Metal (2018)

How did this all start?

I started working on this project in 2018 with the aim of exploring new music (metal music in particular). As a kid I listened to everything and this solidified into an interest in primarily progressive metal. Mostly because my friends listened to them and I was exposed to it. After a few years of this, I felt rather bored and exhausted. I began to realize that I enjoy quite a lot more than just this.

Why did this turn into a magazine?

I have quite an inertia towards starting things. It usually has to have a plan with a measurable and well defined end. So I designed this project to review the albums released in the year 2018. The original reason to write was to bully myself from getting distracted while I listened. A few months in, it was turning out into a small book. That’s when I realized that this was going to need a fresh coat of paint. Working on the design was refreshing (especially compared to my watercolor project which was getting repetitive and stale). The pictures and the graphic design immediately gave the text a breath of fresh air. So I pivoted this into a magazine.

A good amount of writing

I learnt a fair bit about my own writing. I always find it hard to write without a cue. It was not the case now since I had a subject to write about. The challenge for me was describing sounds using words. This was particularly hard for me since I lack any experience with making music or playing an instrument. The solution I found was to relate the sound to my mood as I listened to the album repeatedly. This gave me a unique perception and took into effect the album as a concept, encouraging me to try and feel the songs. I also evolved in how I approached writing the reviews over time. Rereading my older reviews helped me avoid being repetitive.

Designing for engineers

I enjoy design, but most of my work as a PhD is wall-to-wall Serif font. To inspire myself I collected magazines, hoarded museum brochures and concerts tickets, and pinned everything I could find on pinterest.

I was also inspired by metal music, which in itself is rich with imagery. While it has a predominantly dark vibe, there are ample exceptions to this rule. I crafted each page with the aim of capturing the vibe of the album and/or the band.

Challenges, challenges, challenges!

Clearing the backlog of albums to listen to was very demanding by the end of the year. The amount of work (listening, writing & formatting) was rather overwhelming. I decided to write short snippets of the albums I couldn’t fully cover, while keeping much longer versions for the completed albums. In retrospect it added a lot of diversity in the presentation of the content.

In December of 2018, I got to work on putting it all together. I used an open source publishing tool called Scribus to build the pages. I worked on them as double spreads and made a unique page for each album. Everything that didn’t fit got tossed into the “other great albums” category. I sorted the bands by sections and started making playlists for each section. The peripherals like : about, contents, genre spreads, etc went in next. I was done with the project by February the following year.

Why should you read this magazine?

I sometimes feel that its hard to break the echo chamber that YouTube and Spotify create around me. I feel like most of my suggestions are of the type “people who listened to this also listen to …”. I found it vitalizing to actively scour the internet just to have a fresh look at things for you. While this has been quite a journey for me, I hope that this presents some old things in a new light. Who knows? maybe you’ll stumble on some interesting suggestions yourself.