Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

Two weeks ago, we not only revealed that this month’s dB flexi disc is Krallice covering Rorschach’s “Traditional,” but that the corresponding Hall of Fame would be the Jersey bruisers’ Protestant (order here). Krallice have been busy churning out covers both kick-ass and poignant lately, but today’s our day to tongue-bathe Rorschach for their influential 1993 ripper.

Resident dB workaholic Kevin Stewart-Panko wrangled Charles Maggio, Keith Huckins, Nick Forte, Thom Rusnak and Andrew Gormley for Q&As, and the guys were unsurprisingly down-to-earth, modest and hilarious. (“I’ve had people for years tell me about how Rorschach [were] responsible for metalcore, and I’m like, ‘Wow, people think I’m partly responsible for a genre, and that genre is only good part of the time.’” —Huckins.) Another thing about Keith, also of natural-born co-worker killers Deadguy: he joins a select group of artists with two HOF entries: Lee Dorrian, Bill Steer, Jimmy Bower, Nocturno Culto, Scott Ian, Danny Lilker and Sal Abruscato. I’d have to guess that out of all those guys, Bower or Lilker has the fastest potential track to three. But you tell us: what triple threat deserves it the most?

-AB

Decibel’s September 2011 issue also features Opeth, Toxic Holocaust, Sepultura, Cradle of Filth, All Shall Perish, Skeletonwitch, and that awesome Krallice flexi disc. That issue is available here, but why not get a full subscription to ensure you never miss an issue?

It’s time: MetalSucks, in association with Chuck E. Cheese, needs to sponsor a symposium of metal’s greatest up-and-coming critical thinkers — the Albert Mudrians and Cosmo Lees of the future, if you will. Obviously, The Crud Wizard should be right at the top of the speaker’s list; and, Kevin Stewart-Panko’s son, Sam, has been doing some brilliant work over at The Deciblog, so he should obviously get an invite, too. But this is metal, so the event shouldn’t be allowed to get too stodgy; there needs to be, like, a Minister of Partying or something, someone to really get the booties shack-a-lack-a-lackin’ in the ball pit.

Enter the young men in the below video, sent to us by a reader calling himself simply “Scott.” Scott is not the father of these five- and three-year-old grind freaks — he’s not even a blood relative, apparently — but surely, he is the boys’ favorite “uncle” nonetheless.

Part of me thinks these little dudes are too young to be listening to Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the same way they’re too young to see A Clockwork Orange and Silence of the Lambs — I mean, they’re great works of art, but not intended for people who don’t yet know what the phrase “tuck it back” means.

But the other part of me just now wants a son really, really bad.

-AR

Last month we told you about “Justify Your Shitty Taste,” a new weekly column at The Deciblog in which one of Decibel’s writers defends a much-loathed album. Kevin Stewart-Panko wrote the inaugural edition of the column, in which he stood up for the most universally loathed metal album of the 21st century, Metallica’s St. Anger; apparently, Mr. Stewart-Panko thought he was still way too popular amongst internet dweebs, because now he’s written another edition, this time defending Cryptopsy’s The Unspoken King, which, no joke, might be the second most universally loathed metal album of the 21st century.

Stewart-Panko’s defense is typically well-written and intelligent; he asserts that Cryptopsy “didn’t allow themselves to be completely consumed by what was going on around them, but allowed themselves to be influenced just enough by the world outside of death metal,” and basically calls people who were pissed about the clean vocals elitist douche bags:

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Kevin Stewart-Panko is a brave, brave man.

Today The Deciblog launched a new weekly column, “Justify Your Shitty Taste,” in which “every Wednesday morning, a Decibel staffer or special guest will take to the Deciblog to bitch and moan at length as to why everybody’s full of shit and [this week's] dud is, in fact, The Shit.” And the first batter up is the venerable Stewart-Panko, and the album he’s defending, in case the headline didn’t give it away, is St. Anger, perhaps the single most universally loathed metal record of the past ten years.

Stewart-Panko being Stewart-Panko, though, his argument is actually reasonably compelling. Here’s an excerpt:

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Here’s what I don’t understand about all these lists: why they make people so very angry. When we set out to make our 21 Best Albums of the 21st Century (So Far) list earlier this year, we pretty much knew from the outset that it would be unsatisfactory. For one thing, there were only going to be 21 albums on the list, which meant a lot of great records were going to get left off; for another thing, we made the decision early on to allow bands to have multiple albums on the list if that was the way the voting turned out, and that meant that even more artists who deserved recognition weren’t going to get it; and finally, there was the very issue of how you even go about compiling such a list – we thought it was exciting to solicit the opinions of a lot of prominent musicians and industry insiders (as opposed to just the MS staff), but that approach obviously had its pros and cons, too. I’m not apologizing for or disowning our list – I’m just pointing out what should be obvious, which is that it was meant to be a fun conversation starter, which, from our end at least, is exactly what it was. And who really gives a shit which albums did or did not end up on that list? You know which albums you love and which ones you hate, so you shouldn’t need MetalSucks, or any other media outlet, to validate your opinion. I think Albert Mudrian is a great writer and is way more knowledgeable about metal than I am, but my ego isn’t so frail that I need him to agree with my every assessment of every band and every album.

Which brings me to what this blog post is actually about: Decibel’s 100 Greatest Metal Albums of the Decade special, which you can order here. It’s considerably more comprehensive that our list was, but I imagine most intelligent metal fans will also find it just as infuriating, and just as fun.

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