Gratitude Fanzine #1 + Ride the Fury #3 (Weekly Seizure - 11.24.13)

I got to live out a middle school obsession and see Monster Magnet this week. If you happen to be a fan of the Magnet, get in touch. I'm thinking about starting a usenet forum. This week I got a few zines, namely Edgegazer and Gratitude, and the ever growing stack on my desk of things to review just keeps getting less and less tamed.

1) Ride the Fury - Pro Wrestling Zine #3

I caught this one on the last go-around and liked it enough to order again. Many of you already know I'm a wrasslin' fan across the board, and I'm glad that there's some ink being dedicated to the similarities between the cultures. I'm also prone to buy things which have "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan on them.

USA! USA!

The zine also came with a homemade Ring of Honor DVD which I haven't watched yet, but is from a good era of that promotion. I'm stoked on this zine but have a few gripes. There's some really great purely wrestling zines right now (Atomic Elbow here in the states, and Calling Spots in the UK). The layout is a little too "indesign" ish, to the point where the interview with Jam of Code Orange Kids is almost unreadable due to weird spacing errors. However, it saves itself with a few gems. One being an interview with Tom Sheehan in which he tells a story about Indecision touring with Milhouse and Silent Majority and how they gave a shirt to Perry Saturn at a rest stop. I'm also a big fan of the question "If your parents said you could bring back one wrestler who passed away to come back to life to eat Thankgiving with you, who would it be?" Bummed no one said "Ravishing" Rick Rude though. That's my answer, no question.

Nope, that ain't NYC Mayhem-era Tommy Carrol. RIP Brother

Overall, it's sick, the DVD is a nice flourish and I loved issue 2. The fuzzy layouts may seem like a persnickety gripe, but my eyes suck and it was kind of a stumbling block here. Much respect to the back cover image though, a full on HBK tribute mural.

Barbershop Window

DVD's, zines, demos and anything else related to Ride the Fury records (including the above reviewed zine) at their bigcartel. 

2. Gratitude #1

I don't feel even remotely hyperbolic by calling this the best zine of 2013. As a means of disclosure, I actually contributed the Rampage centerfold, but my bias isn't any issue. Gratitude takes after the zenith-era of brilliantly written core culture zines Lockin Out #1 Fanzine and Trumbull Escapades. These zines were insular, obsessive and academic in ways few other zines were, and at times even genius. I won't sell this one that hard. You're either into the aforementioned zines and therefore 'get it' or you don't. I am going to leave this, my favorite quote in the entire zine because it absolutely articulates my position on Metallica better than anything I've ever managed to pen...and i wrote an entire 60-page senior capstone project on them in college. (Not a joke:

What's cool about Metallica is: everything. I revel in seeing them bum people out by doing things they sincerely think are great. Sometimes I don't even know if what they're doing IS great, there's just too much history there for me to make heads or tails of it. The world's finest authors couldn't make up a character like Lars Ulrich if it was their life opus - the closest we have is Pete Campbell from Mad Men. God bless them both. --Leah Geragosian (@diahleah)

Top notch content and contributors, excellent art, footnotes (!) and the best Free Spirit interview I've ever read. There's a few of them here at the Mosher's Delight bigcartel. Get on the right wagon, bunko. 

Me and the dog will show you who's hard