Regarding fanzines, I don’t need much to enjoy the read. While an old-school cut-and-paste layout or hand-drawn borders adds a lot, a simple Word 95 layout with just text, a logo, and a photo can easily meet my approval. If I can see the passion and dedication behind it, I couldn’t care less if it’s just a few stapled A4 sheets, like the brochures of the 1980s.
Altar from Russia satisfies all of the above. It takes me back to my own school assignments in the mid-90s, when Windows 3.1 was running on a 486. That is Altar; no frills, no nonsense, where everything revolves around the text and the ideology.
Mad Slayer’s ideology is is clear and he doesn’t hide it: the Extreme Metal underground is being infiltrated by hipsters and people who value memes and going viral over music and history. These characters deserve no place or platform in the underground. He reinforces this train of thought with the bands featured in his debut issue. With Goat Semen, the Finnish Witchcraft, Vulcano, Sarcófago, and the German Poison, to name a few, he has clearly found like-minded spirits. To quote Erick from Goat Semen: “Kids, for fuck’s sake, try to make truly incomprehensible and dirty hellish sounds instead of posing for 1000 photos. Spend more time rehearsing than fucking around with your cell phone camera”. It’s safe to say you won’t be seeing Gaera or similar acts in an issue of Altar.
This is a fanzine for those who understand the combination of goats, spikes, gasmasks, and bullet belts paired with unpolished Black Metal and Death Metal. Or as Mad Slayer puts it: “This zine is only for true and dedicated Metal fanatics who are obsessed with it so much, that they will still buy paper zines to this day”.
