FEAR, EMPTINESS, DECIBEL: AMOPRHIS’ TALES FROM THE THOUSAND LAKES GETS INDUCTED INTO THE DECIBEL HALL OF FAME

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. Smart, funny, insightful, and honest, Decibel was recently called “The not completely fucktarded version of MetalSucks” by revered cultural critic Slavoj Žižek. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli.

First of all, holy shit, we misspelled Kataklysm on the last cover. Great catch by Clancy in the comments. You win my unyielding respect, which means a lot, since I’m the sort of person who seriously entertained rolling bowling balls down a hill toward oncoming traffic during high school. Anyway (hi mom!), Good Christ, do I fucking detest misspelling. I’m talking anything from “Woah” instead of “Whoa” to Jonas “Renske” instead of “Renkse.” Then again, the second “e” in our logo was backwards, dawg, for the first 24 issues. (It took throwing those big fat smart bugs in Isis on the cover to inspire some semblance of editorial literacy — and some semblance of not many people buying an issue of Decibel that month.)

Amorphis — well, you can’t really misspell that, short of writing a review as Sylvester the Cat. Another thing about Amorphis: They’re hard to write about when you’re simultaneously listening to The Promise Ring in your iTunes. Who the FUCK put that shit in there anyway? Surely not the same genius that put Amorphis’ Tales From the Thousand Lakes into our vaunted Hall of Fame. (Transitions: my specialty.) That genius would be Albert Mudrian, our Editor in Chief, the same man who has IMed me the word “Woah” on several occasions over the past two weeks. Do you know how much he loves Tales From the Thousand Lakes? So much so that he detested it until 2008, before mysteriously falling in love with it. (Kind of the same way you all feel about Disturbed’s Ten Thousand Fists.) And just like that, we got Scandi-phile Chris Dick on the trail, and Tomi, Esa, Jan, Olli-Pekka and Kasper regaling us with — you guessed it —t ales of ill-fated dentistry videos, Doors covers, clean vocals and hotel trashing. And accomplishing that was no walk in the park, as the Dickman has been working on a Moog-less version of this HOF for years, with or without the EIC’s kind of necessary approval.

So, what do you guys think? Is Tales worthy of induction? Is another Amorphis jam more deserving? Should we have just gone with 10K Fist Fuckz? Talk it out.

-AB

Buy yourself a copy of the October 2010 issue of Decibel here, or just go ahead and buy yourself a full subscription here. It comes down to about two bucks an issue for a one-year subscription, which is roughly thirty-six dollars more a year you could be spending on spelling lessins.