Depraved Literature part VIII – Voices From the Darkside issue I

Depraved Literature part VIII – Voices From the Darkside issue I

Authors: Frank Stöver

Origin: Germany

Release date: 1993

Interviews: Immolation, Therion, Disgrace, Balvaz, Comecon, Acheron, Severance, My Dying Bride, Grave, Acrostichon, Psychosis, White Zombie, Edge of Sanity, Vital Remains, Napalm Death, Gorefest, Hypocrisy, Morbid Angel, Seance, Fleshcrawl, Monstrosity, Pan Thy Monium

I believe this is one of the best and most known fanzines in the history of death / black metal! Great German work, that lasted for nine issues and nowadays still exists, but only as an online webzine. But they still deliver some great interviews and huge number of reviews, so I have no problem with it. I’ve read two issues of Voices before, but never had a chance to read the very first one… until now! I took some time to read this old rag, but I must admit that this first issue is far from being perfect, as some interviews here are just shit. The problem with them mainly lays in the questions the editors ask. Basically each interview is based on simple questions, but that’s fine. It’s worse, when the bands are asked simply fuckin silly questions, which are not only not interesting, but just stupid. Come on, asking about your fave food, why Barney dyes his hair, what do you do during your holidays or if you have any pets is beyond my criticism and simple interest. Of course it was common among many old fanzines to cross this line of silliness, but I just can’t understand why were they asking such ridiculous questions! What is the result are such interviews like the one with Hypocrisy which is just SHIT. To be honest, issue one of Voices in majority contained just total mediocre and uninteresting chats. And another truly bad example is the interview with Vital Remains, where Jeff Gruslin is asked such STUPID questions that I am not surprised he did not bother to give any decent answers. “Would you like to eat some German food” or “Have you ever dreamt being Uncle Scrooge” – seriously haha? Ugghhh, so Voices is a classic fanzine, yes, the future issues are awesome, but damn… this first issue is poor as fuck, when speaking of the real informative content. OK, to be fair, it does include some more decent chats also, like with Fleshcrawl, Grave, Acheron (definitely the BEST chat here!), Monstrosity or Napalm Death (read also the hilarious interview with My Dying Bride – I’ve never read anything so damn funny from those guys; they all went crazy in this short interview haha! Forget about being serious, sad doom metal musician here!)… Yeah, the biggest positive thing about zines like Voices is that they were done in the best possible time, when the scene was small and the bands were still small as well, so it features so many cult names that it makes my jaw drop to the floor. Plus the review section covers so many classic demos, EPs and albums! The quality of writing was still rather poor here, although I did like the reviews. More so, the layout is too simple and boring, but that’s something normal for those old days. Oh, and more thing – White Zombie among all those death metal bands? What were they doing there haha?!!

Obviously Voices from the Darkside has got a whole book published last year, which contained all the numbers of this zine and you surely can see a development of the writing quality of Frank Stover and his crew and that’s good. If I was honest though, this first issue is far from my favourites.

Quotations:

Q: Do you use to have pets? A: Yeah, I have two rats – both called cats. (Frank, Gorefest)

Q: Would you like to watch Prince concert with me? A: No, coz he’s a fag! (Masse, Hypocrisy)

Q: Do you have friends in Sweden? A: No, they are all dead! (Masse, Hypocrisy)

“We can’t wait to fuck your mom, when we come to Germany” (all My Dying Bride members)