Ratings

No - This site doesn't really have anything to offer at this time.
Uhm - This site is alright, but you'll have to decide for yourself.
Yes - This site is worth your time to visit.

All reviews this issue by Mariusz Zydyk. The reviews are presented in no particular order.

 

WORT's Mosh Pit

Rating: No

The Mosh Pit welcomes you with a frames layout, and plenty of animated GIFs/bullets flashing at you. Some will like it, some will not. WORT is a local community listener sponsored radio station in Madison, Wisconsin. And Mosh Pit is a weekly 3 hour segment airing on mondays. The show put up their playlists for the past 2 weeks and... that is about it. Yup, not a lot of information at all. But you'll be happy to learn that Stuck Mojo and Manowar are in the top 5 most requested bands played.

 

Afternight.Com

Rating: Uhm

Thanks to the lack of width and height tags, this page will take a while to come down. After which you will see a bunch of scattered and weirdly scaled planets to choose from. Most of the graphics seem original, but it sure is a weird assortement of them. If it wasn't for the title on top of my browser window I would have no idea this page is 'where unsigned bands worldwide unite'. But apperently this is such a place, so let's see if it delivers. Bands can get free web space here, and it seems like their page design is taken care of if the band wants it that way. Everyone has a brief band history overview (some longer than others) and samples to listen to. You can even order tapes and paraphanelia on-line as well for some of the bands. More useful than the band pages are the band listings archives. These give very brief, point form band descriptions, type of music played and contact info. Also of sume use is the Band Tools page which contanins a frontend to a tours seahc engine a like to Submit It, a universal search engine link submit system. Good if you want publicity for your band. Overall, I have found this page to be very confusing to navigate, the planet theme did not carry very well.

 

Genocide Magazine

Rating: Yes

Hey, look! Yet another underground music zine! Well, I guess I shouldn't complain, this is, after all, a good thing. The zine is currently in its third issue and has the usual sections for interviews, reviews, and articles. The intended atmosphere is supposed to be dark and gloomy, and I would say is achieved rather well. Witness the links to Marquis de Sade and trauma page links, and an entire article on the Manson family. The music represented by the zine is also quite dark, darkwave, ritual, doom black and gothic top the list. I found the number of interviews quite impressive, but from the band names only Moonspell sounded familiar. This is not exactly my type of music though. The interviews themselves are quite long and in-depth, so book a lot of time if you intend to read it all. The album reviews are not as impressively plentiful, and are more on the short side; overviews and summaries rather than reviews. Sure seems like a few people contributed, but the credits page lists only three names. I have been unable to determine how often the magazine comes out, and there are no backissues, so you better not miss any.

 

Svartur's Black Metal Page

Rating: Uhm

Black metal is right! Though the page background is white, which seems very odd to me considering the theme. The title graphic pictures some people wearing the 'classic' Viking outfits, but I just find them cheesy. Just my opinion. All you'll find on this page are links to black metal band pages. Don't expect any original content here. But there sure are a lot of links here! Oh yeah, and have a look at the list of interviews with various bands. Before clicking on the links however, try the 'Are you a man to be a Viking?' test. You better not proceed unless you pass... uhm, I think I am not worthy.

 

Total War Productions

Rating: No

If the first thing you see on a page is a missing title graphic, you know it's bad news. Total War Productions is a black metal label, and they showcase some (or all?) of their bands here. Of interest to black metal fans might be the short snippets of band news. Aside from that, there is nothing for you here.

 

Deathonateur

Rating: Uhm

This seems to be a page for a radio show, where black and death metal only are played. Industrial metal occasionally. Most of it is in French though.

 

Rukkus

Rating: Yes

I believe everyone will find the frame/Java enhanced pages most confusing and unusable. The regular pages, however, are not too bad, but lacking in design/presentation. It is nice being a site reviewer for ToC becasue you get to see all the different bands that originate half-way accross the world. This one is New Zealand oriented. It is a hard copy magazine dedicated to, what else, metal and punk. The web version has the interviews and show and album reviews. As an added bonus you can hear some streaming audio, if you have the IWave plug-in that is.

 

Son Of Spam

Rating: Yes

From the start you see that this site has had some thought and time put into it. It has that hip webzine look and feel to it. Once you get past the two pages of content warnings, you'll be presented with a table of contents of sorts. Damned if I know what the icon graphics are supposed to represent, but they are kinda cool looking. This is the 7th anniversary issue in case you are interested. I am having a lot of trouble navigating this site... clickable objects are not very obvious, and the number of links in general seems very small. Perhaps due to my inability to get around this place, the only interesting thing I found here was the Extreme Gallery, a showcase of sample works of art, or twisted minds. Not to be outdone by other sites, also included are links to dark and twisted corners of the web. This seems to be the theme here. Very interesting indeed, and I am sure somehow it has something to do with metal.

 

Aural Armageddon Webzine

Rating: Uhm

I thought missing width and height tags were annoying... but it just struck me that there is something else I like even less. Counters. Counters on top of pages. Those things are notorious for never loading up and disrupting the flow of the page. You are left at the mercy of your browser to time out, because of course you do not want to hit Stop in case you'll miss something. But really, do I care which visitor I am to your page? Counters were originally made for the page creator's convinience. So lets keep it this way and get the counters out of view, eh? This is my short rant for this issue. The AAW is a zine with the usual fare of reviews and interviews. It seems to me that there is only one issue per year, so I guess this classifies as an annual publication. The latest issue is just getting started, and there is nothing there yet to look at. The links and reviews indicate that metal of all kinds is welcome here, so drop by to read the reviews. The reviewers' opinions vary from the ones I am used to reading and hearing, and I'd recommend this page if you were planning to buy some older CDs.

 

Pure Fucking Hate

Rating: No

This is a personal web page, and it does not have anything to do with fucking hate, or even with hate in general. At least not that I could find. The page is loaded with MIDI files playing in the background, and I've never heard a hateful MIDI track. Just cheesy ones. Well, on to the actual site description now. PFH is an outlet for German underground bands, but I only saw one covered in any detail. You'll find plenty of links to satanic, vampiristic and magick pages though. In can you are still wondering what kind of music the author likes... it is black metal. And watch for falling Java classes.

 

The Dark Site

Rating: Yes

Hmmm, I didn't know that Tiamat, Fear Factory and Slayer belong to the extreme metal category. But apparently they do, because this is an Extreme Metal Mag. It is also a bilingual publication, so if you know some German have a look around. Flashing messages and Java script boxes will let you know that most of the articles are not yet translated into English and to be patient. Speaking of Java, the info boxes pop up in the weirdest of places, and in even weirder shapes. How about a 3000 by 100 window on a SVGA display? To sum up the content, the Dark Site is not as dark as it would like to be, with mostly mainstream metal coverage. But their logo is nice!