Fear, Emptiness, Decibel: The Noise Issue Screams in Your Ear

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 totally understandable when great bands lose their fastball. Especially when they emerge out of a long hibernation. How could you possibly keep your shit fresh when you’ve willfully opted for stagnancy and stasis over growth and evolution?

And yet how many times has that trend been bucked in the last 12 months alone? After decade-plus hiatuses, Carcass and Gorguts returned at the top of their games. It’s almost not fair—especially for their hundreds of imitators. And the embarrassment of riches continues. With their first album since 2001, Godflesh have also made the improbable look routine. In turn, the world exclusive first look at A World Lit Only by Fire is the centerpiece of our special Noise issue this August.

“Noise.” That’s a nebulous term, we know. Way more so than death metal, doom or grindcore, all things we can all pretty well empirically define. But as the editor-in-chief says early in the magazine, what we’re trying to accomplish is “[acknowledge] the fact that the seemingly formless noisescapes of Merzbow were creative cousins with the rigidly structured delivery of the Austerity Program, or arguing that the blasting rhythms of Melt-Banana are directly related to the angular riffs populating At Action Park.

So yeah, in addition to explaining just why it took thirteen years for Godflesh to thaw out and maintain ruling, we’ve got a Hall of Fame on Melvins’ Stoner Witch, an authoritative history of the “Japanoise” movement, and pieces on the Austerity Program, Prurient, Bastard Noise, KEN Mode and Pharmakon. Let’s hear it for the noise? In the Decibel webstore now.

Sure, you could JUST get the August 2014 issue of Decibel… but if you don’t just get a full subscription,Justin Broadrick will scream in your ear ’til you’ve got tinnitus!