Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: The August Issue Will Not be Refused

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…

It’s not every month that we bring you a cover featuring a man in a bowler hat smiling and pointing a gun at himself. You’re welcome for… I don’t know, some weird bullshit that I’m clearly too dumb to explain. It’s far and away the most brutal element of August’s ad-spoofing Refused cover (the dude next to him is holding toothpaste, for Christ’s sake) and a completely different level of what-the-fuckery than our usual copiously-bearded-man-hoisting-axe approach. Although, again, I can’t even begin to deconstruct what drummer David Sandstrom was going for over there on the right. So, uh, let’s move onto the actual story! It’s pretty great!

Our trusty staffer Justin Norton does a nice job of employing quotes from Mike Judge’s Idiocracy (a band favorite) to track the world’s aggressive descent into even greater stupidity in Refused’s absence between 1998’s The Shape of Punk to Come and long-awaited comeback Freedom. Shape of Punk foretold a lot of permutations in the extreme underground, but surprisingly wasn’t on the quartet’s minds (thematically or musically) when they began assembling new songs. Instead, the band was inspired by discussing some of the bigger concepts underpinning Idiocracy. As frontman Dennis Lyxzen says, “When you boil it down, the lyrics are all connected in attempt to show how bankrupt the idea of western civilization is and how bankrupt capitalism is. We force ourselves to become people we aren’t happy being. But there is a huge difference from the ’90s. In the ’90s, we thought we were on hallowed ground—that we were the enlightened ones. And we pointed the finger at everyone and said fuck you. But as you get older and travel the world, you also have to take responsibility for what’s wrong.”

It’s a lot to chew on, and if you favor gristle that doesn’t go down easy, check out Cattle Decapitation’s Flexi Series premiere, a Hall of Fame on proto-death metal Canadian crew Slaughter’s Strappado, and the latest on High on Fire, Ken Mode, Failure, Lamb of God and Charred Walls of the Damned, all in the August issue.