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

Seattle-based doom lords To End It All are back with a new album, Of Blood and Memory out tomorrow (April 19), but you can hear it and get super sad with us first. About the new record, the band say: “Here we illuminate sorrow, grief, loss, and how losing one integral to our sense of place in the world expels us from the houses of confidence, confuses the mind, propels our hearts through places of knives, anger, nostalgia, fondness, flagellation, acute pain, smoldering anxiety, sunken affect, tension, blankness, bliss, relief, in no predictable or necessary order. “Rituals and traditions canno ..read more

Anyone who knows me knows that I fucking love Oslo’s “True Norwegian Melodic Grindcore” kings Beaten to Death. This is mostly because their grindcore is the most non-grindcore grindcore that’s ever been thrown at the public the same way monkeys throw their shit at gawking zoo patrons; you don’t really know if they’re being playful, desperately seeking attention, if they’re super-pissed or a combination of all of the above. This is a band that employs barely-distorted guitars, discordant/diminished noise/indie rock chord structures, a straight-edge drummer whose nickname is ‘Bartender’ and a wi ..read more

Brooklyn-based queer and femme folk metalers Zelenaya are announcing their new album, Folk Songs, out April 26, and are beyond stoked to unleash the third single from that record, “Spod Tego Jawora,” with us. Folk Songs is the band’s debut album. When listening to Zelenya, expect haunting Eastern European influence, sludge, doom, even death metal. This is something you might expect to come out of Europe rather than Brooklyn, and that makes it all the more exciting and compelling. Spod Tego Jawora by Zelenaya “Spod Tego Jawora” translates to”Under This Sycamore Tree” in Polish, and it’s heavy a ..read more

With a decade of sharpening their unique musical attack, Nuclear Tomb is ready to riot with riffs and explode like a Molotov, proving that the spirit of metal thrives underground. After two self-released EPs and a series of electrifying East Coast tours, the Baltimore quartet is poised to ascend to new heights with Terror Labyrinthian, to be unleashed by Everlasting Spew Records. Since its inception in 2011, the band has been a beacon of defiance in the face of musical conformity. It draws from a diverse pool of influences spanning classic metal to noisy punk experimentation. Th ..read more

Prepare for a harrowing descent into the death metal abyss with Uttertomb as Pulverised Records proudly unveils their debut full-length Nebulas Of Self-Desecration. With a sound as murky as it is menacing, strap in for eight tracks of defilement that beckon vile resonance. Formed in 2009, Uttertomb has coined their style as “Necrological Death Metal,” drawing influence from bands like Autopsy, Obituary, Grief, and Anatomia. Comprised of members from esteemed acts such as Death Vomit, Violent Scum, and Negative Or Nothing, these Chileans bring a wealth of experience to their infernal sound ..read more

Where they from? Dayton, Ohio. This week is The Masters, which means that ESPN is supplementing all its daytime coverage with fucking golf. Do they not realize what this has done to the under-employed demographic that make up their daytime viewers? I would rather watch Pat McAfee bloviate for two hours and trust me, I FUCKING HATE THAT GUY. Why the hype? Let’s just get this out of the way: This band’s name is Scrotal Erosion. If that is a dealbreaker, I understand but when you write about grindcore sometimes you just have to put your big boy pants on and accept a stupid band name, because some ..read more

Very much living up to its name, 2022 debut Loud Arriver from Philadelphia sensual dark rockers Sonja turned heads at Decibel, who placed the album at a staggering No. 3 on our objectively objective Top 40 Albums of the Year list. Equally impressed were Century Media Records, who are proud to announce the addition of the trio to their roster—or as vocalist/guitarist Melissa Moore puts it: “Century Media became our new sugar daddy.” While we wait for news of their next full-length offering, fans can get a taste of what’s to come with the video for their charged new single “Discretion for the Ge ..read more