FEAR, EMPTINESS, DECIBEL: LAY “WASTE” TO THIS MONTH’S COVER BAND

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…

I’ve only met Dave Witte once, at the editor-in-chief’s palatial Playboy Mansion-esque estate over the Fourth of July (all metal folk remained fully clothed, thank god). He’s a startlingly accomplished whiffle ball pitcher and an otherwise gregarious dude, which in my book is good enough to put his beret-ed mug on the March cover. More notable to you, perhaps, is his long, varied and unfuckwithable extreme music c.v., which branches furthest from the underground in the form of Municipal Waste. The party-thrash institution’s fifth album, The Fatal Feast, isn’t merely an excuse for Dave, Ryan, Phil and Tony to do a gross-out cover/interior spread—it doubles as an interstellar concept album that you really must read about to believe. It’s in the Decibel webstore now, bolstered by the pink-on-white, two-track Torche flexi disc of your dreams.

In other news, as you’re by now well aware, we’ve corralled four bands who are big fans of beer-buzzed suburban backyard whiffle ball games—Behemoth, Watain, the Devil’s Blood and In Solitude—for our inaugural Decibel Magazine Tour, starting in April. Well, dates and ticket info have finally been released, with all sorts of insane deals that are selling out already. Pig out here while there’s still time.