It is for the hearts of blackness to unite!

Sometimes,  when I find myself standing around, waiting for something to happen, and there's a record store or newsstand in the area, I invariably pick up a black or death metal magazine. Not that I listen to extreme metal, mind you - that would be masochistic -  but I love the pictures of scowling Norwegians all dressed up in corpsepaint and bullet belts, and I dig reading their crazy talk about the devil and such. Although it's hugely popular in the rest of the world, extreme metal's not much of a sensation stateside, so even though they're all in English, most of the magazines I check out are from another country- Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, places like that. Couple of weeks ago I'm wasting my time at ye olde record store when I spot a few (very) back issues of Black Hole magazine, a corpsepaint rag from Brazil. Now, let me get this straight- they're Portuguese speaking cats writing in English about Scandinavian bands? Sounds like fun, right? Well, it is. At first I didn't even notice. Metal journalism is so oddly formulaic that they all read pretty much the same. But here was something off/awesome about the arrangement of words in Black Hole, so I just kept reading it over and over again. After a while, the slightly broken English began taking on an almost poetic tone. Some of it was (fittingly enough) funny as hell, too, which made me think that maybe the Black Hole boys were doing it on purpose. Probably not, but it's a riot anyway. Here is a sampling of some of the amazing pieces of prose in the issue I read, dated 2002:

"For your safety no drum machine was found." - Vincent Necrosadofucker, on Virus

"I hope these freaks are preparing another sick stuff like this, anyone who wants to get it don't will stay disappointed, I'm sure !!" - Andre Luiz, on Reinfection

"This band will change it's name for "Are You Shit?" I hope that not." - Jaime Amorim, on Are You God?

"The mixture is so well done that you will forget why you are alive." - Fernando Comacho, on Disavowed

"I have no doubt that Blackened Moon put his money on the right place releasing this CD, and Chicago's scene I think is also going insane to have these freaks playing around and making victims on their life performances." - FC, on Corpsevomit

"What a shit!" - JA, on Krueger

"Well, if you are into this stuff here's a great motive to have a headache." - AL, on Brutal Mastication

"They are from London- a tremendous trouble for the Queen, because they are insane." - Chacal, on Infected Dissaray

...and so on.  Dunno if issues are still available, but check out their website.

- Ken McIntyre