A Swedish heavy metal fan has had his musical preferences officially classified as a disability. The results of a psychological analysis enable the metal lover to supplement his income with state benefits.

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Roger Tullgren, 42, from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has just started working part time as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.

Because heavy metal dominates so many aspects of his life, the Employment Service has agreed to pay part of Tullgren’s salary. His new boss meanwhile has given him a special dispensation to play loud music at work.

“I have been trying for ten years to get this classified as a handicap,” Tullgren told The Local.

“I spoke to three psychologists and they finally agreed that I needed this to avoid being discriminated against.”

Roger Tullgren first developed an interest in heavy metal when his older brother came home with a Black Sabbath album in 1971.

Since then little else has mattered for the 42-year-old, who has long black hair, a collection of tattoos and wears skull and crossbones jewelry.

The ageing rocker claims to have attended almost three hundred shows last year, often skipping work in the process.

Eventually his last employer tired of his absences and Tullgren was left jobless and reliant on welfare handouts.

But his sessions with the occupational psychologists led to a solution of sorts: Tullgren signed a piece of paper on which his heavy metal lifestyle was classified as a disability, an assessment that entitles him to a wage supplement from the job centre.

“I signed a form saying: ‘Roger feels compelled to show his heavy metal style. This puts him in a difficult situation on the labour market. Therefore he needs extra financial help’. So now I can turn up at a job interview dressed in my normal clothes and just hand the interviewers this piece of paper,” he said.

The manager at his new workplace allows him to go to concerts as long as he makes up for lost time at a later point. He is also allowed to dress as he likes and listen to heavy metal while washing up.

“But not too loud when there are guests,” he said.

The Local spoke to an occupational psychologist in Stockolm, who admitted to being baffled by the decision.

“I think it’s extremely strange. Unless there is an underlying diagnosis it is absolutely unbelievable that the job centre would pay pay out.

“If somebody has a gambling addiction, we don’t send them down to the racetrack. We try to cure the addiction, not encourage it,” he said.

Henrietta Stein, deputy employment director for the Skåne region, is also puzzled by the move; “an interest in music” is not usually sufficient to qualify for wage benefits.

“Certain cases are confidential but in general there is always a medical reason that is well-documented,” she said.

Tullgren currently plays bass and guitar in two rock bands and says that he tends to get a lot of positive reactions for daring to be himself.

“Some might say that I should grow up and learn to listen to other types of music but I can’t. Heavy metal is my lifestyle,” he said.

original article

Odds are if I were to corner Missy Elliot and ask her how old the Motorhead shirt she’s sporting in the photo above, the answer would include variations on the phrases “My stylist picked it out for me,” “I don’t know” and “Motor-whatnow?” before her security detail – inevitably led by a 6’8” 475-lb black dude nicknamed “Tiny” – beat my ass into the middle of next month. Plus, who the fuck cares about the thoughts and opinions of someone who’s only understanding of metal is limited to a bunch of carefully and intimately placed body piercings (I’m taking a wild guess here)? You want to know what classic metal shirts/finely aged dishrags the real Warriors of Ice and Soldiers of Steel have in their wardrobes, right? Well, here you go as this week I asked Mudrian’s Merry Band of Decibel-ers to tell me about the oldest band shirt they own.

J. BENNETT

Upon inspection, it seems I have a tie in the oldest band shirt department. I have a Kix Blow My Fuse shirt and a Megadeth “Mary Jane” shirt, both of which date back to 1988, are borderline threadbare, and currently about two sizes too small for me. I doubt I could squeeze my 34-year-old tits into either of them on a bet. Also, the Kix shirt permanently smells like mildew and has a hole in the left armpit.

KIRK MILLER

I have a limited edition Bad Religion t-shirt from a series of shows they did at CBGBs in 1997. It’s signed and in perfect condition. I don’t wear it much – my body has changed with age – but I felt comfortable wearing it out once a few months ago and some guy yelled at me at a bar, saying “That’s worth something! You can’t wear that!” So like R. Kelly, it’s trapped in the closet.

RICHARD CHRISTY

My oldest metal shirt is a King Diamond Abigail tour shirt from 1987. It’s a hand-me-down from my buddy Steve Childers who saw the tour in ’87. He gave me the shirt when he grew out of it. Unfortunately, as my beer belly expanded, I grew out of it but I held on to it and luckily, from exercising a lot and counting my calories in the past year, I’ve lost 70 pounds and am back to a size small/medium. So, this weekend it’s off to the storage space to dig out all of my old metal shirts and shake the spiders and dust off of them!

