About LotFP
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a heavy metal magazine. You know, printed on real paper. It is published every whenever. Its content is totally independent of record company supervision or interference, and LotFP contains the most critical heavy metal writing currently in print.
The laws that Lamentations of the Flame Princess will live by:
- LotFP will at all times treat music as an art form that has value
- LotFP will at all times treat heavy metal as a serious form of musical expression.
- LotFP will at all times value authenticity, honesty, and talent as positive qualities, and will condemn anything contrary to or hindering authenticity, honesty, and talent as a danger and a fraud
- LotFP will at all times have critical, in-depth content
Because publishing is expensive, the majority of LotFP's work goes on the web. All printed content is exclusive to the print edition for a period of six months after publication. LotFP would rather be print-only and not bother with this whole internet thing, but LotFP is a money-losing enterprise and is unwilling to take the steps to change that, so printing happens when it happens. So enjoy the intraweb content.
A history:
1998 - 2001: Seven full-size magazines were published on newsprint to be given away for free through various distributors. I was frankly not ready to be publishing my own magazine, as crappy image quality detracted from the layouts and it was full of immature writing expressing thoughts not yet fully formed. I had three hundred albums and dissatisfaction with the music press at the time. That was enough to get me started, and my idea was, "The problem with the music industry is that it oncentrates on the wrong bands. I will fix everything by concentrating on the right bands!" I had a hard-on for the popularity of my music" so all efforts were put into making "my music" more popular, and the magazine was full of advertising. I put so much strain on my finances publishing and distributing LotFP that I was mooching meals and postage money off of other people frequently since I couldn't pay for it myself. In spite of all of this, there was great good done. Some excellent, excellent interviews were published. Exposure to how the publicity process works, exposure to literally thousands of record company-provided albums, and experiments in writing techniques led to constant refinement of methods and intent. After the third issue, I was still concerned too much with commerciality and popularity, but I'm not embarrassed by the form or writing. The opening editorial to issue four was my awakening as far as rejecting the status-quo as far as scene respect, popularity, and having true individual thought and character to LotFP. Print runs ranged from 1000 of issue one, to a maximum of 10000 of issue six.
2001 - 2003: Inspired by the format and delivery of The Wrestling Observer newsletter, LotFP attempted to go weekly, with the idea of delivering album reviews the week of release and being an up-to-date source of heavy metal news and news commentary. This format was sold by subscription. This idea was utter death to work-drive, as sales got to about the 100 subscription mark and remained steady without increase from there. Conducting interviews is never a problem, but transcribing them and preparing them for publication is a huge pain in the ass. Doing that on a weekly basis was murder. I even brought in paid columnists in an attempt to diversify the magazine so readers wouldn't just have me me me yelling at them all the time. It also was an attempt to not have to fill up all the pages myself every week. When diversification didn't increase sales and lessened workload didn't inspire me to keep deadlines, I dropped the paid columnist idea and issues just got released later and later and I gave up on the weekly heavy metal newsletter idea, and ended it after the fifty-second "weekly" issue was released. The entire idea lasted exactly a year and a half. Aside from quality writing (when I wasn't shovelling out crap to fill space quickly), the best things about this period were the mocking of the powers-that-be in the heavy metal industry, and the idea of dropping outside advertising and existing through mine and the readers' support alone.
2003 - 2004: I never learn. Instead of doing weekly newsletters, I switched to a monthly digest format, again designed to be given away free through various heavy metal CD vendors online. Advertising again appeared as I was printing up 1000 of each issue and didn't want to take the financial hit, but even that was gone by the final issue. Five of these were produced, and the final one was about six months too late to be "monthly". I think the only reason I bothered to put it out was that I was determined to have a fifth anniversary issue if it killed me. Of course it was double the usual number of pages so it did kill me financially. During this period, editorial content matured and interviews were at their most consistent quality ever. I'm very proud of my work in this period.
2004: In the first half of 2004, after putting out the last issue, I was half-heartedly preparing for another issue, but in reality I wanted out. It's unfortunate that some cool interviews with Dusk and Dan Swanö were conducted and never released, but the years of feeling responsible for delivering hype to counter the hype that record labels produced was just draining, and I wasn't searching out new bands very hard anyway. I wanted to just do nothing. The given excuse to readers was that I was going to go through a life change and move to Finland, which was true, but just an excuse to stop doing this. Some half-ass effort was made to keep the website updated, but really, I was done. LotFP RIP. I moved and didn't give a forwarding address so all of the promo CDs still being sent would just get returned. I was just a listener again.
2005: Moved to Finland for three months in the beginning of the year and was heavily involved in the writing for another project when I got inspiration to write about music again. Looking at this timeline it may seem like no big deal, but remember that I'd put out sixty-four issues of LotFP out in a five year period. I was used to being busy as hell producing LotFP material, so an eighteen month hiatus was a big deal. SCUM was released after I returned to the States, an issue that was taken up entirely by a single essay. No ads. 1000 copies distributed. Proofreading was done for the first time ever before release. LotFP rocks. I was in Finland again by the end of the year.
Early 2006: I got married. Looking to the future, as it's mid-January as I write this. LotFP will be produced every so often, whenever I both feel like it and can afford it. The website will be updated whenever I have something interesting to put up. A book (or series of, depending on interest) is in the works compiling old interviews and issues, with any profits being dumped back into producing new issues. Heavy metal lives on in the shadows while music pretending to be heavy metal climbs the charts. Business as usual.
August 2006: LotFP resumes a semi-regular schedule, printing four to six times a year.
There are a few people that deserve special thanks:
Jeff Wagner and Matt Johnsen deserve some sort of award for their degree of articulation and authority which allows them to be highly judgemental without ever appearing petty or condescending. If my brain could ever be reprogrammed, I think I would want to write like them. They've also been highly supportive of LotFP from the beginning.
Marty Rytkonen for that first big boost of publicity and confidence.
Andreas Katsambas has been through one hell of a ride with The End Records. We both started our enterprises in 1998, and I'm glad The End worked out better than LotFP did over the years. I can't ever thank him enough for his support of LotFP from the beginning.
The magazines Isten and METAL for being everything LotFP wants to be, years before LotFP got there. The most inspirational reading possible in metal.
Chris Maycock for getting me to mail a particular letter to Metal Maniacs, starting an interesting mess.
Snakepit Magazine for being a history of metal. Wow.
BNR Metal Pages and Metal Archives for being indispensible research aids.
Kim Easton for the major support the first couple of years.
Russ Smith for telling me about this Hammers of Misfortune band...
... and of course every musician who ever attempted to create heavy metal, not regurgitate or exploit it.
