Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: Decibooks!
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 like reading. When we were young, we read for free shitty pizza. When we got older, we read for the, uh… I don’t know, being too lazy to do anything resembling physical fitness. Either way, because producing Decibel once a month doesn’t give you enough to read, we recently launched our in-house literary arm, the creatively titled Decibel Books. The flagship release is, as you know, the revised and expanded edition of our editor-in-chief’s Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. A proof showed up at the office yesterday. It has that new book smell. And unlike the original, which was useful for crushing insects, this one could legitimately break somebody’s nose (NOTE: Do not break somebody’s nose with your copy of this book). Before that herculean endeavor, we released a compendium of Hall of Fames called Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces. If you wanted to dig into that, you’re shit out of luck: It sold out this week. Will there be Part II someday? Stay tuned.
While we’ll be releasing more hardcore hardcover action in the future under the Decibel Books banner, we recently expanded our library to include limited copies of seven extreme tomes from excellent indie publisher Bazillion Points. One of which is the Spanish version of the original Choosing Death (featuring rad cover imagery from Slayer go-to artist Wes Benscoter). If you don’t habla español, check out Soul on Fire: The Life and Music of Peter Steele, an authoritative biography from our own staffer Jeff Wagner. More must-reads: Tom G. Warrior’s memoir Only Death Is Real, multiple compendiums of the classic zine Slayer Mag, Bay Area thrash photo heaven Murder in the Front Row, and the mosh-tastic NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980-1990.
While you’re perusing all that goodness, you tell us: What’s your favorite extreme metal book of all time? We’ll buy it and sell it back to you. (Just kidding.)
