ERIC WAGNER
1959 2021
MINISTRY NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH
FULL OF HELL DYING TO SOW THEIR SEEDS
REFUSE/RESIST
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NOVEMBER 2021 // No. 205
Health Awaits
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November 2021 [R 205] decibelmagazine.com
60
Among the Living COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY HRISTO SHINDOV
upfront 8 obituary:
eric wagner Godspeed to a titan of doom
10 metal muthas Behind every frozen heart is a cold mother 12 news: postmortem I wonder if Kourtney shops there 14 live review:
psycho las vegas 2021 Decibel avoids COVID but can’t escape other self-harm at Psycho Las Vegas 2021
16 low culture Old man yells at cloud 17 no corporate beer Bury me in beer
features
reviews
40 mono Soul survivors
73 lead review Archspire cook up another course of prime cut tech death with Bleed the Future
20 inferi Certainly not a stabwound in the dark
30 dream unending Modern extreme metal’s dream team
22 the silver A kick from a rose
32 lamp of murmuur Sex and violence
42 churchburn Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s the hurry?
24 drott Lord of the cello
34 bastarður Love lost
44 full of hell Burning from the inside
26 snafu Waiting to die
36 mortiferum Beautiful decay
28 rivers of nihil Seasonal progression
38 helheim The vikings are housebound
46 q&a: ministry Al Jourgensen has a new set of teeth and a lot to chew on 50 the decibel
hall of fame We invite you for a laugh on Satan’s trampoline as we finally induct Lawnmower Deth’s debut LP into our hallowed Hall
74 album reviews Releases from bands that remember when Gary Holt hated the Kardashians well before Chris Barnes, including Cradle of Filth, Lucifer and the Melvins 88 damage ink Always hustling
18 in the studio:
eucharist
The new black
Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. © 2021 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. 2 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL
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REFUSE/RESIST
November 2021 [T205]
10)
9)
8)
7)
6)
5)
So no one has to watch another “all-star” metal band Zoom cover of a Thin Lizzy song because concerts are shut down again. You’ll have yet another competitive advantage over Kirk Cousins and Carson Wentz. So, instead of the usual reasons of being Nazis, misogynists or homophobes, I don’t have to learn that more artists that I once respected are anti-vax dipshits.
PUBLISHER
Alex Mulcahy
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Albert Mudrian
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ART DIRECTOR
Aaron Salsbury aaron@decibelmagazine.com
Michael Wohlberg
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COPY EDITOR
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Tim Mulcahy
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CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph
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Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR
Albert Mudrian
DECIBEL WEB AD SALES
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By this time next year, you’ll be really tired of only attending Madball, Chelsea Grin and Eric Clapton shows. I won’t have a legitimate excuse to get the fuck away from you at a show when you inevitably punish me about why some record hasn’t been inducted into the Hall of Fame.
You can safely help Wino redirect the Jewish space lasers out of California.
4)
Deworming can then be a “personal choice” for you.
3)
You can return to thinking VAERS is just a shitty nü-metalcore band.
2)
You can finally stop “doing the research” and spend more time on uncovering the Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring controlling our politics and media.
1)
See page 8 of this issue.
Vince Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Louise Brown Chris Chantler Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner John Darnielle Chris Dick Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Jonathan Horsley Courtney Iseman Neill Jameson Sarah Kitteringham Daniel Lake Andrew Lee Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Andy O'Connor Dutch Pearce Fred Pessaro Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Joseph Schafer Rod Smith Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky Bradley Zorgdrager CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
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Jason Blake Ester Segarra Hristo Shindov Josh Sisk Gene Smirnov Levan TK Hannah Verbeuren Frank White
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I am exhausted. Tired of the willful ignorance, the craven selfishness and general fucking stupidity that has dominated the pandemic discourse over the last several months. Too weary to write another heavy-handed piece about why getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the simple, responsible course to protecting yourself and everyone around you, because 1) who the fuck wants to read that, and 2) I’m not naïve enough to believe it would change the mind of any “free-thinkers.” So, instead, for “fun,” I present the Top 10 Reasons to Get Vaccinated.
