The Rock N' Roll Horror Zine

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...

One For The Road By Ira Rat It was the biggest check Frankie had ever seen, and he turned it all into cocaine almost immediately. He sat in a chair in his bedroom with his recent spendings piled high on desk, snow white and powdery. To say that Frankie’s rise to popularity was meteoric would seriously put a speed limit on the force that gravity put to heavenly bodies. Though he must admit that after a decade of punching the rock n’ roll time card, putting out two albums a year for as long as he could remember, that the last couple of years were definitely in an upward turn. Promoters weren’t trying to pay him off in Blue Ribbon tall boys anymore. Well, some did, but that was part of the image. You can’t be a former member of the Fuqs, and not be perceived as a drunken buffoon. It was kind of a package deal. An image that he worked hard from many years of touring to cultivate. Nothing denotes the classic “punk rock” ethos as well as crawling on your hands and knees to the...

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...

Kill Riff By E. N. Dahl Jamie invited me to see Kill Riff. I had nothing better to do. Besides, you don’t say no to a free show. She offered to foot the bill, so we arrived at The Hammer, where I blindly followed the swish of her mint green blouse through a mindless horde of pre-drunk superfans. I’ll admit, I didn’t pay attention to the opener. Whatever the band was, they did okay. It’s rude not to listen, worse not to pay attention, but a man five years older than my dad and fifty pounds heavier kept ‘accidentally’ bumping me. This kept happening even when Jamie and I moved another hundred or so feet into the floor crowd. Then the main band took the stage. A shaggy-haired man with three days’ worth of stubble and enough acne for my old school’s senior class stumbled up to the mic. Behind him, a surly drummer tapped his drumsticks together, pretending to warm up, while the bassist tipped his flask to the sky, oblivious to all of us. “We are Ultra. Are you ready for ...