How a man from Belgrade created a death metal magazine based on pure enthusiasm, which is bought from Greenland to Australia
Chances are one in a thousand you've heard of Qrixkuor, Sijjin, and Sweven. But the chances are equally slim that you can roughly guess what it is.
Srđan Šošo (44) knows. Not only does he know, he adores. Shosho works from nine to five, has a wife, children, spins the hamster wheel like most of us.
But whenever he arrives, he indulges in death metal. That's the extreme version metal as a genre that emerged from rock.
After all, type the above names into YouTube and listen. These are bands that will not sell out large halls and stadiums.
"That scene is all over the world in the deepest underground, but it is incredibly alive," Srdjan told our newsletter In between.
"Extreme metal is the last oasis of physical sound carriers. Even the smallest band will release a mini-album on vinyl, at least two hundred copies - and it will sell."
A great undertaking
It will sell. That's exactly how Srđan's venture went. He, in the sweat of his face, completely by himself, created a real death metal magazine in which there are interviews with musicians. It's called Embrace Death, he says over the internet. Everything is in English.
"The circulation of the first issue was about two hundred copies and it was completely sold out, all over the world. From Australia to Greenland. Everyone who bought it said they were very satisfied," says Srdjan.
He has been a part of the scene, metal forums for years. He knows people from the other side of the world, bands know him too. It helped to sell something.
Under your fingers
Bold print, full color, lots of pictures and illustrations. With the cost of registered mail, it costs almost twenty euros. We ask him, wouldn't metalheads like it if it was more reduced, if it was more underground.
"I wanted the underground to be in a mainstream package. Poor print quality isn't cool, it's a reluctance to invest money. With metal, the visual dimension is very important. Most albums have richly illustrated booklets. There are academic painters who have made careers with those illustrations."
Anyway, the magazine is there, you can feel it, smell it, read it. Srdjan says that he discovered the charm in persevering in his love for metal since his school days. To some it seems infantile, to him it's great.
"I had a webzine, a website for a long time. I'm a record collector, so I realized that part of the experience is loyalty to the physical dimension of music - the record, the cover, the smell. That's why I decided to switch to a printed magazine."
He says he buys Vreme every week. He likes the press under his fingers. Books are only when they are printed.
do it yourself
But how does it go when someone gets the idea to create a magazine?
The first is difficult. Stick and string. List of steps. Watching on YouTube how the design is prepared, what Photoshop can do, how the text breaks. Searching for interlocutors, interview preparation, editing. "I do all that crafting myself within my capabilities," says Srđan.
It helped that he came across the online printing center near his apartment in Belgrade and told Dragan, the owner, what he wanted there.
"I told him honestly, that I deal with utopia. I asked about the realistic market conditions of a small circulation," says Srđan. "That man supported my enthusiasm. He gave me conditions that for him are at the limit of profitability. If I hadn't come across him, the question is whether the magazine would look like this."
If you had the magazine in your hands, you would not see Srdjan's name anywhere. He says he fed his vanity a long time ago, and it's not unusual for metal bands to not even know where they are from or who they are. The point is in the content.
Srđan still does not know exactly where he will go with this. If he wanted something commercial, he certainly wouldn't have made a magazine about metal. Then again, he wonders, could you make a living from something you love? Or would love suffer if it turns into business?
The second issue is already ready.
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