Germany’s SKULLCRUSHER crew is currently celebrating their five-year anniversary with the release of their ninth issue, so congrets from here for the necessary strength that is definitely needed in order not to throw in the towel in this fucked-up business a lot earlier already. Never got my hands on one of their previously published issues, so this is the first time I could actually check out what they are up to. Visually the whole zine looks rather impressive – professionally printed and layouted in black and white, with an exclusive coverart by Dragon Design (which unfortunately looks like a cheap copy of MAIDEN’s "Piece Of Mind" meets CANNIBAL CORPSE’s "Butchered At Birth"). The selection of bands honestly didn’t impress me too much at first as AMON AMARTH, NAPALM DEATH, CANNIBAL CORPSE, MY DARKEST HATE or IN FLAMES are usually the type of bands that get features anywhere anyway due to the massive promotion capaigns of their record labels. And I don’t see the need to give them this big exposure in an underground zine as well, which only has 48 pages available. But then I started to read the "interview" with DEICIDE’s Glen Benton and was highly amused. In itself it was probably extremely boring (judging it by the questions that get a mention), but the way they published it (more like a description of what happened with lots of sarcastic / ironic comments) proves that these guys are a lot better writers than I expected them to be! It kind of even reminded me on what the COTHURNUS guys came up with in their heydays. Same sense of humor is to be found in various other write ups in this issue (just check out the SKULLCRUSHER history for that!), so I ended up reading almost the entire zine. Here and there the reviews could be a bit more critical from my point of view and are partly lacking the necessary background (ENSLAVED are from Belgium and not Sweden and COVENANT’s "In Times Before The Light" album differs ALOT from the re-release as THE KOVENANT), just to name two examples here. I also still totally dislike the fact when writers are trying to pay as much attention to their own persons as to the featured artists (which we Germans all know from the monthly major magazines already and which the SKULLCRUSHER crew unfortunately also celebrates). But hey, this issue is available FOR FREE (except for the 1,- Euro which is supposed to cover the postage), so I couldn’t care less and you shouldn’t hesitate to get yourself a copy directly from Harald Deschler, Jörgstr. 9, 88410 Bad Wurzach, Germany (foreign readers should better ask for additional postage costs), skullcrushermagazine@web.de, www.skullcrusher.net