Hello, dear Maelstrom readers,

The forecast for the new issue kind of looked bleak, but we picked up a good amount of steam toward the end, bringing you 45 album reviews, three live reviews, four interviews with recording artists (The Gathering, Kotipelto, Enid and Orphaned Land), and one very unusual one with the man behind the site called abandoned-places.com.

I’m particularly excited about this last one. See, the guy who runs it is an airline pilot who, in his spare time, breaks into abandoned buildings and castles and factories, and photographs what he sees. The lot is catalogued on his site, and you can read what he has to say about it all here. So it seemed only just to interrupt our usual use of Gustave Doré’s work for our front page, and use one of the evocative shots taken from these locales.

We’ve got another contest for you. This month, we’re giving away copies of the new Subterranean Masquerade, Temporary Psychotic State, and the new Winds, The Imaginary Direction of Time. Please check out the “This Month’s Contest” link for the details.

In Maelstrom news, our man Abhishek Chatterjee, out there in India, is undergoing something known only as Six Sigma Black Belt training. No, he’s not joining a college kung fu fraternity, he’s furthering his knowledge as an electrical engineer. He’ll soon be a black belt. We swear we are not making this up.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to our man Joshua, who just underwent hernia surgery (the front, male-only kind.) We know first hand that it’s no fun, especially when you think when your groin will tear apart, like some scene from one of the albums we talk about, merely from laughing.

So remember, lift with your legs.

Happy reading,

– Roberto Martinelli
1573 Dolores St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
USA