Tuesday, February 11, 2014

R'LYEH 11 (2013)




December 2013, 116/A4 pages, printed, Polish, interviews: KING DIAMOND, IMMOLATION, CANNIBAL CORPSE, PUNGENT STENCH, IMPERATOR, PROTECTOR, PARRICIDE, EPITOME, ANCIENT RITES, RISE FOR VICTORY zine, BETRAYER, MASACRE, ARKONA, ANAL VOMIT, RITUAL LAIR, BLOOD, DYSPHORIA, CRUCIFIER, ANIROE, APOKALYPTIC RITES, AMZIUS, NON OPUS DEI, HYPNOS, SACROFUCK, HEGEMOON, MASTER OF CRUELTY, OFFENCE / EXHALATION, PRELUDIUM, HOLODOMOR, SLAV, PAGANIZER, HELL:ON and NORTHERN PLAGUE (in spite of all…).

This is my third meeting with Adrian’s child. And definitely the best one so far. To begin from an ominous and dark front cover, through the countless interviews and reviews, additional other things to the absolutely cult last page. This time Adrian serves 100+ pages once again, without any advertisings or commercials, but the whole number of the reviews really knocked me down: 326 with music and 47 with press. Of course, if I counted well… And the reviews are the first thing I see about on the start. Believe me, it’s not an easy task to break through this enormous wall of text, but I like Adrian’s writing style very much and it was nothing but a real pleasure. He doesn’t use superfluous words or exaggerated descriptions. Only direct to the essence. Though I don’t understand writing capital letters in the case of the adjectives, in Fester review “Norweski”, in Graveyard / Nominon “Szwedzki”, in Headhunter D.C. “Brazylijskich”, in Moder “Niemieckiego”, in Hell Press zine “Bizantyjski” to name a few.  Lowercase is the only way here!

Interviews. It’s not a surprise that this piece of underground contains of big names (King Diamond, Cannibal Corpse, Immolation) and some (completely unknown for me) crews coming straight from the depths of the underground as well . About quality, I read MANY very interesting, full informative talks, but the best ones are Rise for Victory zine (Mirek Górka) and Imperator (Adrian, the drummer of the band) conducted by Wojtek Lis. Then, also noteworthy, with good questions and answers: Parricide, Epitome, Ancient Rites… I’d like to point out on King Diamond interview, as it is not focused on bygone times, but the whole refers to the crucial events in King’s life and health. The transformation is audible, even I can write he is a wiser man now. It is a rather short talk, but forget about any unprofitable argle-bargle.  

While looking through the bands list in every zine, I always search for any crews coming from Middle and South America. This time R’Lyeh proposed four names: Apokalyptic Raids (Brazil), Masacre (Colombia), Master of Cruelty (Paraguay) and Anal Vomit from Peru. And even if the first trio gave good answers, Anal Vomit is a fucking disaster here: questions are much longer than ‘superb’ answers. And I wonder why Adrian decided to make them an opener for this issue? Alphabetical order reasons? Did they pay him? During all these one-sentence lame answering, I found really paralyzing information: Milo is a lawyer… No comments, ha, ha! It should be nuked definitely, as R’Lyeh is a very good brand amongst paper releases.

Reviews, interviews, but also many live reports not only from Polish land, well known columns from the previous issues like “Pomyłki undergroundu część XI i XII” (in English “The Underground Mistakes”), “Metal zza krat” (“Metal from Jail”), scene report (this time from Malaysia), a stirring letter to redaction and so on. But a separate subject is a case of Northern Plague band from Poland. They have been described as clowns of this issue, but when I started to read this fascinating story, I was convinced I had faced a thigh-slapper. Unfortunately, everything became a sad truth after a while… The band which looks for a sponsoring. The band which can offer many goods in return. Another mistake of underground? Absolutely. A sign of modern times? Yes… so beware of the Northern Plague, their sponsored debut album has been already unleashed! Business metal attacks!!!

To sum all the things up: poor are the non-Polish readers! You’re missing really great piece of underground press. R’Lyeh belongs to the best titles in Poland beyond the shadow of a doubt, with each consecutive issue it becomes a better shot of metal words. It’s simply great that it saw the light of the day, because nothing was obvious during the predecessor. Fortunately the duodecimo is planned by Adrian and company, I hope that any kind of misspelling will be eliminated in future and I won’t see another orthographic orgy like in Arkona review… So, I wait.   


ADRIAN
P.O. BOX 20
02-919 WARSZAWA
POLAND
hellishband@o2.pl

9,5/10
-Tlacaxipehualiztli 

(written on February, 2014)

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