Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Presenting The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers: An All-Excess Pass to Brewing’s Outer Limits
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…
We pretty much run six columns every month in Decibel (not counting sidebars in the reviews section or recurring short features with rotating authors). Three of them are penned by musician celebs (Kevin Sharp, Richard Christy, John Darnielle), our longest-running is penned by a musician quasi-celeb (J. Bennett), and our most recent industry-oriented column, Killing Is My Business, is written with comparable authority by Etan Rosenbloom.
If you can count—and you’re reading MetalSucks, so I know you can—that comes out to five. We saved Adem Tepedelen for last because we’re so fucking proud of him right now. Back in 2009—the year that brought you our last “dubious” cover, Summer’s Laughter—Adem pitched us a simple idea: a monthly column about extreme beer. Slam dunk. When you hit a show, you hit the bar before you hit the pit. But Adem wanted to talk about the very best beers, drawing creative parallels to their sonic counterparts. (This man thinks of Coors Light as the Attack Attack of adult beverages). Brewtal Truth was born, and quickly became one of Decibel’s most popular columns.
So, why are we so proud? Adem has turned that unique, insightful pursuit into a book: The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers: An All-Access Pass to Brewing’s Outer Limits. And no, it’s not a compendium of preexisting columns with flimsy “bonus content.” Quite the contrary. In addition to focusing on some of the most interesting and hardcore beers in the world, The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers profiles craft-beer-loving metal musicians (Scott Hull, Jean-Paul Gaster, Brann Dailor, etc.) and extreme craft brewers alike. Adem says it best: “My own tastes have always run toward the extreme—be it music or craft beer—and I have found a lot of like-minded people in both worlds.” Blow your friends’ minds—and livers—and check this monster out.
