I have always loved this issue.
I started a new goal not too long ago – to blog every day again and, to give myself some content to go with, I decided to blog about a back issue of HM, starting with the first official copy of HM (issue #55, right after we changed the title from Heaven’s Metal to HM). Turns out the blog composition took longer than I thought and what I thought would be a quick job turned into a long one.
Here I am, though, trying to mount this horse again.
This issue – #59, dubbed the “Summer Issue” – had one of my favorite bands on the cover, Stavesacre. Other bands listed on the cover are:
King’s X
Godfear
Kerry Livgren
Third Day
Supertones
Newsboys
The back page of this issue had a black graphic of SIN SIN SIN SIN SIN SIN like a tiled wallpaper pattern, with a giant red blob of blood dripping down over the sin to cover it. Someone from Minnesota had this custom painted on the gas tank of their motorcycle. We later ran of photo of that. Twas a cool moment. The closest you can come to someone tattoo-ing your artwork on their flesh. This design was created by an old friend named Todd Pannell. He had a cable access show called Reel Visions, which played a bunch of Christian metal vids, as well as custom videos of skater footage he shot with current metal/alternative tunes played as the soundtrack. He predated G-Rock by at least a decade. He left Austin in the early ’90s after being offered a job at a bigtime televangelist in New Orleans (Jesse Duplantis) as their head video producer. He’s been there ever since.
Ads in this issue included:
Mortification – for Envision Evangelene (and another ad for their Live Without Fear Tour)
Tooth & Nail – for the Ninety Pound Wuss debut (and another one for Plankeye, Stavesacre, Driver Eight, Havalina Rail Co)
Blackball – for their self-titled debut
Salt Music – for Sign of the Times, Cloud Merchants and Quiet City (and another one for their Live at Club 328 video
HM merch – displaying “old school” items like Heaven’s Metal Video Magazine VHS tapes vs. “new school” like HM shirts.
5 Minute Walk – for the Seven Day Jesus album
Freedom Records – for Soulfood 76
Gray Dot – for the LS Underground live album, Bring It Down Now
Cornerstone ’96
Camelot Music – for Plankeye, Bronzspondi, Mortal, Chaos is the Poetry, Stavesacre and T&N Video Compilation
CCD (Christian Compact Disc)
Guardian – for their Kingdom of Rock self-release
Rescue Records – for 12th Tribe, Fros’T and Smooth Ruffness (and another ad with POD, NIV, Blah and Dogwood)
Cling Recordings – for Aeturnus, Dog Baby and Frank’s Enemy
Intense Records – for Tourniquet’s The Collected Works of
Crossroads ’96 Festival (with Rez, Johnny Q Public, Sixpence and Chonda Pierce) and another ad for the Youth Camp
Liquid Disc – for Fourth Estate, One Hundred Days, Jimmy A and Strawmen
Myrrh Records – for Guardian’s As Seen on TV VHS tape
Tourniquet – for their shirts for The Collected Works of
Mere Bone Comics
Tomfest ’96
Ninety Degree Records – for The Fairburns and Thryce Denied
Performance Magazine (a trade) – for The Promoters/Clubs Guide
Flying Tart – for Aleixa and the Stryper Tribute album
Mediatracts – for Paul Howey
Alarma – a two-page color spread for EDL, Poor Old Lu, Chaos is the Poetry, Flowers for June, Rainy Days and AFewLooseScrews
Z Music Television
Musicraft
HM Hotline (a 1-900 # to get weekly Hard News updates)
Texas Rock Fest ’96 (with Mortification, Jesus Freaks, One Bad Pig, Beheaded)
The Metal Crusade Report
Michael Beatty
Torman Maxt
Lifeline Guitar Strings
Paramaecium
Ultimatum
HodgePodge Productions (for 3 different shows with Ghoti Hook, Mortification and Jesus Freaks)
Christian Demo Clearing House
The Mosh Fest
Pepper Records – for Moral Issue
Kingdom Records – for the Fishes and Loaves compilation
Floppy Fish Records – for Towne Cryer, Glenn Rowlands, Painted by Moses, Disciple (the PA hardcore band), Damp and Agressive Change
8-Ball Cholos
Rad Rockers
Innocent Records – for Mike Roe, Peace 586, Spooky Tuesday, Undercover and The 77s
Rockport Records
Atlanta Institute of Music
The subscription card thing (you know, that little card that falls out when you open the magazine?) was a full page thing affixed to the page with “tip-in” glue that removed itself without tearing the page. It had two subscription cards with dashed lines to show where to cut it out and a third card to enter a contest to have “lunch with Blackball at Cornerstone.” We charged Metro One the price of printing and affixing these pages into the magazine. Not a bad deal for us and not a bad deal for them (though probably better for them, since we could’ve and should’ve charged them more for the prominent placement).
