In the airport on my way to North Carolina this past Friday, a magazine I was unaware of called Paste caught my eye. This was largely due to the cacophony on the cover (took me a minute to realize it was gunshot + glass) and the highlighted Q&A with Chuck Palahniuk, of whom I am a huge fan. I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of good material found within.

Being October and the magazine’s editorial staff’s also fandom of Halloween, they dedicated this particular issue to Violence and Death (capitalized intentionally).

The magazine itself is very visually pleasing and generally well written. It follows the blog-esque format of other current new media favorites such as Radar and Blender, which also means there are a gloat of ads throughout. But having no articles longer than 3 pages or so qualifies this magazine as particularly functional for airport and airplane usage.

Anyways, this issue had several interesting and whimsical articles on topics surrounding horror and violence and death, notably a comparison between Death Metal and Gospel Music (with quotes from Cannibal Corpse), an short quip on fake blood with the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, and an article on blood and violence in the media in general, and why people like us (Vincent, myself, and you dear readers) might be drawn to such images and emotions evoked by them.

There are a couple of web-only articles for this issue, and they might be the best ones: an interview with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor and a rumination on the birth of Black Metal.

Check out an issue, particularly this issue.

Tags: magazine, mastodon, paste, violence

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.