Prior to travelling over to the UK, Marcus and I had discussed the old zines that we did in the mid 90's. Thankfully, I only had a single copy of the embarassing personal zine that I had done called Still Hope, so I wasn't able to get him a copy. Marcus, however, had additional copies of the Insignificant zine that he did, and was able to give me the two issues that he had done. Right out of the gate, I can tell that Marcus's zine was way above the quality level that I was working at at the time. Cleaner layouts, interviews with band, and actually printed as opposed to running off copies on the office photocopier like I had done. I haven't taken the time yet to read through these, but I'm sure the writing is more interesting as well.
One of the more interesting things about this zine, was that issue number two came with a 7 inch. Evel are one of those 90's melodic bands out of the mid-west that no one knows or will remember... I know that in my case, I'd never heard them until Marcus handed me this copy of his zine. The record was released by Foresight Records prior to getting scooped up to be included as a bonus 7 inch with Insignificant, and while I was aware of the label and had picked up couple of their early releases (including the excellent Ceilishrine 7 inch from '94), by the time this Evel record was released in '96, it didn't even register on my radar at the time.
To be honest, I was not really interested in this Evel record when Marcus handed it to me. I'm sure that he told me what they sounded like, and I know that we talked about Ceilishrine, but my mind is stubborn and I was too fixated on the band name and assumed that this was some metalcore bullshit that I wouldn't like... which again is dumb, because I definitely like what was considered metalcore in the 90's. I have no idea why I was being so stubborn here, but when I finally put this record on the turntable as I was preparing to write this post, I had to stop and reevaluate because I did not expect this record to be this good. This record just fits that mid 90's melodic vibe so well and I eat this shit up. Fuck yes, this is such a great find 25+ years after its release.
"We firmly believe in limited edition and personalised products."
Nice sticker with info about the Insignificant version of the Evel 7 inch, and hand numbered out of 531.
3 comments:
Not long after this came together, the singer of Evel came to stay at my house for a few days. It was a long time ago and there is a lot that I don't really remember about the whole thing, but what I do remember was that he wore a full Kappa tracksuit the whole time, and he was absolutely obsessed with Clutch. 'The Elephant Riders' had just come out and I think he may have immediately got some kind of Elephant Riders tattoo. The one thing I remember him saying was (quote) 'Clutch is an over 18s band'... his point being that younger people didn't really get Clutch. Kinda funny that 18 was considered old to the early 20 something us. Anyway, I think he stayed with us for maybe like 3 days, and after he left I don't think I ever heard from or saw him again. Man, the 90s were fucking weird...
Ha ha. Great story. Clutch isn't for the kids.
Looks like there needs to be a fanzine section on both of your blogs.
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