Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Preview The Decibel Magazine Tour
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…
You didn’t have to be there in ’92. You don’t have to have a Tools of the Trade tattoo beneath a Tools of the Trade longsleeve beneath the white coat at your medical internship. Shit, if you have even the most dilettantish passing fancy for death metal, you’d better be at the third annual Decibel Magazine Tour. Carcass headlines (duh), and various vintages of the genre are represented by the Black Dahlia Murder, Gorguts and Noisem (the latter venturing the closest to pure thrash). Our own personal Big Four are spotlighted on the April cover, amusingly wielding… OK, so, Tyler Carnes from Noisem has choked up a little too high on that seven-string to wield it effectively as a bat. Not sure what he’s going for there. Jeff Walker and Trevor Strnad look sufficiently ironically menacing with the respective torch and sledgehammer. Luc Lemay: slightly less intimidating with the rosary, but points for self-reference [LINK: ]. Anyway, quite the rogues’ gallery. I don’t know how they’d fare against Brick Tamland’s trident, but I wouldn’t bet against them.
Getting all these people in one place was nuts, as you might imagine. Editor in Chief Albert Mudrian says, “We flew Jeff in Friday night from Liverpool to New York. He got up, did the shoot with Luc—who drove down from Canada the day before—and Trevor and Tyler, who were playing Brooklyn that night, and then flew back to Liverpool early that same evening.” Even though the interview obviously wasn’t conducted that day, it would’ve explained the first thing Walker tells J. Bennett in our piece: “I’m depressed. America is tough for touring nowadays.” FUCK YES, LET’S DO THIS THING!
Don’t worry: The Carcass mainman—who reanimated his legendary band last year via the outstanding Surgical Steel—has a surfeit of alternately self-deprecating, hilarious, bitchy and acerbic observations about the tour and his tourmates. And the BDM, Gorguts and Noisem leaders reciprocate in kind. Learn all about this staggering lineup—and all the killer regional openers—in the April issue, available here now.
The April 2014 issue of Decibel also features At the Gates, Twilight, and Gridlink, and can be purchased here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an issue?
