Hooray For Metal Zine Oaken Throne

originally published October 31, 2007

When I was 13 years old, as I sat on my bed plunking broken chords on a pawn shop guitar one day, my mother came home from the grocery store and knocked on the door to my room. Upon being granted entrance to my pubescent domain, she presented me with a gift: the December, 1996 issue of Metal Maniacs magazine, a publication which I had not only never requested, but had never even heard of. At the time I was heavily into bands like Metallica and Pantera, but the cover of Metal Maniacs made no mention of any music that I was remotely familiar with. Bathory? Nevermore? I had no idea, and neither did she, but her simple explanation betrayed more maternal prescience than I had ever given her credit for: "I thought it just looked like something you would like." Thus my key to the immortal underworld of heavy metal was secured.

How natural it seemed when 11 years later, I would happen upon a man named John Mincemoyer in downtown Athens, GA one sweltering Friday night, and he would just happen to have with him copies of the fifth and latest issue of his own world-class heavy metal print publication Oaken Throne. [Editor's Note: John Mincemoyer wrote a lot about heavy metal for Flagpole back in the day.] Born out of an unlikely pop-saturated college town, but with a voracious global readership (I first heard of the 'zine from a friend in California), Oaken Throne has gleamed for the past couple of years not only as a torchbearer for various extreme subgenres of heavy metal art (primarily the highly iconographic black metal form), but also as a testament to artistic passion and true visionary dedication.

Oaken Throne is the ultimate monument to the undead, as it purveys two expressive forms that mainstream analysts would have us believe should by all rights, if they aren't already, be deceased, but which clearly thrive: heavy metal and print media. In mainstream music journalism published by the likes of Rolling Stone, Spin, and Pitchforkmedia.com, the death knell of traditional heavy metal is tolled so ubiquitously that its dull klang is rendered irrelevant. Likewise, I spent a couple of years in journalism school learning, among other things, that print media is gasping its final breaths. However, holding the substantial weight of Oaken Throne #5 in my hands, marveling at its gorgeous silver-on-black design, it is difficult to envision these supposed eventualities ever coming to pass.

No Insults Necessary

Pitchforkmedia.com's review of Mastodon's Leviathan referred to that band glibly as "thinking man's metal," a common term in mainstream music journalism which insults the intelligence of the majority of actual metal fans and, ironically, reveals that those types of writers haven't really thought very much at all about what heavy metal really means to many of its creators and absorbers. Reading Oaken Throne, it is obvious that editor Mincemoyer and his crew are prepared to treat the very idea of subversive music and its many metal idioms with deft scrutiny. From the cartoonishly abrasive vitriol of the UK's Adorior and its "Fist Metal" ethos (that's "fist" in the verb form) to the conceptual audio decay of Saskatchewan's reclusive Wold, each subject's motivations and image in addition to their actual sounds are discussed with a refreshing mix of reverence and critical analysis. This makes the publication a joy to read for anyone who appreciates music as an art form and not just something to idly fill ear space with, whether they know much about heavy metal or not.

The reverential tone in Oaken Throne is subtle and never impedes upon the work of probing the minds of the bands interviewed to illuminate as best as possible what is at the heart of their creations. It is wonderful, for example, to actually see a man with the stage name Necromorbus, who as a drummer and producer has been involved in some exceptionally mirthless recordings, discuss the virtues of Weezer's self-titled blue album. Most artists in Oaken Throne do not shed their hateful postures (the defensive insistence that this is not a pose perhaps being one of the most repeated and clichéd poses of all) so lucidly, but the overarching theme of negativity expressed by many of the subjects as a whole is itself revelatory. By reading the somewhat theatrical discourses of bands such as Archgoat and Blacklodge (though there is always an unnerving touch of sincerity in their words), I feel that I gleaned more than I expected to about the overall cultural role of artistic misanthropy, an artistic device certainly not unique to heavy metal or even music.

The detached respect shown its subjects and the largely positive record reviews of Oaken Throne are in stark contrast to the tone of other high-quality independent print publications - Athens/Atlanta's' own sometimes-published Chunklet, for example - which can be tiresome in their efforts to put down bands and labels they deem unworthy rather than working to expose readers to new sounds and ideas, and perhaps give them greater understanding of the artists they already know and love. Heavy metal is often insulted for being silly or thuggish, but there is little that seems more puerile than spending all day complaining, talking only about things you don't like. Ultimately, Oaken Throne's avoidance of this pitfall is its greatest strength.

Gloriously, issue five of Oaken Throne includes a 14-song companion CD, featuring one track each from the bands featured in the publication. It is a delight to be able to conveniently have the opportunity to pair a band's words with its art and to pass final judgment myself on who is worthy of my future attention and dollars (clue: over half of them pass muster), not to mention the simple pleasure of hearing Athens heavyweight Harvey Milk mashed alongside the blistering likes of Acrimonious and Coffins.

Works of Love

Print media, particularly of the variety produced for no profit exclusively out of fanaticism for a subject, will not be killed by the Internet any more than vinyl records were killed by compact discs. The distinctive visual style of Oaken Throne, informed heavily by woodcuts and calligraphy, is given a warmth and fullness that digitally encoded facsimiles could never reproduce, similar to the fine grooves on black wax that drive an unrelenting global horde of record collectors well into the 21st century. In fact, it is art and advertising director Ben West who elucidates the aims of Oaken Throne and the enduring spirit of heavy metal in a concise mini-manifesto of sorts included in his introduction to the issue:

"I continue to insist that this music has a meaning greater than it is credited for," he writes. "It exists for a reason, a product of and reaction to the times in which we live. As the mainstream becomes further compromised and stupefyingly vapid, this music exists as a staunch and stubborn refusal to offer easy answers and diluted entertainment… All we at Oaken Throne hope to do is offer intelligent insight, open a dialogue, and shine a brighter light on the genre than normally probes its depths." Success on all of these fronts makes Oaken Throne #5 essential reading and listening for any aficionado of music and cultural discourse.

Jace Bartet

Oaken Throne is available at Wuxtry Records and from various online distributors.