FEAR, EMPTINESS, DECIBEL: NUCLEAR DEATH ENTER THE HALL OF FAME!
Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…
I would imagine the qualities that make a good Decibel Hall of Fame are: a) we picked a universally beloved album that everybody was clamoring to read about, and b) the participants offered heretofore untold, stirring insight into the process of creating it. Which is fine and dandy, but the cherry on top is when the band clearly can’t fucking stand one another. I don’t know if that’s reciprocal for all three members of Nuclear Death—who we had to corral pretty last-minute for their take on 1990’s Bride of Insect—but bassist/vocalist Lori Bravo sure doesn’t seem to be stoked on guitarist Phil Hampson and drummer Joel Whitfield.
Now, as you can no doubt surmise, an oral history isn’t a compendium of cold, hard facts. The way we use it, it’s a compare-and-contrast exercise to concisely summarize peers’ shared histories, and that history often extends 20 or 30 years back. Not everybody keeps in touch just because they worked on a record when they were teenagers that shut-in weirdos like us are psycho for in 2012. And if some of them were dating at the time (as in this case), well, all bets are off. So, there’s a lot to read—and read into—in this particular Hall of Fame. We devoted a lot of this issue to women’s struggles to gain equal footing in every facet of metal, onstage and off, and Bravo provides a compelling microcosm of the experience. Hampson and Whitfield may be at home vehemently disagreeing with her take, they may be nodding their heads regretfully, or they may be somewhere in between. Wherever the truth lies, we the nominally objective third-party readers are, as always, the real beneficiaries. Details within—interpret away.
-AB
The August 2012 issue of Decibel also features Kylesa, Cretin, Royal Thunder, and an awesome Electric Wizard flexi disc, and can be ordered here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?
