Let's face the facts: no matter how good they are - fanzines are really difficult to sell, especially nowadays, when the internet is a way easier, quicker and cheaper information source for many Metalheads around the world... With that in mind it's an even riskier venture to publish a zine whose content consists of pure underground names almost exclusively. Well, the editors of Germany's BANGING IMPULSE zine obviously couldn't care less as they did exactly that! Apart from less than a handful of interviews with bands from the 80s (TOXIK - coverstory, VIOLENT FORCE and MINOTAUR), one with DESASTER and one with a guy named Frank Stöver (ooops...) issue number 5 only has bigger features on bands in here that I personally wasn't familiar with previously (BOOMERANG, MECHANIX, TORIAN, PHILOSOPHER, ANGEL OF DAMNATION and DESILENCE). Same goes for the 32 reviews... I didn't even know of the existence of most of those releases. But that's more than fine with me, cause this is what fanzines are here for, aren't they? To introduce fresh underground blood to the interested readers instead of coming up with the same boring shit that the major magazines deliver every fuckin' month. BANGING IMPULSE is a simple, yet very clearly layouted black and white zine, done by people who obviously don't give a fuck about what's supposed to be THE next big thing and therefore they totally deserve your support. I would only avoid to include a poster next time (VIOLENT FORCE b/w TOXIK in this issue) and use those wasted four pages for more content instead. Don't know the exact price (there's 2,-€ mentioned on the cover, but that's without postage of course), but you can easily find that out by sending an email to János "Thrasher" Cseke (ironthrasher@hotmail.com).

Frank Stöver

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