SLAYER N°1 à 5

It's not a fanzine, but a book about a fanzine.
SLAYER mag was an important do-it-yourself publication in the early days of thrash, black and death metal, as it was one of the first obscure medias to deal with these kinds of music (At least in Scandinavia) and helped many very small bands when no one cared about them... The name of the zine was often associated with the cult stories surrounding the existence of early MAYHEM, and Metalion still publishes issues from time to time, which probably helped to build a cult aura of some sort.
French editor CAMION BLANC had the idea to publish the content from the first issues of SLAYER in a book, from the first one to issue 5, which is cool!
When I learnt about it, the temptation was too strong and I automatically needed to order a copy! No thought, no mind, just send the money as soon as possible and get it immediately!!! Zombie reading!! Zombie reading!! Zombiiiiie reeeadiiiiing!!! Addicted to the fanzinal skin!
But even if I was enthusiastic, some doubts remaint... "Would the initial pages be included? Would it be modified? Would the translations be written in the initial pages? How good would be these translations?" And other questions turned in my head...
Hopefully, the content is not bad: It contains all the initial fanzines’ content (Without any modification! Important!) on the left page, while a French translation is on the right one. These translations are quite useful, since the first two issues and half of issue 3/4 are in Norwegian.(The fifth one is totally in English).

These first issues are quite representative of underground metal fanzines from the 80's, it contains enthusiastic but short articles/ reviews/ interviews (Quite logical  considering the few amount of informations one could find about such bands back then, and (Maybe?) the younger age of editors…) and a fresh spirit of thrashing madness.
In the beginning it was more about thrash and heavy metal, but with each issue it turned out to be more involved into thrash, with a bit more Death metal each time... The content of the writing also developed into something more informative: More (And better) interviews...

I think some translations are a little bit too "literary" (A little bit more of "let it flow" would have made it closer to the original), and the layout of the French written pages could have been a little embellished to look less serious, but it's ok: I know it's not so easy to translate metal interviews, the meaning remains, and we kept the initial fanzines' pages!
More stories of Metalion such as in the introduction would have been great! (His meeting with MAYHEM, their first contact, a travel to Germany to meet ASSASSIN etc) but it's not a Metalion biography, it's a book containing the content of the zine, don't you remember?
It's something like deep underground from the 80's/90's available in many french bookshops, which is quite funny.

This A5 sized book will be a quite interesting reading for fans of underground thrashing metal who want to learn and feel more about these early days of thrashing madness! I think it would especially be an interesting order for French readers, even if it's not really a "Buy or die" item. Personally speaking, I think I would be more interested in a book containing issues 6 to 10 (With more old Death metal and early Norway Black metal), because as you probably remember: ONLY DEATH IS REAL!

It seems NUCLEAR WAR NOW Recs will release a book with many old SLAYER mag issues, so keep tuned if you don't read French or Norwegian...

http://www.camionblanc.com