The Rock N' Roll Horror Zine

The Devil Guitar by Michael Britten It had been delivered.   I raced up to my lofty apartment with both trepidation and excitement.  I moved through my rooms down towards the back, and there it stood, The Devil Guitar. It was basically a 335, but with a difference.  Said to be one of a kind. Handcrafted by Mr. Gibson himself for a man who performed the black arts.  The guitar had become a legend. Its hollow body looked lackluster with its natural, and I might add, unvarnished wood.  This was a request of the customer. It is said that he baptized the guitar with the blood of a human sacrifice, hence the slightly darkened staining.  And it is also written that the tuning pegs were carved from real bone. These I quickly inspected, but they offered up no clue, other than being slightly course to the touch.   I did not further inspect this stunning curio.  The legend surrounding it and its strange owner was for another day. ...

A Piece Of History By Ben Fitts David spotted the guitar in the back of the shop, buried behind rows of shiny new Stratocasters and Les Pauls and sleek black guitars marketed towards bedroom shredders. The guitar looked ancient. Its once white finish had turned a sickly pale yellow with age and strips of it were missing, revealing the bare swamp ash underneath. At some point someone must have spilled nail polish or something on it, because flecks of dark red stained the guitar around its humbucker pickups.   But best of all, it had no brand logo or other identifier on its headstock, meaning it was probably built in some average joe’s workshop. It was probably one of a kind. “Hey,” David called to the clerk behind the counter, “could I please try that one over there in the back?” The clerk ceased fiddling with the massive blue gauge in her left ear. A crusty ring surrounded the piercing and it looked freshly infected. “Sure,” she said, fishing a key out from a drawe...

Made In Norway By Josh Anderson Beneath a blackening sky, a Ford Econoline cuts its way across the upper midwest, a pathogen in the veins of the American night. Its occupants, exiles from polite society, spend their days navigating endless expanses of highway. By night they descend into basements, subterranean sanctums where black-clad masses gather to witness their performance of arcane nocturnal rituals. Except lately, no one had been coming to the fucking shows. The last tour had been an unmitigated disaster, plagued by perfidious promoters, incompetent sound guys, and pitiful turnout. The members of King Paimon held no illusions of achieving fortune or fame; their strain of heavy metal plodded along at a glacial pace, mired in dissonance and distortion. It was challenging music that demanded patience and rumination, scarce resources in this age of instant gratification. However, nothing had prepared them for the crushing indifference they faced night after night, playing...