Haha, no its just a labor of love; I’ve been dedicated to metal since I was a kid, and extreme metal since I was a teenager, so although it takes up most of my spare time, its never a burden. In fact all of my projects (band related and fanzine archive) are kind of like part-time projects now. Aside from real work, I do what I can when I can. Lately the fanzine archive has slowed down a bit, but I have not forgotten it. Once things settle down I will get back into it more actively. Right now I try to add one zine a month, and I already have a few hundred in there, so its growing slow and steady (but probably not as fast as some people would like, I know).
Exhumed #1, December 1994, Germany
Please tell the readers of Systematic Desenitization Zine since when your archive exist and how did the idea come to yor mind to start this ? What was the main reason ? And did the inspiration for your book come from starting „Send back my stamps“ or vice versa (I ask because I don‘ t know when you started doing research and writing the book, which I haven’t read).
I started it around 2011 as an online archive of metal fanzines, which I was not finding online anywhere, at least in a searchable capacity. Meaning, the idea was to have all the zines properly tagged with all the bands searchable on individual pages, not just a mass of PDF downloads. So, the idea was that these zines were getting to be 25-30 years old and fading fast, and if they were not scanned and documented, a lot of them would be lost to history. So, being a kind of academic, I wanted to preserve the history, especially as a lot of the old print DIY media has a lot of information about how the metal’s genres developed and grew both musically and culturally. So, with that I just started it up as a pet project, and it is pretty stable now. The book I published in 2014 (Extremity Retained: Notes From the Death Metal Underground) was a separate project, being an oral history of the death metal genre specifically.
The Black Montanas of thy Septentrio #1,October 1993 ,Texas, USA
If I read some old
fanzines a lot of memories return, good and bad feelings from these times come to
my mind and of course there is so much nostalgia. You read about bands and
persons that completely disappeared from the scene and then I sometimes ask
myself, what these person are doing today (and how all these years gone by so
fast, time flies)…Do you know these feelings ? On the other hand you read
about bands that were total underground 20 years ago and are big names in
todays metal scene….
Exactly – its a strange mix of „where are they now?“ to „wow, those guys went on to be quite popular“…every time I get a new zine to upload it’s like a new historical artifact, especially because they also have the style and approach specific to different countries and genres. But I always get that „feeling“ when I open up the zine and it takes me back to when I was 16 waiting for zines in the mailbox from all over the world, from Chile, Germany, Finland and Malaysia for example, from others who shared the same passion for the music. Its a feeling that is still with me all these years later and helps to drive the desire to keep the history alive.
Sombre Eve #1, 1992, Australia
Did you maybe re-activate some contacts through your archive or contacts between other/third persons (I think something like this I read in the comment section of your page where people took notice of each other that lost contact for a long time…). And if you get contact to some ex-publishers and authors of fanzines, are most of them still active in one way or another in today’s scene ?
Actually it is more so that I have made new contacts; in
fact, from the comments section on the website, some old school death metal
guys left some messages, who I then got in touch with to interview for my books
(guys from Necrophile (Japan) and Abhorrence (Finland), for example. So it has
been useful in that regard, and I have even gotten some ‚donation’ zines from
others who have wanted to share what they have, so its been a great way for
meeting people (I never would have met otherwise).
Hypnosis #5, 1997, Germany
Do a lot of people
still send you scans (or even originals or copies) of fanzines ? From which
countries do you get the most ? Of course , you are a scene expert, nevertheless
have there been moments where you discovered a great fanzine you never have
heard before ?
I get scans primarily, from all over the world, in all langauges and from all eras…I have gotten some ‚hard copies’ handed to me at shows every now and then, but it’s pretty rare. I have already gone though my own collection (about 60 zines or so, mostly from 90-94) and some friends have loaned me some zines to scan, and then I returned them afterwards. There were actually so many zines made during that time I am constantly discovering new ones. A lot of them only lasted for 1-2 issues; there are, I think, thousands of titles from the 80s and 90s, from the local variety, to the more well known ones passed through ads and trading.
Can you tell us some special knowledge you have about german fanzines, because Systematic Desensitization Zine is located in Germany.
Yes, I remember the first zine I ever got from Germany was
way back in 1990 and it was called Giants Lore, which had a Fates Warning kind
of trad-metal thing going on, and it was very nicely printed and written auf deutsch.. Other ones like Voices
from the Darkside and Witchcraft are excellent and there are also quite a
number of German zines in the archive already, some even from the former DDR.
Of course metal is massive in Germany and the zines have always reflected all
the diversity of subgenres accordingly.
Are there some
fanzines you would like to see published as a book due to their amount of
issues and high quality which includes all issues, as it happens with legendary
fanzines Metalion, Voices from the Darkside and Isten ?As many as possible! Even a compendium of different zines…the more that can be documented, the better.
If you look at all these different fanzines from allover the world, which main differences can you see, concerning band selection and general approach ? And is there often the socio-political and / or economical situation of the country / state the author / publisher lives in often or sometimes reflected in the particular fanzine / issue ? Are there fanzines where you can see that people can’t really express all they want to say and you have to „read between the lines“ because of state opression back in these days in some countries (for example concering some authoritarian communist regimes) ?
Most zines seem to stay true to the conventions of the underground scene and its aethetics and themes, as well as the themes of the specific subgenre, whether its heavy, black or death metal or grind etc…then the ‚local’ kind of enters the picture, through the editorial, the scene report and other things…some zines were probably censored if they came from within oppressive systems, but the vast majority are not. As far as the editors, some zines of course reflect their times and places, and have some editors (and even the bands being interviewed) espoused some pretty ignorant views and there are even some things that people said in their youth that they might regret now or not identify with anymore, but its still history and its all relevant.
The internet killed the real fanzines, I also did a printed zine 15 years ago but today I am also doing an online blog. Of course the internet makes a lot of things so much easier (communication, listen to new music). And doing a printed zine is so much more work, to reach the public is much more difficult and in the moment you publish it a lot of the stuff is not really current anymore. So can you understand that today a lot of people who want to contribute to the scene don’t think about doing a real zine and do the internet-zine instead ?
Yes, for all of the factors you mentioned, it really is a labor of love to make a printed fanzine…but people are still doing it..zines like Chronicles, Compilation of Death, Death Wound, Cryptic Propaganda, Grave Wave and many many more, are carrying the flag forward for a new generation; I think that people do seek something more real, true and meaningful like that found in printed material, especially given the disposability and ephemerality of internet content.
The last words are yours……
Cheers and thanks…!!! Check out the archive…tons of metal history awaits!
