Decibel, the Philly-born heavy metal magazine, is turning 20

While Decibel, the heavy metal magazine that he founded 20 years ago, is still based in Philadelphia, editor Albert Mudrian decamped for Northern Virginia back in 2008. Any fears that he’s forsaken his local ties are dispelled when he begins to measure time in terms that any Philly die-hard would understand.

“I moved here right after the Phillies won the World Series,” Mudrian said from his basement office via Zoom, one wall lined with (presumably head-rattling) LPs and a drum set in the opposite corner. He remembers going to the playoffs, World Series games, and then the championship parade. “And then the next weekend packing up and getting out of there.”

Mudrian will be back in town this weekend to celebrate two decades spent covering extreme metal, hosting an earsplitting anniversary show at Brooklyn Bowl on Saturday headlined by Immolation, Horrendous, and the long-awaited Philly debut of California death metal legends Autopsy.

At a time when print media has long since been eclipsed by the internet, Decibel stands, devil horns raised, as the only monthly metal magazine published in North America.

Over that period Decibel has grown beyond the pages of the magazine, publishing more than a dozen books, spinning off a small record label, hosting concert tours since 2012, and launching the annual Metal & Beer Fest in 2017, with additional festivals in Denver and Los Angeles.

Philly has never been a hotbed of extreme metal, but Mudrian still credits the city for shaping Decibel and contributing to its longevity. “Metal is traditionally a blue-collar style of music,” he said. “It’s not a glamorous scene. Philly is a very real, and at times unforgiving, city. I think experiencing that culture in that particular city was different than if I had been a metal fan in New York or Los Angeles.”

Now 49, Mudrian grew up in Wilkes-Barre during the MTV heyday of the 1980s, when videos by heavy metal and hard rock bands like Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, and Quiet Riot were in constant rotation. As cassettes gave way to CDs, metal evolved in more extreme directions, from thrash to death, doom, and black metal. Mudrian was at exactly the right age to evolve along with the music.

“In your early teenage years,” he said, “you’re trying to seek out the most adventurous stuff possible — whether it’s music or art or just being a jerk with your friends. So I naturally evolved into finding heavier sounds.”

Like many a music junkie, Mudrian fed his habit by working at a record store, in his case the (still extant) local chain Gallery of Sound. The store published its own in-house music magazine, and Mudrian set his sights on its metal writer. “He was covering some, to my ears, decent music, but I absolutely hated the way he wrote,” Mudrian recalled.

“He used a lot of gimmicks, like conversations between Satan and a guy from Nanticoke.” Mudrian was 20 “and this music was the most important thing in the world to me; I couldn’t deal with it.” Now in the “sober light of adulthood,” though, he added, “I’d be happy to run that in Decibel.”

Mudrian began contributing his own record reviews, and gradually became friends with the growing publication’s editor, Alex Mulcahy. In 2003, the pair relocated to Philly, where they’d regularly traveled for shows, with the idea to expand Red Flag Media from record stores to newsstands with a magazine that covered the ever-changing genre.

The idea was to find a middle ground between underground fanzines and the glossy “big, dumb metal rock” magazines then cluttering newsstands.

Mudrian was then putting the finishing touches on Choosing Death, his book-length history of death metal and grindcore, and immediately shifted focus to the nascent Decibel (Red Flag now also publishes the relaunched alt-rock magazine Magnet and the local environmental monthly Grid). Fortunately he’d lightened up a bit since his earlier fandom.

“As much as I love heavy metal, obviously some of it was a little ridiculous. I felt like there was a lack of self-awareness in U.S.-based magazines, so I wanted to create something that had a nuanced, authoritative voice, but also had a sense of humor.”

Now, 240 issues later, Decibel has become the subscription of choice for listeners inclined to the likes of Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Deicide, and Gojira — long before the French band played the opening ceremonies at the Paris Olympics. Not much has changed, its editor says — several writers on the masthead of Issue #1 (cover band: The Dillinger Escape Plan) are still contributing today — which is by design.

“We’ve always stayed true to who we are,” Mudrian said. “I didn’t launch the magazine thinking that this was going to be on every newsstand, with a circulation of a couple million. I knew that audience didn’t exist for what we were doing. That inevitably made us a niche publication, and in 2024, that’s pretty much the only way you’re going to survive.”

Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show, Aug. 31, Brooklyn Bowl, 1009 Canal St, Phila. www.decibelmagazine.com/events/decibels-20th-anniversary-show/