Writing a review about a zine that I’ve created myself 13 years ago is a pretty strange situation, but as this is the re-print edition from 2010 and current SNAKEPIT editor Laurent asked me to do so, I’ll give it a try nevertheless… When I originally came up with the whole idea of SNAKEPIT, I was totally fed up with the Black and Death Metal scene and simply wanted to go back to the roots of Metal even more by starting up a zine that should mainly feature bands that had split-up long time ago already and / or played old school Metal exclusively. At that period of time, nobody really seemed to care about traditional Metal acts anymore and a totally unknown act from Sweden named HAMMERFALL had just released their debut full length… When I check out the content of SNAKEPIT # 1 now there’s definitely a couple of acts that I could easily live without and that I wouldn’t give a feature again, but I guess that’s pretty natural. On the other hand I’m still very happy about the fact that the DESTRUCTOR interview for example not only lead to a CD re-release of their "Maximum Destruction" album via Listenable Records, but also motivated the band enough to reform again and give it another try. Next to DESTRUCTOR SNAKEPIT # 1 featured interviews with a.o. VOIVOD’s Away (about his artwork), Marty Friedmann (about his activities in ALOHA / VIXEN / HAWAII etc.), Tom Gattis (about DEUCE / TENSION / WARDOG), EXODUS, TESTAMENT, EXCITER, THE RODS, VIRGIN STEELE, HEAVY LOAD, RIGOR MORTIS, NASTY SAVAGE, ARMORED SAINT, TYGERS OF PAN TANG and a BLACK DRAGON RECORDS label special. Some Death thrashing Metal was also included already (AURA NOIR, EVER DARK, MORTEM, VOMITORY, WARHAMMER), so everyone who’s complaining about the fact that Laurent started to include more brutal stuff in later SNAKEPIT issues should know that it has been a part of the zine’s concept since day one! All interviews of course still weren’t as in-depth as the stuff you’re getting to read in SNAKEPIT these days, but I suppose / hope you’ll still get some info in them anyway. Compared to the original edition the overall printing quality turned out a little bit weaker, but I suppose the better paper quality for the cover / backcover and the free DESTRUCTOR live 7" EP will easily make up for it. Don’t be confused by the number of pages mentioned above (as the original # 1 only had 64 pages)… this is just due to a couple of advertisements that weren’t included in the original issue. So, if you missed out on SNAKEPIT # 1 back when it originally came out, this is your chance to pick it up now. I’m not quite sure about which mailorders might have it in stock already, but no matter what – it is on sale directly from www.shadowkingdomrecords.com for $9. By the way, there’s plans to reprint the other old SNAKEPIT issues as well in the not too distant future, so watch out for them as well!