You would be correct if you thought you’d been seeing a lot about Exhumed lately. First, the band is celebrating the 25th anniversary of their debut Gore Metal with a national spring tour. Second, Gore Metal was just inducted into Decibel‘s vaunted Hall of Fame. Finally, the band just finished work on a three-part documentary on the band’s history that will premiere on Exhumed’s YouTube channel on April 28. The documentary is also available for DVD or VHS (!) preordering via Exhumed’s webstore. Fans in the Bay Area can see Decayed Decades and meet the band and filmmakers (Andrew Corson and Avi ..read more

Postmortem Procedures The Making of Exhumed’s Gore Metal In 1998, there was some thrilling, forward-thinking game-changing happening in extreme underground metal. The Dillinger Escape Plan were storming the scene, making us rethink what was humanly possible on instruments, Nile were animating death metal’s mummified corpse and Nasum were blasting excitement back into grindcore. Then there was Exhumed. The California-based goregrind/death metal outfit was on Relapse, the same label as the aforementioned trailblazers, but I distinctly recall getting promotional material for Gore Metal when it ca ..read more

“You guys are nerds, are you?” What followed was a tension-shattering bout of laughter from your eager co-columnists, already halfway through our most star-struck interview to date. It was our guest who less threw out a jab and more stated the obvious after disappointingly learning that Kill Screen was incapable of carrying much of a conversation about his love of basketball save for a few distant childhood memories of NBA Jam. “There’s nothing wrong with that!” he reassured us as we took in the moment, but best believe that when the legendary John Carpenter calls us nerds, we wear that with p ..read more

Hailing from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Exhumation emerges once more with their fourth full-length album, Master’s Personae. Since their inception in 2008, the band has garnered attention for their unique blend of atmospheric solace and death metal aggression. Master’s Personae encapsulates the essence of Exhumation’s sound, weaving a tapestry of darkness and brutality that is both captivating and intense. From the opening track to the closing crescendo, the album immerses listeners in a world of sonic debauchery, where every riff and growl is infused with raw emotion and energy. The alb ..read more

With a band name like Tombstoner, one would normally expect to hear sluggish Sabbath or Sleep worship. Fortunately, Tombstoner are the exact opposite of that. The New York death metal unit hail from Staten Island are straight-up killers, blending their riff-centric death metal with strains of grindcore and thrash for a groovy, fast-paced time. Their second album, Rot Stink Rip, comes three years after their debut and sees the band tighten up their writing while upping the intensity factor. The influence from Power Trip and Pig Destroyer is immediately felt on Rot Stink Rip ..read more

Where they from? Pilsen, Czechia. The NHL playoffs are here and my team is in it. What this means is that for the next few weeks I will have to explain to various people in my life that I can’t hang out on a random Tuesday night in May because I have to watch a bunch of grown men on ice skates run up and down in an igloo for three hours while screaming “SHOOT THE FUCKING PUCK!” as loud as I can. And what is my reward for doing this? Well if my team wins, I get to do it for another three weeks. Why the hype? LilixElbe, angular powerviolence from Pilsen. Got a good ring to it, right? It’s really ..read more

Here at Decibel, we’re down with pretty much anything drummer Dirk Verbeuren (Megadeth, Cadaver, ex-Soilwork) is down with. That goes double for Savage Lands, his eco-friendly band with guitarist Sylvain Demercastel. Functioning as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, Savage Lands uses money from music royalties, as well as donations and other fundraising sources, to build sanctuaries and support preservation efforts in Costa Rica. As such, it’s only natural that for their new song and video “Black Rock Heart,” Savage Lands joined forces with Heilung vocalist Kai Uwe Faust and singer Chloé Trujillo ..read more

Greetings, Decibel readers! There’s something beautiful about how upsetting extreme metal is. You’re not going to make people cheery with the albums below. You can’t put any of the song titles on a pillow at TJ Maxx. Well, maybe you could. And I’d buy that pillow. But I’m not most people. And neither are you, and that’s why you’re here. Enjoy! — Antichrist Siege Machine – Vengeance of Eternal Fire Oppressive, ferocious warlike power and hatred. This is what you go for when you want pure violence and malevolence mainlined into your soul. Not for the faint, or even sturdy, of heart. Stream: Appl ..read more

London death dealers Vaticinal Rites got together in 2020 and wasted no time in hitting the ground running, blasting out their self-titled EP a year later. Keeping the momentum going, the band quickly got to work on their debut LP, Cascading Memories of Immortality. The first track, “Plead for Termination,” gave listeners the first taste of the new record and now Decibel has the second taste in the form of “Foiled Skirmish.” Staying true to Vaticinal Rites’ influences of Morbid Angel, Monstrosity and Vital Remains, “Foiled Skirmish” is an old-school-styled song that bl ..read more

LanzerRath have a killer split with Shroud of Despondency coming out May 10 via Northern Spire Productions. You can stream LanzerRath’s weird and epic contribution “Nuclear Collapse: The Dissolution of Order and Meaning” below. Shroud of Despondency/LanzerRath Split by LanzerRath “LanzerRath have spent the last year coalescing with the raging cosmos,” the band say. “These dialogues with the stars have brought us into new unexpected territories of black metal misadventure.  Now we are proud to present to you our new opus, a mere blink of an eye for our meaningless existence!” In 2018, foun ..read more