Hi and welcome to the semi-inaugural issue of Maelstrom! We present to you this, our first issue. This is sort of a trial version to see how we want our layout and presentation to be. Our full-on debut will be out within a month. If you sign up with the convenient subscription box on the main menu, we'll send you new issues when they become available.

We hope to separate ourselves from the large amount of print and web zines covering underground music forms with exceptional writers who are objective and open-minded. Although at the moment our content primarily concerns metal, we hope not to limit ourselves only to that genre of music, mighty as it may be. It's just that at the point we're at now, we seem to know a whole lot about metal, while being interested in other things. There are a few other little goodies that we'll hopefully be unveiling soon, but the nature of those must stay under wraps for now…

The idea to make this page came from Steppenvvolf. He and I met in Tokyo in February, 2000. Being goofy guys, we agreed that a web page dedicated to putting up photos of the worst metal album covers and band photos was clearly something that was necessary to all. We played around with that for a few months, when Steppenvvolf said "how about something more serious?". So here we are, with a complement of four contributing writers. The enthusiasm about this project is very high, and we expect the presentation, layout, and features of Maelstrom to exponentially improve in a short period of time.

In the meantime, if you'd care to send us any material you have, we'd be happy to review it. Of course, please send us contact info. The address is:

Roberto Martinelli
3234 Clay St.
San Francisco, CA 94115 USA

Enough fooling around. Please take a look at our first issue and enjoy. - Roberto

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