Book review II: Zero Tolerance #108

I've had the idea to do a review for this magazine issue I bought a couple months ago, but I didn't have the chance to do that yet, partly because of my 3-month busy schedule (one month done, two to go). But now that I have a small gap in that schedule, and I finished working on some other things, I can finally do my review for...

This won't be as detailed or super-long as my History of Heavy Metal review. Anyway, Zero Tolerance is an extreme metal magazine from the UK. I usually read metal magazines such as Metal Hammer and Terrorizer (before its discontinuation) only in bookstores when they're unwrapped so I don't have to buy them or take them home. But that Zero Tolerance issue was wrapped, and I wanted to read it so bad, so that one I bought and took home. It was actually one of the last ever books I bought from that bookstore, which got shut down two months later, and there isn't any point in going to that bookstore anymore anyway because I go to the mall that has that bookstore for my Robotics class, and the place that had my Robotics class, which happened to be right across from, shut down too, putting my Robotics classes on hold.

Anyway, about the magazine itself, it's quite cool, though it's more for the heavier metalheads that myself. It seems to tackle the darker metal genres like black metal, death metal, doom metal, with Behemoth appearing in the front cover already being the tip-off. I also don't plan to listen to the CD that the magazine comes with. Still a couple bands I'm already familiar with have been mentioned, with Revocation having an article mentioned their recent album Netherheaven. The true highlight for me though is... (blast-beat drumroll...) Lorna Shore! They have their own article in which guitarist Adam De Micco is interviewed, an ad for their new album Pain Remains, and a brief mention of their live performance in the August 2022 Bloodstock Open Air where other bands had performed. Bummer there isn't a review for Pain Remains, but it was before its release as of publishing.

All in all, it's quite a solid magazine issue from Zero Tolerance, but I might not keep it forever. After all, I'm still with my sometimes suspicious parents, and I don't want them to get any wrong ideas. I know an outside-world friend who's into black/thrash/speed metal, so maybe I can send it to him. But again I still like this magazine quite a bit, so I have a bit of tolerance for ZERO TOLERANCE.

3.5/5

I got a few of the very early issues of ZT and found it suited my taste better than Terrorizer (which was still going at the time). It was a decent mag, but suffered the same problems as all printed media that has to attract readers to keep afloat in that it tended to cover the better known acts and didn't really delve into the underground.