READER OF THE
MONTH Exodus are on the cover of this issue. With Slayer out of the picture, do you move Exodus into the “Big Four” of thrash?
Well, considering I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Exodus is probably my favorite band, I say, without a doubt. Bonded by Blood is the blueprint for thrash—period.
I don’t care how much of a die-hard you are; you’re gonna miss stuff, and that is where you guys come in.
Andy Ford
Los Angeles, CA Our admittedly spotty records indicate that you’ve been an active subscriber for 15 years. That’s over 180 issues! Aren’t you sick of us yet?
Has it been that long? No, I’m not sick of you guys! In fact, I look forward to each issue because I don’t care how much of a die-hard you are; you’re gonna miss stuff, and that is where you guys come in. It’s like having my own research team and, as you say, having been with you guys forever, I know I can trust you.
6 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL
You’re a metal DJ in Los Angeles. Tell us how you got into that format and how our readers can hear you spin music.
Decibel returns to downtown Los Angeles for the first time since 2018 with our Metal & Beer Fest in December. You coming or what?
I was offered an internship at KNAC.com; having spent time in the Navy and running heavy equipment previously, it seemed like an opportunity to do something I really loved, as opposed to just earning a paycheck. I now run my own station called Razor Radio, which you can listen to at www.razorradio.com.
I was at the two previous West Coast Metal & Beer fests; I am 99.9% certain that I will be at this year’s. I tell you, one thing that pissed me off during this whole pandemic mess was that I was ready to hit up the East Coast version [in Philadelphia in late September] and COVID fucked that all up! Hopefully someday I will make it back east for that.
Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novels Black Metal, Vol. 1, 2 and 3 For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com
OBITUARIES
ERIC
WAGNER 1 9 5 9 - 2 0 21 inspired and moved audiences around the world. His first and most important band, Trouble, played heavy metal rooted in the Birmingham soil tilled by Geezer, Tony, Ozzy and Bill, but were from the very beginning determined to build something new atop that ground—something heavier, something grander. Their 1984 debut, Psalm 9, hit the metal underground like a comet; people named bands after songs on it, and some of those people went on to carry the inspiration forward into new and vital directions. Wagner left Trouble twice and returned twice; his other bands, Lid, Blackfinger and the Skull, pursued rewarding quests into further possibilities of doom, by turns psychedelic, epic and profound. ¶ Wagner’s dead now. He refused to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, so he got sick and he died. He was 62. It’s hard to know who else he might have infected before he went, but it’s almost certainly a non-zero number; he was on tour when he tested positive. The audience that felt Trouble’s music hit the speed-obsessed metal world of 1984 like a slow-motion meteorite are all now in his age bracket: a little older, or a little younger, but getting on in years. It’s good to be alive. It’s good to be around to hear elder statesmen like Wagner still making great music, still reaching into the bowels of the cosmos and grabbing hold of the sludgy, gooey entrails. Still celebrating, interrogating and affirming life’s infinite complexities as only doom metal can. Still doing it. But Eric Wagner won’t be doing it anymore, because he had to have his own fucking opinion about a matter of settled science—namely the efficacy of vaccines against viral spread. His death is pointless and deprives the metal world 8 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL
of one of its most distinctive, restless voices. The music that the Skull had been making offers ample, immediate proof that he had more to share, more to give, new hills to climb. Instead, he died on the hill of vaccine denial, one of the
a musical legacy that metal listeners will be mining for years to come; Trouble is one of those bands that just get better the more you listen to them, and this tends to hold true with Wagner’s post-Trouble bands, too. Some bands are content to make records that splash loudly when they hit the water and then sink, but Wagner, openly Christian, sought out gestures that would resonate in sound, to reverberate for years past their first hearing. I’m a Christian, too. It’s incumbent on me, therefore, to forgive one of metal’s true luminaries for going out like a punk. Do I trust that he’s safe in the arms of God now? I do. Am I angry at what mindless go-your-own-way thinking has done and is doing during this pandemic? At a man who leaves five children and seven grandchildren without a father and grandfather? I am. It’s important to stand up for your beliefs sometimes, and other times it’s important to listen to people who know better than you about what the prudent course of action is. Eric Wagner, whose music shaped the direction of metal in the 1980s and going forward, and whose work will endure, put the former before the latter. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 reads: Test all things; hold fast what is good. What’s good is to be alive and making music. May he rest in peace. —JOHN DARNIELLE
PHOTO BY ALYSSA HERRMAN
FOR
37 years, Eric Wagner sang in bands whose music provoked, most moronic hills on Earth. He leaves behind
NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while successfully avoiding every Black Album cover released last month.
Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell
This Month's Mutha: Daciana Bârladeanu Mutha of Vlad the Inhaler of Persekutor
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Daciana Bârladeanu. I am workings for many years in hair salon that is also selling pork chops and loose cigarettes. Sometimes hair salon is having cock fights in back room, but not today. Your son is impressively adept at speaking English. How instrumental were you in teaching him to be bilingual?
He is translatings this interview for me now, so I am teachings him nothings about English… but everythings about how to looks good at all times! How proud were you when his first professional review was a perfect 10 in this magazine?
Well, he is tellings me about this but too bad album is never comings out. Many criminals is takings advantage of musician for moneys and sex favors. Lucky for Vladislav this situations is just moneys. As far as I am knowings.
and Van Halen, or were those records unavailable in his childhood?
I am listenings to Zamfir, Master of Pan Flute only backs in those days. He was handsome devil who is having his ways with all the babushkas. As flute player, he is likings to see how they can blow! Not me though, I am givings him slappings of face and also testicles when he is tryings to get handsome with me at concert in Timisoara. What was it like raising Vlad during the end of communism in Romania?
Romania is only country of Soviet Bloc where communism is endings with violence. We is endurings much but dictator dogs Ceausescus is payings with blood. After this, lifes is gettings better slowly but Vladislav is always more concernings with Scorpions tapes and Levi’s pantaloons and trying to make sexy time with girls at bus stop. Do you share your son’s affection for meth?
Vlad is influenced by a lot of classic heavy metal. Did you introduce him to the likes of Thin Lizzy 10 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL
You mean fairy dust? Real men smokes Krokodil. —ANDREW BONAZELLI
Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f Trouble, Manic Frustration Trouble, Trouble (1990) Stormkeep, Tales of Othertime Apparition, Feel Catherine Wheel, Chrome ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e Gorilla Biscuits, Start Today Strife, Witness a Rebirth Sepultura, Arise Brandy, The Gift of Repetition Knowso, Specialtronics/Green Vision ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s Suffocation, Effigy of the Forgotten Sentenced, Rotting Ways to Misery demo Omnium Gatherum, Spirits and August Light Anata, Under a Stone with No Inscription Gehennah, Too Loud to Live, Too Drunk to Die ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r Every Time I Die, Radical The Red Chord, Clients Perilaxe Occlusion, Raytraces of Death Imperial Slaughter, ...Vile Slobs Ghost Bath, Self Loather ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s Neil Perry, Lineage Situation Jerome’s Dream, Completed 1997-2001 A Trillion Barnacle Lapse, Selective Memory Joshua Fit for Battle, To Bring Our Own End Saetia, Collected
GUEST SLAYER
---------------------------------John Cooke : c o r r u p t m o r a l a lta r / n a pa l m d e at h
Cloud Rat, “Mother You Get/ Glitter Belly” Pig Destroyer, Pornographers of Sound: Live in NYC Spazz, Crush Kill Destroy Killing Joke, Pylon Tobacco, Fucked Up Friends of Presence