Den of Iniquity

Independent
None
Rating
Written by Michel Renaud
Published August 18, 2002

Nice fanzine from Belgium here. Breaking away from the norm, this one completely ignores extreme genres such as death and black metal to concentrate on heavy, doom, prog, "true", power, thrash and speed metal. About 53 pages here filled with thorough interviews and a lot of reviews, including a large number of vinyl releases as well as zine reviews (a lot of them sound interesting but are in German).

Bands interviewed include Twisted Tower Dire, Paragon, Ballistic, Overlorde, Born of Fire, Double Diamond, Brocas Helm, Dervish, and Have Mercy. There's also an interview with Bad Posture Records. This zine does a good job featuring lesser-known bands, leaving the bigger names to the glossy mags. The interviews are for the most part pretty long and very interesting, the editor obviously having quite a bit of background on the bands before doing the interviews. The reviews include a number of big name bands, but the bulk is dedicated to more underground acts, most of them I've never even heard of before, but I found quite a few good ones by investigating further after reading about them in this zine.

A very well-written zine packed with information. Two thumbs up! And there's no ads in this one, I don't know if that'll continue in future issues. Highly recommended.