Holy shit! No sooner had I finished perusing issue #60 when issue #61 shows up, proving that this new format of Lamentations of the Flame Princess is indeed able to keep up with the monthly schedule (at least for now)! This is another great issue, actually offering quite a bit of different content in addition to the usual high quality interviews and reviews. The interviews are a bit shorter than usual this time out, but it doesn't matter because the extras more than make up for it. One such extra is "LotFP Goes to Finland" - the simple tale of an editor's journey to Finland to meet a girl, look for metal, etc. It's actually quite an amusing little read. There are also a couple a columns at the end of the zine: A "retro review" and an actual column speaking of maturity and progression in relation to music. Snooore. I was pretty bored by both of these little tidbits, but that's just me, so whatever. Now, the real gem in this issue is the masterful article called "A Look at Metal Journalism". This thing is a fucking incredible critique of the current state of metal journalism. Included first off are reviews of 15 of the largest metal magazines from all over the world (Metal Maniacs, Terrorizer, Unrestrained, Metal Hammer, SOD, Pit, and many others). Now, that's good, but what's awesome is the mathematical breakdown (in percentages) of advertising, comparing what percent of each magazine is devoted to advertising, how much of those ads are dedicated to bands that are featured in each magazine, the labels whose ads appear the most throughout the set of chosen mags, etc. Then, there's a similar breakdown of the average review scores, comparing the ratio of positive and negative reviews against the advertising numbers and so on. Incredible, not to mention disgusting. SOD magazine averages 53.1% of their reviews rating a 9+/10, with an average review score of 8.237 - not to mention that 39.9% of the magazine is advertising, 80% of the bands featured are also advertised within the pages, and so on. More proof that SOD needs to take all of the dicks out of their mouths, pack up shop, and get the fuck out of the metal scene. I give those posing fucking losers "-666 Fucking Skulls!" for being a bunch of spineless pussies that only want to make money by peddling what is undoubtedly the worst magazine out there. Anyway, some of the bigger and most well known mags like Terrorizer and Metal Maniacs fare better than one might expect, so it's a very interesting feature. It's also fairly written without really espousing too much of an opinion one way or another about what the stats reveal... and that had to be hard, I would've been talking so much shit it wouldn't even be funny. There's also a little rant about Dissection's Jon Nodtveidt and the way that record labels, press, and the band members are glamorizing (or will likely glamorize) certain band members' prison time served for murdering homosexuals and immigrants as these cats prepare to get out of jail and release new albums. Angry stuff. All in all this is a superb issue, I was really impressed by that journalism analysis. It should be noted at this time that there are only two ads in this entire issue... and none of the labels advertised have bands featured within its pages. Why pay $5+ for a piece of shit that's printed on glossy paper and sits on a newsstand (SOD, Pit, and many, many others) when you can get this for free or next to nothing?
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Lamentations of the Flame Princess - http://www.lotfp.com