NICK GREEN

I have a brown Graf Orlock t-shirt depicting a dog holding a dismembered hand. Corporate America tends to frown upon my lifestyle choices and, as my colleague Anthony Bartkewicz would say: I pose hard. That said, there’s an original Slayer Reign in Blood tour shirt in a box somewhere in my dad’s house and I’ve spent the better part of 10 years trying to find it. It’s the Holy Grail, really. Who wouldn’t want to stuff their moobs in that?

ADRIEN BEGRAND

At first I was going to say the oldest metal t-shirt I own is from Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere on Tour” in 1987, but then I remembered the shirt I got at a Helix concert a year and a half earlier. In the fall of 1985, Helix was huge in Canada. The Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge album and ubiquitous single “Rock You” catapulted the band to mainstream popularity, and while the follow-up Long Way to Heaven was less consistent – though I’ll defend “Deep Cuts the Knife” to my grave – the band was still selling out 2-3000 seat theaters across the country. This tour in particular was a solid one, as the band had brought along Vancouver’s Headpins, one of the country’s finest hard rock acts of the early 1980s, as openers. To this 15 year-old, whose only previous live metal experience was seeing Kick Axe play to a couple dozen kids at the Coronet Motor Inn in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, it was an eye-opener seeing the band run around the garish, multi-leveled stage and singer Brian Vollmer work the crowd like a seasoned master. No, it wasn’t the coolest show by any stretch, but back then we took what we could get, and I wore my black tour shirt – the album cover on the front, a brick wall emblazoned on the back – with great pride. And I still have it to this day packed away somewhere, well-worn but still intact, a full size smaller than what I wear today. I can’t believe there was a time where I actually wore a medium…

ADEM TEPEDELEN

I have a Motorhead T-shirt that I bought at this skanky incense/bong/rock gear shop called Lazar’s Bazaar in Eugene, OR, in probably ’83 or ’84. I think I was 15 or 16 at the time. It’s the only surviving shirt from that era. It just has the basic MH logo on a black tee, which is actually gray now and so thin you can practically see through it. It has most recently been commandeered by my wife, since it no longer fits me. 

ETAN ROSENBLOOM

I’ve trashed a whole bunch of band shirts over the years that I would be embarrassed to admit I ever owned. The oldest “band” shirt that I still have is a Beck shirt from 1999. I got it at a Beck concert at LA’s Greek Theatre, right after Midnite Vultures came out. It’s a dark grey deal, with a supine crash-test dummy on the front, and a whole bunch of cartoon figures on the back, each with the same speech bubble: “We are individuals.” The thing is wrinkled beyond the point that ironing would help, and there’s a huge hole in the right armpit. But goddamn, does it bring back pleasant memories of those ironic teen days. 

JEFF WAGNER

I didn’t used to keep old, unwearable shirts around (and could have made a mint on eBay with some of the rags I threw away), so the oldest one I currently have in my closest is a well-worn Cathedral long-sleeve from 1993. Bought it when I saw them open for Mercyful Fate in Chicago (9/24/93). I keep it around because the front of the shirt is a Dave Patchett painting that Cathedral never used anywhere else, and it’s cool because there’s no logo or wording of any sort on the front, just the artwork. Wore this shirt probably every third day of my life between 1993 and 1996, and retired it when it became too stretched out to be of much use as anything but a house dress. And I don’t do house dresses.

KEVIN SHARP

I have a Devo Freedom of Choice shirt I got when I was maybe three sizes smaller. Animals and bugs have eaten holes in it, but it’s my woobie – I WILL NEVER TOSS IT! Saw Devo on Saturday Night Live. Changed my life.

JEANNE FURY

I’m gonna guess my oldest shirt is Discharge. I stole it from my much cooler, much more hardcore brother, who had it for a few years before I, you know, borrowed it. So, by the time I got my hands on it, it was pretty busted up. It’s size XL (I normally wear a youth large), black (duh), and hangs to about my mid thigh.  It’s got the song title “Q: And Children? A: And Children” on it, with a photograph of one kid holding another — bleak as hell.  Way more disturbing to me than any disemboweled cartoon death metal album cover. 

GREG MOFFITT

The oldest band shirt I have is a Saxon one. It’s a little unusual as it’s red cloth. It features the first album design – the angry Viking guy on the attack – and the combination of the predominantly blue album art and the red background works surprisingly well. I bought it in 1981 from the band’s fan club which was called the Militia Guard after one of the songs on the first album. They issued a periodical newsletter which had a merch page. You could get all the usual 80s type items: metal badges, silk scarves, studded wristbands with the band logo on and, of course, various shirts. I could have got a Wheels of Steel or Strong Arm of the Law shirt but everyone – well, not quite everyone – had those and I wanted to make the point that I’d been into the band first. Although I still have it I’ve no idea exactly where it is; probably in the loft and probably in great shape unless the moths have gotten to it. I felt like a king wearing that shirt. Great days!

LIZ BRENNER

Malicious Onslaught “Thrashed Black” t-shirt (from ’89 – ’90, I think). It’s definitely not my oldest shirt, but it’s probably one of my most worn. Got it in high school from one of the guys in the band and at the time, they were among some of the heaviest bands I’d ever heard. I was honored to own that shirt. It was like the mark of an unofficial Rockland County gang. You could go to the Nanuet Mall and see people with that inverted “Thrashed Black” cross all over the place and if you didn’t know them, you’d kind of give them that metalhead nod of recognition/approval. I’ve always been a big fan of simple, black and white designs. I hate decal-looking shirts that appear sweaty in the sun. This one, to this day, rules, COC-esque skull and all. I work from home and literally rock it at least three days out of the week. It’s so thin you can probably poke holes in it with your thumbs if you tried. It has all kinds of subtle bleach stains and mystery marks, but for being more than 20 years old, it’s really not looking too shabby. I plan on rocking it till the neighbors complain. RIP Malicious Onslaught. Your [well made] shirts and music live on. \m/

And in case you’re wondering about yours truly, because I know you were, I admit I haven’t been immune to liquidating some of my band shirt assets over the years via eBay in a quest to make mortgage payments instead of maintaining a museum of rock tees. However, some goodies survived the cull, like the Welcome to Hell shirt pictured here. The main difference being mine looks like it was purchased in 1983 because it was purchased in 1983. And unlike many of my body-morphing colleagues, it still fits me perfectly.

Decibel Magazine

If you’re like me, then you see these images all the time because you google the words “king diamond tattoo” everyday. For the rest of y’all, here is a crucial collection of the evilest ink out there.

Wow. That shit is as evil and grim as tattoos can get. Skull chalice full of blood really does it for me, and so does that ‘stache.

That looks pretty legit, but there’s a lot of white in there.

It’s wonderful to see the King so close to a nipple. Unfortunately, it looks that tat will be covered with chest pubes before it even heals.

One of the King after he beat down some tards who tried to jump him.

Looking particularly pouty in this one, clearly mean muggin’ some posers.

This one looks like it’s washing off. Still pretty grim, though.

Here’s a take on the King from his “Cats The Musical” period.

King’s X!  The only crucial sXe tattoo ever.

And this…wow…um, looks good. I can’t tell if it trumps them all or is a miserable flop. Let Them decide.

AND HEY! If you have any extreme metal tattoos worth sharing, send em’ to roast_man@hotmail.com

We would love to feature some reader submissions on the blog. Just keep that shit trve and brutal or else strangers will tear it down.

Decibel Magazine

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole quarter-century since Megadeth sprayed the eternally-burning napalm of Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? all over the unsuspecting mulleted masses; hell, I was still listening to Sesame Street albums at the time.  Presumably, this thing would have scared the hell out of four-year-old me, even though kids these days grow up listening to Job for a Cowboy or whatever.  To celebrate the anniversary, Capitol is putting out a ridiculously complete box set with three different mixes on CD and vinyl, a live show, a super high quality mix for people who like to listen to music on something other than iPod earbuds, vintage posters, concert tickets, and probably a lock of Dave Mustaine’s hair.  So we decided to take a look at the album and figure out what makes it so worthy of the red carpet treatment.

Back when Dave Mustaine was mainlining heroin instead of Jesus, he wrote some insane stuff.  And with Peace Sells, his first major label release, you could actually appreciate the dynamic instrumental interplay instead of having to interpret it through a wall of floppy fuzz (Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good didn’t sound so good, is what I’m saying).  Out of all the nascent thrash acts, Mustaine and Chris Poland unleashed the most intricate, complex riffs (at times the aural equivalent of a contortionist), drawing on a myriad of influences from jazz fusion to punk rock to, yes, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in a way that the others didn’t. Peace Sells was the first real crystallization of that sound.  Obviously, there was a certain other thrash touchstone released that year by Mustaine’s former band (Controller of Marionettes or something), but that was a much more ambitious, ponderous beast. PS was a leaner, nastier predator – the velociraptor to its competitor’s Tyrannosaurus rex.  Megadeth preferred to kill with speed and precision instead of size and power.

And, oh yeah, there were some killer tunes.  “Wake up Dead” was the sign of ‘deth to come, its acrobatic, proggy tempo changes more nimble than anything that had come before, and its personal lyrics about the dangers of unfaithfulness (a lesson it would take Mustaine himself a while to learn) a far cry from the politics and sorcery that abounded at the time.  Not that there was any shortage of that stuff here, though.  “The Conjuring” and “Bad Omen” dealt with black magic, which Mustaine would later claim ruined his life.  Still pretty sweet as far as Dungeons & Dragons metal goes.  “Good Mourning/Black Friday” tells a creepy serial killer story over a classical base, and despite the pedestrian subject matter, it was pretty rare for neoclassical influences to appear in acts that didn’t wear frilly shirts or come from Europe.  Then, of course, there’s the politics, in the form of the song that would single-handedly define Megadeth as a band (and MTV news, for that matter) for the next couple decades: “Peace Sells” itself.  Its unforgettable opening bass line instantly cues any metal head anywhere to throw up the horns and prepare to shout along to Mustaine’s spoken/snarled wordplay, a cynical screed against God, the system, government, and humanity’s hypocrisy in general.  The song still hasn’t lost any of its power (or relevance) to this day.

Neither has the album as a whole, actually.  Megadeth still plays a fair amount of songs from it live, and you can hear its influence from Arch Enemy (their latest, Khaos Legions, sounds like a tribute album at times) to Dragonforce.  If you’re reading this blog, you’ve heard a band that sprang from Vic Rattlehead’s bony loins.  So in the unlikely chance that you never listened to Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, you owe it to yourself to find out what you’ve been missing for the last 25 years.

Indulge your consumer compulsions here!

Decibel Magazine

When Decibel needs their Reviews illustration for every issue or the dopest drawing of Glenn Danzig ever wet-dreamed about, we go to Mark Rudolph.

But there is more to Mr. Rudolph than Municipal Waste vomiting. In fact he is on his way to Kickstarting an amazing 70-page graphic novel.

A reimagining of the short Lovecraft story Dagon, this is a tale of shipwrecks, ghouls and morphine. In other words, it’s some real bleak ass shit. Also:

“The book is also an experiment to do as much of the art on-the-page as possible and not rely on digital tones or lettering. I ended up using a brush pen for inks and a Copic marker to tone, with the lettering being done by my father in cursive to reflect the narrative device of the letter.”

There are, as of this writing, 43 days to go and the man needs to collect less than a thousand bucks. The best part is that for only $ 25 you get a signed copy of the book, an exclusive postcard and a .pdf so you won’t even have to crack its sweet spine. (Pay more and we’re into original art territory and probably a grim backrub.)

This isn’t just a bro deal, people. This is a serious artist doing some serious art. But if this chatter hasn’t convinced you, behold the trailer:

Decibel Magazine

There’s little more annoying on this planet than the immoral majority telling you how essential, transcendent and (huh-huh) seminal a particular extreme album is, when you know that it’s overrated as fuck. Hence, our new Wednesday morning column, “Disposable Heroes,” in which one brave soul sails against the current to inform all you clones why you can’t spell classic without “ass.” This week, Jamie Getz, ringleader of Westboro Baptist Church favorites Gods & Queens, has a clone to pick with Carcass classic Symphonies of Sickness.

In December of 1989, I was 13 years old (so many years before Earache would release many jaw-dropping Dub War records). I was just starting to get ankle-deep into being a tape trader, buying and borrowing everything and anything I could get my hands on. One band floored me (enough to get their name tattooed in my lip at the old age of 16; smart move as it was the only place my parents couldn’t see it. Even smarter was the cool straight-edge tattoo I got later that year…). This band was Napalm Death. This was a very pre-Internet age, and I relied on magazines, letters, gossip of my older friends at shows and dubs of tapes. To my knowledge at the time, Carcass didn’t even exist.

This was my first take on the band. Yes, yes, I know Reek of Putrefaction came out a year before, etc. I was unaware of anything Carcass up to this point. So, imagine how amped I was when I discovered Carcass had shared members with my all-time favorite band. Imagine how let down I was when I got my hands on Symphonies of Sickness (probably around June of 1990, right around the same time I got Death’s Spiritual Healing, another record I just didn’t get, and still don’t). I didn’t understand it. How could members of my favorite band put this out?

As soon I put this on, I was thoroughly confused. This wasn’t grind; this wasn’t death metal; this wasn’t some melodic death metal either. This sounded like mid-paced, standard metal, with goofy vocals. This just wasn’t brutal enough for me. I wanted to be knocked on my ass. I wanted the music to come out of the speakers and assault me. I wanted a mixture of Streetcleaner and From Enslavement to Obliteration, two other records released around the same time that shook me to the core. Not these phaser-effected weak guitar solos (“Excoriating Abdominal Emanation”), weak breakdowns (“Exhume to Consume”), seemingly pitch-shifted vocals (what’s up, “Ruptured in Purulence”) and songs that went on aimlessly for far too long (“Empathological Necroticism”). I was appalled, and annoyed. Simply put, it just wasn’t aggressive enough for me. I wanted the heaviest of death metal, and the fastest of grind, the fastest end of all solos, and the most insane vocals I could find. This record has none of that.

Not to mention the absurdity of the lyrics. They offered me nothing. Nothing! There was no social dilemma here. Nothing of what I’d come to expect from my grinding English musical idols. “Blackhead and boils, pustular cysts. Chapped commodones, perspiring zits…” or, “Where does the white man stand, where does the black man stand, where do we all stand? Knee deep in fucking shit.” I’m gonna still go with the latter. Maybe this was an effort to remove themselves from the social aspect lyrically, and if it was, they succeeded. I’m pretty certain more dictionaries were pulled out trying to decipher the lyrics of Carcass than any other metal band ever.

I illegally downloaded this sucker, just to make sure I didn’t have my head up my ass after all these years. I gotta say that my opinions stay the same. There’s not one memorable hook, or high point of this record. At least not one that I didn’t laugh at. At the same time, I’m going to leave this little rant on a positive note. Despite me not liking this record at all, the impact, and legacy this record has left on metal is undeniable. I fully admit that Carcass laid some new groundwork for countless clones to follow. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not good, but I’d much rather have had Carnage’s Dark Recollections be the record everyone flipped out about and remembers as a genre defining record. That record fucking RULES.

Decibel Magazine

The long drought is officially over. For all of those ANTHRAX fans who have been waiting for the band to finally release new music, “Fight ‘em ‘Til You Can’t”, the first track available from the upcoming album “Worship Music”, has just gone on sale at iTunes. “Worship Music” is the first new studio album from ANTHRAX in eight years, and the first with vocalist Joey Belladonna since 1990′s “Persistence of Time”. What a way for the band to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

It’s a well-established fact that we like to drink beer and listen to metal. But second only to that pursuit is being able to talk brewskis with other like-minded beer geeks. So upon hearing that Tombs bassist Carson Daniel James is an equally devout barley-pop imbiber, we called him to talk (and drink) beer.

Decibel readers know you as the bassist of Tombs, but what’s your day job?
Carson Daniel James: I am the manager of a specialty coffee house in Green Point Brooklyn called Brooklyn Label. I do the coffee buying and I create the beer list for the place and everything. It’s a pretty fun job from that end. I get to drink whatever beer I want all the time. I get to introduce new beers that other people in the neighborhood might not know about or haven’t seen in other places.

Were you hired there for your beer expertise, or did you start out doing something else?
James: When I moved here from Philadelphia four years ago, this is the first place I got a job. [The coffee house] was actually trying to get its liquor license for some time, and talking to the owner, who doesn’t really know a whole lot about beers, it seemed like a logical step to have me curate the beer list. I have friends in the brewing community and in the brewing scene and my friends and I used to make beer and stuff like that. At the moment, we have a simple six draught lines [at Brooklyn Label] with a couple rotating seasonals. But it’s fun because I can get in and drink the beers that I really like and hopefully other people will enjoy them, too.

What are some of your personal favorites?
James: My favorite style of beer of all-time, all together is stout, mainly imperial stouts. The heavier and higher alcohol, the more robust and complex the stout is, the more I like it. I like the really malty, chocolaty, soy sauce, like squid ink darkness. The misconception with [stouts] is that they’re really heavy, when they’re really not actually a lot of times. They’re just super-dark because the malt is heavily roasted. Right now I’m drinking a Victory Prima Pils which I think is probably one of the greatest American pilsner-style beers. It’s got just enough of a hops bite to it, and it’s refreshing and light, so you can drink it throughout the day. Oskar Blues’s Mama’s Little Yella Pils [in a can] has probably been my beer of the summer. I’ve been drinking a lot of that; it’s a really good one.

Brooklyn has quite a brewing history and even today a lot of good beer is made there. Any locals that you’re partial to?
James: My favorite from the area has gotta be Sixpoint. They do a lot of specialty beers. As a matter of fact, just this past winter, they teamed up with Stumptown Coffee from Portland, Oregon—whose coffee we actually carry here—and they made a German bock with Stumptown coffee which was pretty awesome. They actually just got a canning system. Before that you could only get [their beer] on draft. Now you can buy 16-ounce cans. They make such an array of beers and they’re always changing. Brooklyn Brewery does one of my favorite beers, the Black Chocolate Stout. It’s absolutely phenomenal. It comes out in the fall, and every year for my birthday I crack one of those and drink it in the shower. You can age that beer, too. I’ve got a few bottles from a few years ago that I’m holding onto.

OK, finish this sentence for me: “The beer Tombs goes best with is…”
James: I’d say Harvey’s Imperial Stout. It’s an incredibly dark, complex, unyielding beer. Definitely not for everyone, but once you learn to appreciate it I think that you can really immerse yourself in it and enjoy it for what it is. It changes every time you drink it; you notice something different about the beer.

Any beers you’re looking forward to drinking on your upcoming European tour in support of Path of Totality?
James: I’m really excited to get back to England. The Samuel Smith brewery was always a favorite of mine, simply because the brewpubs in London are phenomenal. And because they are Samuel Smith’s own pubs, they only serve their beer, and it’s cheaper than all the other beers in all the other pubs. It’s nice to go get Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, as a opposed to a Guinness. That being said, I’ve never been to Ireland, and I’m very, very excited to have a shot of Powers [whiskey] and a pint of Guinness in Dublin. It’s one of the most clichéd things in the world, but everybody’s always told me that Guinness tastes completely different when you have it in Dublin. So I’m really excited to try that. In Germany, I couldn’t name one beer that I don’t want to drink. I really love German beer. I like the simplicity. I like crisp, clean lager and the fun social aspect of drinking German beer. You can’t drink a four-liter boot of a Belgian trappist beer. [Laughs]

Decibel Magazine

Surveying the Apocalyptic Necromancy track listing it is pretty clear those with an actual fear of gore might have their gag reflexes tested a bit by the latest fetid offerings from Goreaphobia — see, for example, “Rust Worms and the Noxious Fevers They Bring,” “Shroud of the Hyena,” or “Void of the Larva Queen.” Thus, to help our faint-ish of heart readers take a baby step away from their apprehensions and toward the open arms of what guitarist Alex Bouks calls the band’s “1000 percent occult metal nihilism” Decibel proudly premieres the reunited classic Filthadelphia death metallers’ “Xurroth Rreeth N’ves Helm (City of Rot and Decay)” below.

Here’s what Bouks had to say about this nasty little number: “This is one of those songs that just came very easy. To me it has a Venom meets Iron Maiden-type feel to it. This is more of a straight heavy metal track. It sounds like nothing else on the record.”

Goreaphobia, “Xurroth Rreeth N’ves Helm” by Decibel Magazine

Decibel Magazine

Surveying the Apocalyptic Necromancy track listing it is pretty clear those with an actual fear of gore might have their gag reflexes tested a bit by the latest fetid offerings from Goreaphobia — see, for example, “Rust Worms and the Noxious Fevers They Bring,” “Shroud of the Hyena,” or “Void of the Larva Queen.” Thus, to help our faint-ish of heart readers take a baby step away from their apprehensions and toward the open arms of what guitarist Alex Bouks calls the band’s “1000 percent occult metal nihilism” Decibel proudly premieres the reunited classic Filthadelphia death metallers’ “Xurroth Rreeth N’ves Helm (City of Rot and Decay)” below.

Here’s what Bouks had to say about this nasty little number: “This is one of those songs that just came very easy. To me it has a Venom meets Iron Maiden-type feel to it. This is more of a straight heavy metal track. It sounds like nothing else on the record.”

Goreaphobia, “Xurroth Rreeth N’ves Helm” by Decibel Magazine

Decibel Magazine