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Track Premiere: Mayan Bull (ft. members of Trappist & Despise You) “Kid Cleveland”

It’s not often that a band forms after being offered an opportunity to write music for a film, but that’s exactly what happened with L.A.’s Mayan Bull. Back in 2011, drummer/keyboardist Phil Vera (Trappist, Despise You), guitarist Kurk Stevens and bassist Chris Walters were approached by director Todd Hickey to write a song for the soundtrack of Takedowns and Falls, his documentary about high-school wrestling in Pennsylvania. The trio recorded 10-minute instrumental “A Dangerous Gun” in Vera’s living room with producer Paul Fig (Alice In Chains, Deftones), and Mayan Bull was born. “We had so much fun recording the song that we kept practicing and came up with new songs,” Vera says.

One of those songs is “Kid Cleveland,” which we’re premiering here today. The propulsive track is all the more impressive given that instrumental music is a distinct departure for the members of Mayan Bull. Stevens plays in the noise rock band Kevarra, Walters plays shoegaze in The Slow Signal Fades and Vera plays an entirely different instrument—guitar—in L.A. powerviolence kings Despise You and Crom. “We discussed Mayan Bull as being a project that we could do for decades to come, something that isn’t pinned down to any particular genre of music but will grow over time,” Stevens says. “We want people to hear us and watch this project evolve.”

Mayan Bull by Mayan Bull

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Track Premiere: Mayan Bull (ft. members of Trappist & Despise You) “Kid Cleveland”

It’s not often that a band forms after being offered an opportunity to write music for a film, but that’s exactly what happened with L.A.’s Mayan Bull. Back in 2011, drummer/keyboardist Phil Vera (Trappist, Despise You), guitarist Kurk Stevens and bassist Chris Walters were approached by director Todd Hickey to write a song for the soundtrack of Takedowns and Falls, his documentary about high-school wrestling in Pennsylvania. The trio recorded 10-minute instrumental “A Dangerous Gun” in Vera’s living room with producer Paul Fig (Alice In Chains, Deftones), and Mayan Bull was born. “We had so much fun recording the song that we kept practicing and came up with new songs,” Vera says.

One of those songs is “Kid Cleveland,” which we’re premiering here today. The propulsive track is all the more impressive given that instrumental music is a distinct departure for the members of Mayan Bull. Stevens plays in the noise rock band Kevarra, Walters plays shoegaze in The Slow Signal Fades and Vera plays an entirely different instrument—guitar—in L.A. powerviolence kings Despise You and Crom. “We discussed Mayan Bull as being a project that we could do for decades to come, something that isn’t pinned down to any particular genre of music but will grow over time,” Stevens says. “We want people to hear us and watch this project evolve.”

Mayan Bull by Mayan Bull

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Track Premiere: 71TonMan – ‘War is Peace’

Speaker-shaking sludge is what’s on the menu today with Polish sludge purveyors 71TonMan and their new EP, War is Peace // Peace is Slavery. To spread the message that “War is Peace,” the Poles employ waves of feedback-tinged, nihilistic sludge and doom that leaves little empty space in its desolate atmosphere.

71TonMan specialize in the same scathing sludge as acts like Primitive Man, Dopethrone and Fister; melody is eschewed in favor of single-minded heaviness and noise is caked into the songs.

“The idea for the War is Peace // Peace is Slavery EP was loosely based on George Orwell’s 1984, which is gradually becoming more and more non-fictional nowadays,” 71TonMan tell Decibel. “We are on a downward spiral collision course with hell right now and these tracks are our soundtrack to what we see. Make no excuses, it is what it is and it’s all well-deserved.”

War is Peace // Peace is Slavery is set for release on July 9 via Transcending Obscurity. Pre-orders are available in Europe and the United States.

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Track Premiere: Meridian Dawn – ‘Every Time I Die’ (Children of Bodom Cover)

The death of legendary guitarist and Children of Bodom frontman Alexi Laiho late last year shook the metal scene to its core. Tributes to the late guitarist are still pouring in, including this cover of “Every Time I Die” from Finnish/Greek/American melodic death metal project Meridian Dawn.

Led by vocalist and longtime friend of Laiho, Antony Hämäläinen (ex-Nightrage and ex-Armageddon), Meridian Dawn’s tune of the Follow the Reaper tune is a fitting and faithful cover, replicating Laiho’s trademark vocal and playing styles.

“There are no words to express how important this man was in my life,” Hämäläinen tells Decibel. “No matter how small of a role I may have played in his life, he played a large one in mine. I have never met anyone else that was so humble with all of the world’s talent rumbling inside his fingertips. Here my friend is the only way I know how to pay you tribute. Sing you one last song.”

