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4 days ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
Dutch thrashers Mass Deception are taking us to the fabled crossroads in their new video and single, “Selling Souls! Buying Lies!,” which is pretty much exactly what you might imagine. Except it’s not, apparently. Nope, Satan doesn’t seem to be the bad guy here, unless the devil has taken on a very different physical form and resembles a robed alien.
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1 week ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
Grab an earful of the bewitching debut, Sorrows, from Scottish gothic doom outfit, Cwfen (pronounced “coven”). This female-fronted quartet—Agnes Alder (vocals/rhythm guitar), Guy DeNuit (lead guitar/backing vocals), Rös Ranquinn (drums), Mary Thomas Baker (bass)—has mined the sorrowful gloom of Type O Negative and swirled it together with some post-metal spaciousness and classic UK doom. Sorrows is at turns rage-filled, hypnotic and eternally dark. There’s a lot happening in a mere 10 tracks.
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1 week ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
To mark the first release on vinyl of Irish black metalers Horrenda‘s second full length, Díoltas, we’re streaming in full this blistering experimental black metal assault, and letting the band take us through a track-by-track discussion of the reissue.
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1 week ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
We’re going deep into the Peruvian metal underground to offer up a full stream from instrumental stoner-psych-doom trio, El Jefazo. Their fuzzed-out, down-tuned third album, Colision Brutal, is six tracks of experimental sludge with a definite psychedelic bent. Songs are peppered with sampled dialog and the guitars are fed through head-spinning effects, covering perfectly for the lack of vocals. There’s so much going on here, you never miss them.
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2 weeks ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
No tariffs have so far been levied against psyched-out Mexican stoner doom, so it continues to flow across the border into the U.S. unfettered. The latest import is a full-length debut, Demiurgo, from instrumental trio, Veljet, who rumble through eight fuzzed-out, sludgy head trips in a tight 45 minutes.
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2 weeks ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
A couple of brothers with different last names—Aidan Edward Escalante (vocals/guitars) and Andrew Salazar (bass/backing vocals)—are the brainchildren behind new San Antonio outfit, Donella Drive, whose single, “Mindless Embryonic,” we’re premiering today. Over the course of seven minutes they take quite a musical journey (a la At the Drive-In) through post-rock mellowness, post-hardcore angst, a bit of groovy doom and some 90s alt rock passion, with strong, clear vocals leading the way.
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3 weeks ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
While this Decibel writer has never made a secret of the fact that he believes Sleep’s Dopesmoker is the unfortunate result of too much weed (yes, that’s a thing) and not enough editing, we get the sense that High ’n Heavy guitarist, John Steele, the mastermind behind Grave Speaker, may disagree with that opinion. His sophomore solo album, Rays of the Emerald Sun, feels like an extended love letter to pot (do the kids still call it that?), from the color palette to the . . . well, everything.
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3 weeks ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
Florida power/trad metal outfit Helms Deep had us at “bassist John Gallagher.” Apologies to the other members, who all appear to be quite solid, but if Raven vocalist/bassist Gallagher is involved, we’re already there. And, yeah, “Chasing the Dragon” doesn’t disappoint. Helms Deep is actually the project of guitarist/vocalist Alex Sciortino, who formed the band a few years back.
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1 month ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
Florida noise combo Meatwound are not here to make friends, they are here to clobber you. And on album number four, Macho, they do that effectively and repeatedly over ten new tracks. These dudes—Ari Barros (guitar), Mariano Iglesias (bass/programming), Dimitri Stoyanov (drums), Daniel Wallace (vocals)—sound like Killing Joke fed through a meat grinder.
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1 month ago | 
decibelmagazine.com | Adem Tepedelen
Sometimes it takes a while to get from point A to point B in the rock world. Swedish trio Bacon Wagon got their start in 2003, released some singles and splits and here we are 22 years later premiering a track, “I-Beam,” from their debut full-length album, Trauma Cake.