Letters to Ed included gripes about the Stryper Tribute Album. I think fans of the band did not appreciate the alternative takes on their cherished metal tunes.
Hard News highlights included Living Sacrifice showing their new DJ-less lineup; Johnny Q Public, X-Sinner in the studio and Sometime Sunday saying goodbye.
The spread feature on Godfear was a sign of thinking wide and out-of-the-box. I just wish I had left more white border around the layout, and used a cleaner, sans-serif font. The live photo of their frontman Sean Vargas is cool.
The Seven Day Jesus story was fun for me, because the label did not send me a band photo, so I used a page out of my high school yearbook. I changed the names of three of my best friends to have last names that begin with the letter “S” and in between them was one of those “Photo Not Available” images for Seven Day Jesus. At the top of the page was a letter that said,
“Dear Teacher,
Please excuse Seven Day Jesus.
They’re out for ministry.
Sincerely,Mrs. Seven Day Jesus”
The Newsboys feature used a photo of the band, which I inversed to be negative on a black background. The “King’s X Flies Again” feature included a photo of guitarist Ty Tabor flying over a jump on his motocross bike. In addition to repairing computers and numerous other tasks, he also raced motocross as often as possible.
The Stavesacre cover story featured some great photography. The one thing I remember about this story is I had assistance transcribing the interview. Apparently something was hard to hear or understand and the confession of the lead singer of the sin of adultery was translated as:
“…I was promiscuous – fornicating and experiencing all kinds of stuff. I was a fornicator, man. I was a manipulator. I messed around with some drugs. I did a lot of stuff that was bad. I hurt a lot of people’s feelings and I hurt a lof of people – probably beyond what they are capable of forviging. Even if they may not hate me, they probably won’t ever trust me again. That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way things went. That’s the way I lived. I was totally self-centered and totally inconsiderate of other people most of the time…”
I’m not sure where the word “adultery” got filtered out, but it was an innocent mistake in someone who didn’t do the interview transcribing and typing what they thought they heard. I found this out by asking frontman Mark Salomon what he thought of the interview. “I was tripping, man,” he said. I asked why and he told me that he couldn’t figure out why the detail of being in adultery was taken out. “I thought maybe it was too bad of a sin or something,” he shared. That wasn’t the case, but I could see how he would wonder about that, after having been so open and honest about his failure. That’s a bummer that we didn’t print that accurately.
The Fourth Estate article talked about the ground-breaking Transperformance Guitar and how Dave Beegle was the pioneer with that self-tuning instrument. The centerfold poster was a sweet live shot of him playing. The Supertones got good coverage in HM. Missouri metal band Aerturnus did, too. Even Brian White & Justice and Third Day got feature articles. Roadside Monument got a good article, too, which delved into somehow trying to explain their experimental sound.
I always enjoyed being able to interview Kerry Livgren and this four-page feature offered plenty of room for that conversation. The Geezer Butler Says feature was laid-out sideways. It was an honor to interview a former member of Black Sabbath back in 1996. I asked him about a Sabbath reunion:
“Should there and will there be a Sabbath reunion?
There probably should be, but there won’t be. The only way it could ever possibly happen would be for vast amounts of money and that’s the wrong way to come together.”
Interesting how that changed over time…
As far as the Album Reviews went in this issue, it was interesting to see how Ear Candy from King’s X turned this band from an ignorable “musician’s band” to “a truly great album” in reviewer Brian McGovern’s head. The Choir got a raving review for Free Flying Soul and I’m Your Biggest Fan, V.1 exposed the readers to Blaster, Coolidge, Exhaust, Shorthanded, Blah and more. Mental Destruction‘s first album got a fair nod.
This issue had four concert reviews in it. All short. Only one with a photo. Three Crosses; Grammatrain and Dakota Motor Co; Guardian; and Third Day and Rocketboy.
The Internet Madness page had a lot of url’s with those long and impossible-to-memorize url’s, like http://www.canit.se/~pst/venidomine.html instead of something easier, like venidomine.com (those were NOT the days!).
Not our best issue, but some of the parts are splendid.
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