Bloodsongs – Review

Bloodsongs

#8 (PO Box 533653 Orlando, FL 32853) $5
by Scott Hefflon

The publisher of Implosion: A Journal of the Bizarre and Eccentric and Thora-Zine brings Australia’s Bloodsongs back from the Dead! A 64-page full glossy quarterly filled with fiction, art, music, books, comics, and interviews, all dealing with the macabre, all well-written and legibly yet artfully laid out. Feature interviews with King Diamond, Ronnie James Dio, The Sandman‘s Neil Gaiman, and Hellblazer‘s Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis offer pages of on-target questions and coherent, well-edited answers. A true joy for those tired of sloppily-crafted, pointless interviews with their heroes. Usual ‘zine-style interview: the interviewer can’t write, can’t edit for shit, and has only a smattering of knowledge about the body of work in question, not to mention most ‘zine editors (title cap withheld ’cause they don’t deserve it) are hack writers with poor judgment in the first place and wouldn’t know how to salvage an insightful interview buried by gross ineptitude if their pathetic, misplaced ego-driven excuses for lives depended on it. (Note to self: Editors ought not review ‘zines.) But Bloodsongs is different. Very different. I read every word, some passages multiple times. On many occasions, I stopped and reread a paragraph to fully appreciate the wordsmithing, the visuals created in the mind, or to ponder the implications of what wasn’t being said. Now that’s a well-written publication. And yes, it’s on shiny paper so you don’t get ink all over your fingers as you repeatedly thumb through the pages. Bloodsongs is a worthy coffee table companion for readers interested in the dark side.