Listen to the cover of “Every Time I Die” below. Meridian Dawn’s last album, The Fever Syndrome, is available on Bandcamp.

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Track Premiere: Blue Ox – ‘Lesser Gods and the Science of Superstition’

Midwest hardcore crew Blue Ox delivered a beatdown in the form of Holy Vore, their album from last month. An ass-beating fusion of metalcore, D-beat, nasty sludge and howled vocals, Holy Vore cuts ahead of the hardcore pack because of Blue Ox’s recognizable sound. If you missed the LP when it dropped in May, here’s your chance to catch up; Decibel has an exclusive premiere of the video for “Lesser Gods and the Science of Superstition.”

The fast pace of the song keeps things moving at a fast pace, serving as the background for the video, which includes live and in-studio band performances, horror movie clips and other videos.

“This song is arguably the fastest tune we’ve ever written,” bassist/vocalist Luke Olson tells Decibel. “Once it gets going, Dan [Johnson’s] drumming never lets up and makes an honest challenge for us to stay locked up and execute it right. The video footage is a Frankenstein of in-studio pre-pro, in-studio recording, some live action and combing through hours of B-roll horror footage and live rodeo videos from way back. Lyrically, Dennis summed it up simply as ‘The best love is unrequited.’”

Check out the video for “Lesser Gods and the Science of Superstition” now and head to Bandcamp to hear the full album.

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Video Premiere: Eternal Struggle – ‘Manifesto/Point One’

Hardcore crew Eternal Struggle are in the groove for their debut album, Year of the Gun. Although it’s their first album, Year of the Gun positions Eternal Struggle as a band to be known by a larger audience. They make their beliefs known on latest single, “Manifesto/Point One,” which can be watched below.

Hailing from Israel—but, the band notes, not Zionist or in agreement with the Israeli foreign policy—Eternal Struggle write about the horrors of war and the fact that no one wins. In addition to playing major festivals and shows with international touring bands like Turnstile, Eternal Struggle have participated in benefit shows and fundraisers for police brutality, women’s rights and refugee children.

“Manifesto/Point One” is for fans of positive hardcore, as well as fans of extremely-heavy breakdowns. Watch the new video below and pre-order the album (out June 4) through Upstate Records or Demons Run Amok in Europe.

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Video Premiere: Horndal – ‘Rossen’

Horndal, Sweden is a small town in Europe but it’s eerily similar to countless ghost towns around the world. In 1979, the town’s steel mill closed shortly after the town’s saw mill suffered the same fate. The effects were clear: the small town’s population dwindled rapidly, totaling just over 1,100 people in 2010.

These events were the inspiration for sludge quartet Horndal, who take their name from the town drummer Pontus Levahn and his brother—vocalist and guitarist Henrik—grew up in. Their sophomore album Lake Drinker retells the town’s descent from industrial center to quiet ghost town, while drawing parallels to Horndal’s latest woes.

In 2017, Google bought 109 hectacres in Horndal with the intention of using the space for server and data centers. Decibel spoke to Pontus Levahn about the town Horndal’s past and present, as well as the video for the band Horndal’s latest video, “Rossen,” which can be seen below.

Lake Drinker is out now on Prosthetic.

I read about the historical events of your hometown of Horndal. Can you summarize the events for people who may not be aware?
Horndal is a really small town in Sweden. It’s a post-industrial town, so it used to have a steel mill that employed almost the entire population, so it used to be 3,000 people, something like that. In the late ’70s, they decided to close the steel mill and that was just two weeks after they closed the saw mill, which was way smaller but still an important employer in the hometown.

In three weeks, they shut down all the industries and everyone became out of work, just like that. It had a huge effect on the town and there was a lot of protest in this town. There was a lot of despair and people were desperate.

When we grew up—my brother is older than I, he was around when all this happened. I was born shortly after, so when I grew up, I grew up in a ghost town not knowing anything else. We realized when we got older, that old story and the protest surrounding it is pretty interesting and a pretty dark story fit to tell in metal music. We sort of had the idea for the band before we had the songs. Then we just started writing and it poured out of us, sort of.

Growing up, did you realize that you were in a ghost town or was that just normal for you?
I didn’t know anything else, so that was completely normal to me. Our parents, they were teachers, there were so many families that were forced to move. There were way fewer kids in their classes, so after a while they looked for work in other nearby towns. After a while, we moved, not very far but closer to the bigger city. It was then, when I lived there, that I understood. We came back and visited friends in Horndal and that was when I realized that there’s nothing here, there’s nothing left. There used to be banks and stores and hairdressers and all kinds of stuff, but it was all gone.

One thing, around the protests when they were shutting the steel mill, they were setting up this theater play. It’s a very ’70s way of protesting, but that’s what they did. Our parents were in that play. Our dad played the devil coming to Horndal to crush the steel mill and take the money and leave the community to its fate. That really inspired us as well. That whole story, it’s very political and very angry, but it’s very metal too.

There are parallels today. Google is looking to set up shop in Horndal right now and, in doing that, they want to operate in areas of nature that have been in your town forever. Are you seeing parallels to what your father experienced when the mills closed down?
Definitely. This is the biggest thing that has happened to Horndal since the closure of the steel mill. Some people are very hopeful as well; they hope that Google coming might bring some hope, but no one knows how many jobs it would actually create. It’s server hosts and it’s not like the whole town gets a job or it can grow very much. In a week or 10 days, they’re going to court and it gets decided if they can build server facilities or not. It’s been a lot of trouble on the way; they have chopped down forest there, a lot of trees, so that’s already done. The plan is to take cooling water, because they need a lot of cooling water, and they want to take it from the local lake that everyone swims in and fishes in.

It’s been a lot of suspicion about how that will affect nature and the lake. It could be very harmful so now they’re looking at other water. There’s a river a couple miles away, so it’s huge pipelines they have to dig into the ground.

To answer your question, yeah, there’s a lot of parallels, only this time they’re building something. Not everyone is so sure that it will be positive in the end.

That’s a topic that came up when Amazon was talking about building new locations. They’re promising these jobs and that they’ll be good for people, but who’s to say it will be people form that town or area? They may just bring in people with more specialized skills. There’s no guarantee it will help.
Exactly, and for Amazon, they’re building those slavery places. But Google, they’re going to build in people who know how to build a server facility and then most of it is not run locally. But it’s a double edged sword. Me, as Pontus Levahn, a human being, I love my hometown so much and I just want it to finally get to flourish. I’m super hopeful and I want this to become something good but I’m waiting to see how it will play out.And also as a songwriter and a storyteller, it has a lot of angles that are very interesting for making a new type of ghost story based on true events. It’s kind of weird but we will definitely see. I think they will get approval but I don’t know.

When you wrote this album, Lake Drinker, did you want to draw people’s attention to these stories and enact some type of change, or were you setting out to document your hometown?
It’s both. An old friend of mine, we met up when we had a small release party in Horndal for the previous record, we knew the plans were there for Google. He was talking about Rossen, which is the name of the lake they want to take the water from. He was like, “We’ll see. Hopefully it can create some jobs, but they should stay the fuck away from Rossen,” talking about the lake and it was something that was really inspiring.

Music, I think it’s a good way of getting a message across. I think we shouldn’t be so naive with—all kinds of companies, it’s not like they’re coming to save communities or people. It’s business; for Google, in Sweden we have a lot of clean energy so that’s good for them. It’s business. People should not be so naive. We should beware and if we can get critical thoughts out there, if it happens, it could become a better thing and they could definitely put pressure on the town and on the city hall and on Google itself.

I just want this to become as good as possible for Horndal, and at the same time, it’s a pretty great narrative for a dark metal album. To us, it just felt like a perfect sophomore album.

The whole story is a very metal thing or a very dark thing. Similar things happening twice makes it so much more of a story.
Horndal is a very small place, but there are Horndals all over the world. There are so many people coming from these kinds of places. It’s not a Swedish thing. Old towns that used to have steel mills or any kind of industry where they shut down the factories. That’s been experienced in the US, all the rust belts, and in Northern England and in Germany. We have people all the time writing us, saying “I come from a former mining town in South America and I can relate to what you’re saying.”

We just felt that if we write stuff that is very personal to us and very local, it will automatically become something global that people can relate to. Even though it’s really small, really local, at the same time very universal.

I live in Philadelphia, which is in Pennsylvania, so outside of the city there are many, many parts of the state that were affected by factory closures and things like that. Plenty of ghost towns, steel and coal related things. It certainly is something that I think people around the world feel. It may be a very small microcosm of that town specifically, but the story is so much bigger.
It’s sort of like we’re looking upon the world through Horndal. That’s our filter, we just realized that this story, you can find them on a bigger scale out there in the world. At first, we were kind of “OK, maybe we just have one album to write about this,” but we understood this is a very human and personal aspect to it. It will resonate with people from many other places.

In many ways, it’s much darker than writing about Satan because these are things that affect so many people’s lives.
We’ve never had to write songs about dragons or swords or wars or demons because we have the demons right there.

We’re premiering the video for “Rossen,” which is an animated video. Where did your idea to do it this way come from, doing it as an animated video in this really dark style?
The director is called Kalle Haglund and he’s really talented. He’s done really cool videos for The Hives, for instance, and they come from a town that’s really close to Horndal. I just reached out to him because I thought that he would totally understand the whole thing. The town that he comes from is sort of similar, it’s a steel town.

Right off the bat, he came back to us and said, “I love the record, I really want to do this.” His idea was that “What if, from the old steel mill, there’s one worker left behind. Just imagine that it’s not gone 40 years but maybe hundreds of years and he’s become this weird figure that is running around in the old factory.”

It sounded so scary and I was laughing at the same time when he was explaining the idea. What if he just sends in lake water, taking over the steel mill, and then he gets crucified upside down in the ending.

Always with us, we have true stories and stuff inspired by true events, but at the same time, it’s this sort of ghost story feel. You see in the framed photos in the beginning, those are real workers from the steel mill. We had permission to use them, so it’s some reality but at the same time, we have this weird, fucked up ghost story merging them together.

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Interview: Rockabilia Co-Owner Discusses Merch Trends, Covid-19 and Craziest Stories

Rockabilia is one of the largest online merch retailers, stocking merchandise from thousands of rock and metal bands. Their website currently lists over 500,000 pieces of licensed merchandise, ranging from standard T-shirts to wallets, shoes, hats, sunglasses and pretty much everything else you can print a band logo on.

Decibel spoke with Rockabilia co-owner Frankie Blydenburgh about the company’s daily operations, metal’s most iconic T-shirts, the effects of Covid-19 on business and the time he got Anthrax sued for a million dollars.

You’ve been with Rockabilia for over a decade at this point. What do your daily responsibilities look like?
Being a co-owner of a small business, my two partners and I all wear multiple hats. But my daily responsibilities are the fun ones: buying the merch, promoting it—all that good stuff. I am consumed by band shirts every single day of my life, which is just awesome. It’s also pretty dangerous though, because I personally own probably 500 black band T-shirts!

Obviously merch is a big part of the way many metal fans express themselves. Have you noticed specific merch or design trends that come or go over certain periods?
When it comes to metal merch, the same rule still applies: the gnarlier, the better. “Jesus is a Cunt” (Cradle of Filth), “Fuck Me Jesus” (Marduk), and of course anything Cannibal Corpse, are all best-sellers. In fact, when I first saw the uncensored art for Violence Unimagined, I initially thought “OK, they finally did it—no one would actually wear THIS.”

But after talking to their merch company and finding out it outsells the censored version 10 to one, I knew Rockabilia had to have it too. And so far, so good—it’s selling great!

Poking around the site, I see everything from Skinless to Eagles of Death Metal to Avenged Sevenfold and Black Label Society. How do you decide what artists are on Rockabilia?
I think one of the biggest misconceptions about Rockabilia is that we only sell heavy metal merch. I guess most metalheads remember growing up seeing our ads in magazines like Metal Maniacs, so we’re forever branded like that in their minds. Which is fine, but what they maybe don’t realize is that the company was also advertising rock merch in Rolling Stone and SPIN simultaneously with all the big metal mags, so we have always targeted anyone and everyone who would wear band merch.

Rock music is a really broad term, obviously, and we believe our name is too, so we don’t feel pigeonholed and aren’t afraid to branch out. At the end of the day, I want to offer every piece of merch that’s available to us, regardless of the genre, so we do. I love music. Not just metal, but everything. And I want our company to have that same mindset too.

Covid-19 affected pretty much everyone in the music industry somehow, between loss of income, shipping delays, tour cancellations and a general state of panic. How was Rockabilia affected. Do you notice some of those effects at Rockabilia and, if so, how have you dealt with them?
When the pandemic initially hit, we experienced about two weeks of really low sales, so we definitely panicked like everyone else. Then business just exploded, and 2020 ended up being our biggest year ever by far. 2021 is off to an even stronger start, with no end in sight.

We definitely don’t take it for granted though, as we know so many bands and companies in the music business were just devastated. We realize how lucky we are and have tried giving back to our community as much as possible. We did a fundraising campaign with Halestorm last year and donated a bunch of merch to charities throughout 2020.

