DECIBEL MAGAZINE: ISSUE #109

G’morning, brainiacs. After a brief shipping delay due to damaged Godflesh Flexi-disks, issue #109 of Decibel Magazine is out on shelves. It’s another great chapter, with an entertaining Call & Response column with Ghoul’s Digestor as well as features covering Skeletonwitch, Doomriders (whose new album I review), and Morbid Angel. Here are the pieces I wrote for the magazine this time around:

Page 26: Ulcerate - Vermis profile. I exchanged e-mails with Jamie Saint Merat, founding drummer of New Zealand’s extreme metal conquerors Ulcerate. We discussed tyranny, Latin translations, and how his geographic isolation has impacted their music. Although it didn’t make the profile, he was also refreshingly honest about how their band name doesn’t seem to capture the sound they’ve developed since their high school days of gore metal.

Page 86: Blood Red Throne - Blood Red Throne review. I really enjoyed this Norwegian death metal album, even if the score seems unspectacular. It was a lot of fun, leading me to quip about Richard Simmons and my childhood dream of being a seven-foot tall baseball player. I recommend this album to those who embrace the less technical side of death metal and don’t mind flashes of metalcore. I gave it 7/10.

Page 88: Doomriders - Grand Blood review. I dig these guys from Beantown, and proudly wear one of their shirts often (let’s face it, their Grim Reaper “D” logo can brawl with anyone else’s logo and win a heavyweight belt). I handed this review to Decibel a week before seeing them play with Red Fang, and after hearing the songs performed live I likely would have changed this score to an 8. That’s not entirely fair, since the album should stand on its own --which it solidly does-- but sometimes songs don’t make as much sense until you see them screamed in person, or accompanied by the synchronized headbanging of a front-row of Brooklynites. I also gave this 7/10.

I have three more pieces in next month’s issue, so more on that in a few weeks. This ssue should be on shelves now if you’re still one of those weirdos who ventures into the world and stores and stuff to buy things. Just order stuff online like the rest of us Morlocks.

Go over here to subscribe to Decibel Magazine. At $29.95 for a whole year this is one of the biggest bargains out there. The writing staff is fantastic, the editors are awesome, and the design is sleek and filled with trippy illustrations. Definitely worth your money:  http://store.decibelmagazine.com/collections/subscriptions-renewals

REVIEW: OXXEN - S/T EP

Oxxen, a Tennessean doom/sludge trio, sounds like the Chattanooga Choo Choo has derailed at the stroke of midnight and plowed through forests filled with man-eating black bears and haunted oak trees, leaving behind a wreckage of splintered wooden limbs, bones, and fur. While the band’s name reminds me of ill-fated computer expeditions along the Oregon Trail (I always had at least two oxen drown when I chose to ford a river), the music evokes everything from the hardest-partying stoner rock to the murkiest grunge in Seattle’s days of pre-exploitation.

Their self-titled EP kicks off with “This Shit Ain’t Exactly Thunderdome.” This shit is, however, heavy enough to give Tony Iommi a boner from a continent away. When the distortion hits it can collapse weak hearts, and there’s a punk energy in this music that spits blood and teeth into the crowd. When the songs reach mid-to-uptempo they feel like they’d be right at home playing with Black Tusk, Red Fang, or Orange Goblin. (Editor’s note: Just checked the band’s gig history and it looks like they have played, or will play, with Black Tusk. Solid.)

“Stoic Men Under Ancient Lord” swaggers with reckless grunge intensity, taking the heaviest moments of Nirvana’s Bleach and the Melvins’ Houdini and dressing them up with armor and a battle axe. It features Bill Robinson's best lead guitar work on the album, whose voice sounds how I’d imagine Kurt Cobain would sound if he was still alive. The same hoarse shout, tone deepened from years of drinking cocaine and snorting whiskey, only occasionally concerned with weak shit like pitch and melody.

Oxxen close with the album’s highlight, the 10+ minute “Riddle of Steel.” This song revs its engines as loudly as the best biker metal out there before slowing to a Cathedral crawl until the seventh minute, where they return to the punk riffing and gruff aggression that propelled the EP’s opener. Oxxen’s roots may reach into traditional doom and the spirit of Sabbath and Pentagram, but there is a fist-pumping, binge-drinking sense of immediacy and toughness to this release that gives me the hunch these dudes are a totally killer live band. Just because you can flatten a forest with your slowest riffs doesn’t mean you can’t chop the keg open with an axe and party sometimes.

This EP is currently FREE on Bandcamp, so check it out and throw them some bones if you enjoy it as much as I do:  http://oxxen.bandcamp.com/album/oxxen

And follow them on Facebook for future news on gigs and merch:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxxen