Last April we announced our partnership with f.y.e. for the Decibel Meter, a monthly collection featured both online and in store to make sure you don’t miss any of those essential headbanging, face-melting titles that make your collection extremely extreme. The issue currently on newsstands, which features Suffocation on the cover, declares 2017 THE YEAR OF DEATH METAL (all caps necessary)--and our Decibel Meter picks showcase why death is alive more now than ever.
The most obvious place to begin is with ...Of the Dark Light, the eighth full-length from the Long Island purveyors and innovators of brutality. Over 25 years into a career of crushing heaviness, Suffocation returns with one of their best ever. Similarly, deathly grinders Expulsion, Matt Olivo’s spiritual successor to Repulsion, tear their mark into the death metal world with the don't-miss-this debut EP Nightmare Future. Other returning morbid mongers include the esoteric Decrepit Birth with Axis Mundi; the old-school revivalists Necrot with their delightfully nasty first non-collection full-length Blood Offerings; and the relative newcomers Skelethal, with debut devastator Of the Depths...
Of course not everything from this month dwells in the crypts. Eighteen Visions return with their first release in over a decade, XVIII. The crawling, soul-crushing funeral doom of Loss on Horizonless will permanently darken the sun. The raging return of Goatwhore with Vengeful Ascension will be sure to put necks in braces. The unusually vintage metal of Beastmaker revives the past with Inside the Skull. The limited reissue of Panopticon’s landmark (and essential) Kentucky expands the pantheon of USBM; Decapitated surprisingly yet successfully depart from their deathly norm on Anticult. And previous issue cover stars Integrity take their signature, atypical blend of whatever it is exactly Dwid Hellion does to a new height on the raging Howling, for the Nightmare Shall Consume.
f.y.e. also has some exclusive vinyl for all you turntable enthusiasts, with a bone-white vinyl of Dying Fetus' Wrong One to Fuck With, swamp-green vinyl of Obituary's Obituary, and white vinyl of Iced Earth's Incorruptible.
We assume you’re already a death metal expert with a pretty substantial collection (enough to liquefy the brain of the average music listener, naturally), but there’s always to more riffs and blastbeats that absolutely need in your collection. So check out the full list of this month’s Decibel Meter at f.y.e.'s website, or head straight to the nearest f.y.e location, to inspire a headbanging frenzy.
