Depraved Literature part IX – Putrefaction issue 5

Depraved Literature part IX – Putrefaction issue 5

Authors: Tomas Nyqvist

Origin: Sweden

Release date: 1991

Interviews: Agressor, At the Gates, Baphomet, Marduk, Bolt Thrower, Carbonized, Dark Tranquillity, Death Courier, Demigod, Dissection, Repugnance, Immortal, Impaler (UK), Infamy (FL), Infested Incarnation, Interment (FIN), Malaphar, Macabre End (God Macabre), Merciless, Misery (SWZ), Sadist, Sadus, Salem, Samael, Sentenced, Shub-Niggurath, Therion, Atomic Aggressor, Unleashed, Traumatic, Torturer, Obscure, Osmose Productions

I haven’t done any old zines articles in long time, so it’s time to bring it back to this website. Here’s Putrefaction zine from Sweden, issue five, from 1991!!!

I know that back in the old days Putrefaction (ran by Tomas Nyqvist, who was also a founder of once famous No Fashion Records) was among the most influential and best fanzines in Sweden. I think I’ve seen just two out of five issues of this zine and to be honest I can say that in my opinion it was rather typical zine of its time. Its biggest advantage was the fact that it was released in the best period of time, so it featured the best bands that were around then. Putrefaction covered many classic bands and helped promoting many fantastic, legendary demos, but I cannot say that the content and text quality was better than in other zines. It was solid, but nothing special. Sometimes it was simply awfully bad, so I cannot agree that Putrefaction was a killer fanzine.

To cut this retrospective article short, here I have issue five from 1991. Well, the content of bands, which Tomas interviewed for it is absolutely amazing and contains a bunch of fuckin killers and classics. Just check the list above. Wow, it’s impressive. Sadly, the quality of all interviews was poor. Usually they were really short (some of which may have had less than ten questions with answers that include maybe five words – so you can imagine how boring and uninteresting are these interviews!). And the questions often were just boring and typical. And sometimes simply stupid, where Tomas asked for completely irrelevant, childish things, trying to be funny, but he was pathetic. I always feel it’s a shame that we get an old fanzine with such an excellent list of bands interviewed and after reading it turns out that it gave you nothing – no new information you were searching for, no joy of reading some old chats…

Take that interview with Morbid Angel as an example. It’s just waste of space. These days something like this would never be published. Interviews like those with Morbid Angel, Misery, Baphomet or Atomic Aggressor would end up in the rubbish. Then we have interview like the one with Merciless, which is full of bullshit, stupid questions (about fuckin, drinking or whatever) and half of it is in Swedish, what makes completely no sense.

Much better impression was to read chats with smaller bands, which never made it through, like Traumatic, Obscure (Spain), Interment (Finland) and Infamy or finding about completely new names like Malaphar. At least there was something interesting to find out about. Also reading about bands you don’t read often, like Salem, Death Courier or Impaler (UK) was OK. Finally it was great to read about very early incarnations of black metal bands such as Immortal and Marduk (this one with their very old logo and band picture – very precious thing to find!).

Best interviews surely are those with Traumatic, Bolt Thrower, At the Gates, Dark Tranquility, Obscure, Macabre End, Unleashed.

As for the layout and everything else – it was also nothing special, nothing what would distinguish Putrefaction zine from all other fanzines around. It’s weird that there were no reviews in it. Soooo…. Yeah, cult name on the fanzine scene, but I cannot say that Putrefaction really deserved this.

Quotations:

“Lyrics on the LP are against all kids of crap like war, violence, coca cola, drugs…” (Therion)

 “I’m the hottest guy in this world!” (Arturo, Shub Niggurath)

“I’m not interested in girls. But in fact I’ve fucked dogs and pigs, goats and children this week” (Vorphalack, Samael)