Keept It Real #9 (Review)

Maybe you remember this post from March - I finally found the time to read this whole thing and write a review about it. First of all, the guy who's doing this zine, Apostolis from Athens, Greece, seems to be a very nice dude, so I didn't buy only one zine but six, so if you're from Germany and want to have one of those babies, drop me a line. Price is three Euros plus shipping haha. But back to the review. First thing you realize when you pick this up is of course the artwork, and this one looks really cool, as you can see on the picture to the left. It was done by a guy named Peio. Second, the paper is quite thick, especially the cover, but the normal pages as well, so reading this thing is also a haptic experience, which is cool. Zines that are made of this super thin paper (like MRR for example) always tend to annoy me after a while, because the pages get ripped up quite fast. No diss towards MRR intended by the way. Content-wise, this zine offers a good mixture of bands, and from a subjective point of view, of bands I can relate to. I especially enjoyed the interviews with Pulling Teeth, Poison The Well, Vitamin X (I didn't know Wolfi of Tangled Lines fame is drumming in that band now, I did an interview with him like five years ago) and above all (and to my own surprise) Greg Bennick of Trial. He has a lot of interesting things to say, and manages to do it in an entertaining way. The let downer is IMO the Lewd Acts interview, due to the LA-guy's laziness to come up with a little bit more interesting answers. The questions in all interviews are above the average you usually get to read, although I wish that Apostolis would have pressed on certain topics a little bit more. Then there's an article about Krishna consciousness, not something groundbreaking new, but on the other hand, 90 percent of today's Hardcore kids surely don't know about the connection between Hardcore and Krishna anymore. Personally, I always thought it was kinda strange, and this not only due to the fact that Krishna also involves some kind of organised religion, and with that, religious leaders, something that doesn't go to well hand in hand with Hardcore in my book. The other side of the coin is that I'm still siked about hanging out with the guys from 108, especially Vic, three years ago or something when we had the chance to play with them. Vic is cool, and for sure wouldn't be the person he is without all that Krishna-rave. But back to the Keep It Real zine, well, there's not much left to tell you, there's also a photo report from last years Fluff Fest, I never understood what's so great about festivals, because this is not what keeps Hardcore alive, but I can understand that a lot of people appriciate the chance to see a lot of good bands in a very short time. In addition to this content there are a couple of record reviews as well, I know people who only read the record reviews in zines. Whatever, to bring this to an end, this printzine is definetely worth your money, all in all it's nice to read, looks great and seems to be the perfect match with a hot summerday by the swimming pool, hanging out, drinking ice tea, and reading a zine. 

For info, orders, trades etc. pp.:

myspace.com/keepitrealhc

And like I said, I also have a few copies flying around, if you're interested, let me know!

Keep It Real Fanzine Issue No. 9 out now

My friend Apostolis from Greece asked me to do a post about the newest issue of his print-zine, because it just got released. Well, I don't know a lot about it now, because I haven't read it yet, but since I ordered a few copies I will review the zine later on. 

For now I can tell you what's inside: Interviews with Greg Bennick of Trial, Birds Of A Feather, Lewd Acts, Confronto, Vitamin X, To Kill, Pulling Teeth, Poison The Well and Despite Everything. Especially the combination of Pulling Teeth and Poison The Well is fucking rad, I wouldn't have thought that somebody except me likes both bands haha. Besides that you'll get a six pages photo report of Fluff fest '09, a thought provoking article concerning Krishna Hardcore Consciousness and the usual reviews. 

There will be 500 copies, Din A4, price for this baby is 3 Euros plus shipping. You can contact Apostolis at hxf_prodaxionz@yahoo.com (also for wholesale and what not).

Ignorance Is Strength Fanzine (Review)

This is the first issue of this new printed zine (A4), done by Wouter from the Netherlands. As far as I've read in the introduction it's not the first fanzine he's doing, and you can definetly see that. A few general things about it: All the questions to every single band are really good, well prepared and you realize that Wouter put a lot of thought in them. Now one could say, well, that's what someone who's doing a zine is expected to do, and that's probably right, but it's surely not happening in most interviews you'll read in hardcore fanzines, or on websites about that topic. Very often it's all like "what do you think about Have Heart, what shoes do you wear, when will your new record be released blablabla". But I'm getting off topic. Like I said, the questions are good, it's not your standardized small talk bullshit, and on the other hand Wouter's not trying to talk about issues that are too far off the track, something that sucks most of the time as well. Another thing he did very well is the artwork. It's all cut and paste, but good structured and in a great layout, so it's easy to read and looks cool, and that just how it should be.
To the content, basically you'll get two kinds of: interviews and some kind of columns in which various people write about certain song lyrics that have a special meaning to them, which is a great idea since most people tend to write so much boring bullshit in columns if they get to write about whatever they want. But first about the interviews, you'll get: Black Breath, Blind To Faith, Cold Snap, Cornered, Feed, Foundation, Goldust, Keep It Clear, Mindset, New Lows, Oathbreaker and Vivian Girls. The ones I enjoyed the most were Black Breath, Cold Snap, Cornered and the one with my own band haha, just because it's so cool to have interview over more than one page in a zine like this. I'm not really into the Youth Crew type of bands, it's just not my cup of tea. But to be fair, without bands like these and people who support them there would be even less printed zines, so that's totally fine. While reading the interviews with Blind To Faith and Vivian Girls I kinda asked myself what's the point about agreeing in doing an interview if every answer is shorter than the question, I mean, if I don't want to say anything why am I doing an interview? Quite strange, but ok. As much as I like Blind To Faith's music, all they say is that Hardcore sucks and Gehenna and Iron Monkey are cool. I mean, although they might be right at some terms, it seems to be quite a lot of "we know bands way too underground for you". Ah whatever, it's not that I'm never doing this.
When it comes to the columns, I have to give special prominence to two of them: the one of Aram, where he talks about 108's "Killer of the soul". To be honest, I didn't know the lyrics until now, but the aggressivness and words really gave me goosebumbs, I think they are some of the best pro-vegetarian/vegan lyrics I've ever read. "Killer of the animal, only a demon could dine on the flesh of the dead". That's so hard. Awesome. And how Aram writes about how this song touched him, although he was vegetarian for a few years when discovering the lyrics, is great, because I kinda felt the same now.
The second column is by Arne, who's doing arguably Germany's best zine: the Dawk Fanzine. The song he choose is Supertramp's "It's raining again". It's not that I can connect to his thoughts and feelings about this song as good as with Aram's, but I simply love his writing. If he'd write a book, I'd buy it.
Besides those two there are some people writing about Youth Of Today (pretty generic stuff if you ask me), Cap'n Jazz, Modern Life Is War and what not. Good mixture of people and bands and lyrics. I like stuff like that, because it always makes me think about what song I would have choosen to write about and why and what I'd say about it.
So what can I say? If you're hungry for a good fanzine (completely in English btw.) better get a copy of this one by dropping Wouter a line at ignoranceisstrengthzine@gmail.com.

No Comment #1

Here's a pdf-file of the first issue of No Comment. If you're interested in getting one of the few printed issues (I have a few left), just drop me line at nocommentfanzine@arcor.de and we'll work something out. My favourite page is the one with the Terrorizer quote, definetly a song that hasn't lost any of its relevance. Get the pdf here

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