Right now I’ve been working with Tony “The Demolition Man” Dolan from Venom Inc., on getting his Black Sabbath tribute album, Sabbatonero, released here in the states. He teamed up with a bunch of musicians from bands like Death and Obituary, and all the funds raised from record sales are going to frontline workers at Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome, Italy. Italy was arguably impacted the most by Covid-19 last year, and it’s my favorite place in the world too. So, it just feels good to help out such an amazing place with great people, even if it’s just a small bit from our niche industry.

Since you’ve been with the company for so long, I bet you have a lot of stories about working with big-name artists. Does anything in particular spring to mind if I asked you for your craziest or coolest story?
Well, I accidentally got Anthrax sued for $1 million dollars. Luckily, I was able to apologize to the guys in-person a couple years later, and they were super cool about it—we all had a good laugh. Then there’s the time a big-name merchandise vendor of ours stole $100K from us with fraudulent charges on our credit cards for orders we never placed. We kinda blew the whole story open and the merch company soon discovered that this employee of theirs actually stole a total of more than $500K from retailers like us and bands on their roster. The dude ended up confessing to everything and got sentenced to I think six years in prison.

Those are definitely some of my craziest stories. Or at least, they’re the ones I can publicly tell! But don’t get me wrong, most of what goes down here is super cool. And working with artists is usually great. It’s a trip to work so closely to Tony Dolan, who of course fronted my favorite era of one of my favorite black metal bands ever: Venom. I’ve been able to do so much cool stuff with The Misfits, plus Jerry Only and their manager John Cafiero are just the greatest guys ever. Dani Filth and his manager [Coal Chamber and Devil Driver vocalist] Dez [Fafara] are awesome too. I’m also working very closely with Hüsker Dü right now, as we’re about to launch their new merch store that will include a new vinyl record pre-order. Being in Minnesota, it’s pretty much the coolest thing ever to work with the absolute legends of Minneapolis punk and hardcore. So yeah, when we’re not in the middle of some crazy lawsuit or embezzlement scheme, I’m livin’ the dream!

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Track Premiere: Dawn Ray’d – ‘Wild Fire’

Red and black metal luminaries Dawn Ray’d will release their upcoming Wild Fire seven-inch on May 7, featuring two renditions—one black metal, one folk-inspired—of the song “Wild Fire.” Today, Decibel has partnered with the band to premiere “Wild Fire I,” the black metal version of the song.

The song—their first new music since 2019’s Behold Sedition Plainsong—is a call to arms against fascists in the metal scene and in the world, set to the band’s music which alternates between aggressive blasts and slow dirges.

“For too long have we watched antisocial losers use cheap far-right shock tactics, shameful relics of the past, swastikas, dog whistles and other cowardly signifiers to which they have no claim,” Dawn Ray’d tell Decibel. “So as to inject a bit of life into otherwise unremarkable bands.

“Why is it those bands, of which we all know the names, when pressed, deny any far right leanings, hastily distance themselves from any sincere conviction, mumble apologies, insist there was some misunderstanding, or some other historical context?

“Dawn Ray’d has done everything we can to make it as clear as possible what we believe, why we think the world should be better and how we think we can get there. And one of the first jobs we have is to erase these parasites, cowards and bad actors from our communities: we are against fascism in all forms, now and forever. We make no apologies and will not concede one inch in our conviction and belief that people are good and need defending, everything for everybody, until this world is a good and fair place for everyone who is good and fair.

“’Wild Fire’ is two versions of the same song, and I hope the lyrics ring out clear for themselves.

“Fuck all the coward bands that crumble when pressed, let’s together build the true black metal resistance!”

Dawn Ray’d will release Wild Fire via Action Now! and Prosthetic on May 7, but “Wild Fire I” is streaming now.

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Track Premiere: Mephitic Grave – ‘The Vaults of Strangling Fear’

“The deepest darkness, that hides a slumbering monstrosity, slowly comes to life again. In the veins of eternal death, blood begins to flow again, and as red-glowing eyes stare at you from the throat of the bottomless pit, you know there is no escape anymore…”

The above is an explanation from Hungarian death dealers Mephitic Grave about “The Vaults of Strangling Fear,” the latest track from their forthcoming album, Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity. Inspired in equal parts by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Autopsy, “The Vaults of Strangling Fear” sounds like it was dug out of a literal mephitic grave; alternating between buzzing old-school death metal and zombified death/doom, Mephitic Grave excel at sounding like the members of the band were just pulled from the grave themselves.

The horror-movie vibe of the music is enhanced by Mephitic Grave’s fascination with Lovecraft, both in the lyrics and accompanying artwork. Listeners will be allowed Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity when the album is released on May 7 via Carbonized, but “The Vaults of Strangling Fear” is streaming below.

Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity by Mephitic Grave

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