I was proud of his determination. I did worry a lot and wondered if I was being a good mom, but he was always very honest with me, and I knew he was a good kid. Yet I’ll never forget when he called me around 2 a.m. saying he had to drive his friend’s 12 : M A R C H 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L
car from the city after a show. He’d never driven a car before, let alone a stick shift! We talked it through and thank God he made it home safely. Outside of extreme music, what were some of Artie’s interests as a young man?
Artie’s main focus was reading, especially comic books. I remember one spring he was so worried about being bored all summer since there would be no school. So, I bought him a wagon and he filled it with books from the library on the first day of summer. Artie has more bands than we can count, including Milhouse, Indecision, Concrete Cross, Celebrity Murders and now Ready for Death. How many have you seen?
I’ve seen him in three shows. One show was in NY and I actually got into the mosh pit. I didn’t really enjoy that too much. It scared me! I also saw him in Indecision in San Francisco opening for the Misfits. He was always pretty mellow and not known to get in fights or be aggressive, but when I saw him perform with Indecision and he was taunting the audience, I was shocked, to say the least. He did apologize to me for cursing during the show. It was very respectful of him. What’s something that most people wouldn’t suspect about your son?
People might be surprised at his deep love and affection for animals and his family. He became vegetarian as a teenager, even though he worked at Arby’s, which I knew he hated. —ANDREW BONAZELLI
Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f Jesus Piece, So Unknown Fäust, Death From Beyond The Crown, Deathrace King Satan, Earth Infernal All Out War, Celestial Rot ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e Charged G.B.H, Like Drones in Honey The Exploited, Let's Start a War Chaos UK, The Riot City Years 7 Seconds, The Crew Minor Threat, Complete Discography ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s The Crown, Deathrace King All Out War, Celestial Rot Memoriam, Rise to Power Enslaved, Heimdal Dryad, The Abyssal Plain ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r World of Pleasure, World of Pleasure & Friends Deadbody, The Requiem Jesus Piece, So Unknown Rotten Sound, Apocalypse Kruelty, Untopia ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s Blackbraid, Blackbraid I Malignant Altar, Retribution of Jealous Gods Escuela Grind, Non Serviam Strychnos, A Mother’s Curse Venomous Concept, The Good Ship Lollipop
GUEST SLAYER
---------------------------------Derrick Vella : t o m b m o l d / d r e a m u n e n d i n g / o u t e r h e av e n Veldune, Veldune Innumerable Forms, Philosophical Collapse The Gathering, How to Measure a Planet? Bruce Cockburn, Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws Michael Manring, The Book of Flame