- All
about us ... and a little more
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- The contact address
- UNITED Webzine
- Zelena pot 19
- 1000 Ljubljana
- Slovenia, Europe
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- The story of UNITED Fanzine, now Webzine, according to Alberik Ceglar, official
co-editor, translator now functioning both as web-apprentice and editor for quite a while!
- History:
- Well, it all began in 1989 when I first met Musto Deliæ. The guy
came to Slovenia all the way from Bosnia to work here and to seek fortune and fame. The
war happened two or three years later but that bears little relevance because it didn't
really have that much of an effect on us. I still remember, I met the guy in a debate over
a new album that the metal scene in Slovenia has been eagerly awaiting, DREAM
THEATER's debut album When Dream and Day Unite. As we
were already present on the scene, we have of course got our hands on vinyl much faster
than the regular people. That particular album blew us away, I mean literally knocking us
of our feet. Baffled as we were, at that time precisely Musto came up with the idea of
producing an underground fanzine, totally independent and not subject to anyone but us! I
was immediately for the whole fanzine thing, having run a school metal fanzine for four
years prior to that. That personal experience had a very simple name, EXODUS,
and it was shamelessly stolen from the legendary band of course, but that didn't seem to
matter that much. As long as it was A5 format, 100% metallised, deep underground in
b&w copies on a regular copier machine. It never sold very well but it was worth the
time and trouble. I still have the originals, masters if you will, and some day I might
reproduce them for the web. For history's sake, and for everyone to see what real
amateurism is!!!
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- The year 1990. The first issue of our A4 project fanzine didn't come
out under the name as we know it now. The first name was a brainchild of mine, I don't
know why I came up with such a name, THE LEAGUE OF HEAVY METAL. I guess
Musto was just democratic about the whole thing and he simply let me keep the name. It
contained unoriginal work, mostly articles copied from other magazines from which he got
permission to do so. I wasn't glad about it, no, not at all. But, he was so eager to put
it out, and had major self-imposed dead-lines which he had to comply with so he just
copied articles and put it out. I said no to such blatant plagiarism and copyright
infringement. I was pissed off, told him so, and we went our separate ways. When things
cooled down after a year or so, I talked with the guy and he said that the next issue will
be 100% original work. And, it was!
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- The year 1991. The second issue came out under the name UNITED Fanzine. Musto
obtained the name from a friend who had also run a fanzine but had abandoned it
altogether. This time it was clean, no copyright infringement. Just a simple transaction.
I was also for the new name, the previous one being too long for flyers, and so we could
begin working. The issue no.2 was so cool, with more than 30 pages fully packed with
reviews, demos and presentations of various underground metal bands. Musto was really
hyper-active and he contacted tons of bands and got overwhelming response. Up to this very
day, I still admire all the work he put into the second issue! He presented bands like RAPED
APE, ATTAXE, IMPACT, CRUCIFIER,
MESHEEN, SAHARA, MISERY, ARCANE,
CHEMIKILL, BLACKSTORM, DREAMBREED, CARDINAL
SIN, R.O.D., WARGASM, MESSIAH (USA)
and so much more. While Musto is still to this very day a true die-hard heavy metal fan, I
was at that time already focusing my attention on more cross-over and progressive bands. I
presented just two bands, GYPSY KYSS and EXHORDER plus
reviews of albums of PRIMUS, GUNS'n'ROSES, MR.BUNGLE,
HELLOWEEN and LIVING COLOUR. I was more of a translator
and text editor, a contributor of a kind mainly due to the fact that I liked working for
such a no-budget underground musical edition. All in all, things went smoothly with issue
number two. But things were about to change and the next issue was to be ground-breaking.
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- The year 1993. Yes, UNITED Fanzine was revolutionised in many a way.
To begin, it was a double issue. So much material to work on, so many bands. We simply
couldn't put all the stuff just into one single issue. There was more than 50 pages of
information, pictures including four posters. And this time, the texts were written and
edited with the use of a computer! I didn't own one then so, I just went into a shop that
sold these machines and they had a promotion; you just came in, sat down and worked on a
PC. All the work was done that way. Unfortunately, due to my lack of insight and complete
ignorance I didn't save that work in any way, no usage floppy disks! Imagine, I just went
in, typed the texts and
- printed them right away. But, then that was more than enough for both of us. And what a
relief for me, no more banging on the type-writer. Musto prepared most of the material and
this time the presentations were huge and not just a couple of lines of text like in
previous issues. Here are just a couple of presented bands: SYRIS, RAPID FIRE,
MALFACTOR, STRIKE FORCE, MORPHEUS, CONFLICT OF INTEREST, MALADJUSTED, PARIAH, INFERNO,
HATRIX, ATROCITY, WINTERS BANE, LECOMPT, ALLEGIANCE, ORACLE, LEPROSY,
- SEDUCER, CHERUB, also he produced these really huge presentations of RITUAL
SACRIFICE, RUDE AWAKENING, CONQUEST, SINFUL LUST, and PHIL NARO plus
a gigantic(!) interview with DAVID LA DUKE. I, on the other hand,
produced a little more output than before and featured a rapper, RASPUTIN,
and a guitar hero, JOE RODRIGUEZ, both from Florida, New York funk
hip-hop metallers SHOOTYZ GROOVE, first real progressive band in our
fanzine TILES, a review of an OZRIC TENTACLES album Arborescence,
and I also had an interview with Seattle based underground grunge band LEAD PIPE
CINCH.
- A special addition in the making of this issue was our friend Peter
Mokranjac with some of his own contribution mainly in the field of progressive genre and
bands like FATAL OPERA, DANIEL L. DALLEY, TRIPHAMMER,
- DELIVERANCE, LAST TURION, WIZARD PROJECTS,
BATTLEFIELD. Peter also contributed numerous album reviews of BLACK
JESTER, IVANHOE, PENDRAGON, TALISMAN, SYSTEM ADDICT,
ASIA, MALMSTEEN, LEVIATHAN, PSYCHOTIC WALTZ and one very personal review, a
merciless bashing of DREAM THEATER and their Awake
album that was in his opinion at that time "...definitely the worst record from this
cult band."
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- To be continued...
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