RKF is the black metal jackass in charge of this ezine. When he's not making a fool of himself in public here, he makes a fool of himself in the noise / black metal band Korperschwache. He is formerly the guitarist for Autodidact and a bunch of other bands you never heard of. He is currently hiding in the bushes in Texas, waiting to pee on your leg. He also wants to pole Kate Dillon, not that this has anything to do with DEAD ANGEL.

AMANDA is an enigma enshrouded in mystery and wrapped in darkness, sort of like J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, only with bigger breasts. She lives in a shack somewhere in the woods in Canada with a tribe of barely-domesticated panthers, a cistern full of gin, and a large double-barreled shotgun. She is not interested in "getting to know you better." She does, however, accept gifts in the form of toasty socks of an unusual nature. And money. And more bottles of gin.

GAFNE ROSTOW is a bitter and dangerous escapee from the original Norwegian "Inner Circle" whose current location cannot be revealed in the interests of national security. He "rewards" those who displease him with fire, death, and dismemberment. The FBI and Interpol refuse to confirm or deny the rumor that he once responded to a passing fool who dared to mock his corpsepaint and many upside-down crosses by cutting the man's head off and posting it on a stick in his front yard. We run his reviews unedited because we are frankly fucking afraid of him. We deeply fear his great and terrible wrath.

NEDDAL AYAD is a cranky bastard from the frozen wastes of Canada who plays scorched-earth guitar for the does and knife, please. He has survived fifteen-foot snowdrifts, opening for bad metal bands, and the unfortunate explosion that levelled the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice, so you'd best not even think about getting lippy with him. He enjoys relaxing by setting mimes on fire and directing loud, profane tirades at people who piss him off, which is just about everybody.

THE DEVIL KITTY is our mascot, demonic fountain of wisdom, and diabolical force of evil who protects us from the rest of the world. Fear him, or else he will heave on you. Then eat you. Then burp.
FEAR OF A BLACK METAL JACKASS: At long last, the dream is realized: The destruction of the old version of DEAD ANGEL and its replacement with the new and theoretically "improved" version. Some may wonder why the revamp was necessary, assuming it was necessary at all. There's a long story behind that, but it's boring and beside the point -- the real point is that after more than a decade of existence (DEAD ANGEL celebrated its tenth anniversary in June 2004, just in case you weren't looking), it was time to shake things up a bit.

I frankly never imagined that DEAD ANGEL would last this long. The original impetus for doing the ezine was a combination of the fervent desire to have an excuse to talk to Bliss Blood of the Pain Teens and an equally fervent desire to acquire free listenables. That alone probably would not have been sufficient to sustain the ezine for very long, and in fact I originally expected it to last about three issues before folding. Imagine my surprise to wake up one day and discover # 66 looming on the horizon, huh? So part of the revamp has come about simply because the ezine's focus has changed somewhat over the years, and the site had grown to monstrous proportions, and it was just time to redesign everything so the "old-school" material could be more easily accessed without having to wade through piles and piles of bullshit. Then, too, for some time now I've been unhappy with the fact that so many of the past issues were thrown up on the site in a hurry at the last minute in addled form. The sheer size and volume of the issues has resulted in a certain level of sloppiness here and there that I'm no longer pleased with, and it's my hope that the site redesign will go a long way toward correcting some of that. In addition, as this latest issue demonstrates, I'm finally starting to get with the program as far as including graphics. I'll freely grant that it's still not quite as dazzling in the eye-candy department as, say, DUSTED or PITCHFORK, but those are people with $$$ and an actual staff, so I'm not inclined to feel too bad about it, eh? While I still have a few people on hand to help with the reviews, the actual production of the ezine and the archives and the website in general is still entirely the work of one cranky dude who has way too many other things to do besides this, so for things to even look this good is a major (and time-consuming) accomplishment.

Nevertheless, I've been aware for some time now that the back issues have had serious coding issues, missing parts, hideous mistakes here and there, blah blah blah. Hence the redesign, which has mainly entailed pulling the issues apart and archiving them in some semblance of alphabetical order. There's still much work to be done -- the film archive and book / magazine archive still haven't gone live yet, and everything still needs proofreading -- but I'm convinced that what is up here now is certainly a lot easier to access and digest than the previous version of the ezine. Not to mention that slicing and dicing the old issues has led to many opportunities for historical revisionism and the complete tossing of certain junk.

So what's the new masterplan? This, pretty much: The review-oriented material and interviews from the first 65 issues are now available in the ARCHIVE section. Sharp-eyed long-time readers may notice that not everything is there; while 98% of the music reviews are still present (a few were deleted due to duplication issues or various other reasons), not all of the original interviews made the final cut, and when the film and book archives go live, only the best material will be present as well. Part of this is simply due to space limitations -- between the growing vastness of the original library of material and the fact that subsequent issues are going to be more graphic-heavy (and thus take up more space), it seemed wise to let the chaff fall into the Eternal Pit of Editorial Darkness.

What's ahead? The continuation of the revamp, which I sincerely hope to have finished by the middle to end of July. That includes finishing the book reviews that we ran out of time for in this particular issue, as well as pulling all the book and film reviews from the old issues and archiving them, and proofreading this giant sprawling disaster area. (We'll see how much of that can really be done in two weeks.) I'm also hoping to get more consistent about letting people know when their materials for review have arrived, and letting people know when reviews have in fact run. In short, we're trying to get a tad more organized here, to put it mildly. The issue will still continue to come out every two months; I'm still vague on what will happen to the graphic-oriented issues as time goes on. Right now I'm leaning toward archiving those reviews once a year, but we'll see what actually happens.

SITUATION NORMAL, ALL FUBAR: Some DEAD ANGEL readers are already aware that my personal situation has been somewhat FUBAR for a while now. (If you didn't know, you don't need to worry about it, I assure you.) For those who are interested, the situation has improved somewhat, but still has yet to reach a stage I'd consider optimal. Ideally that will happen within the next couple of months. When I sent out an update a couple of months ago letting people know that the ezine was still happening and that I had not, in fact, fallen into the abyss, a number of people were kind enough to send back sympathetic responses, and while circumstances prevented me from responding properly to all of them (I suck, I know that already, thanks), it was deeply appreciated nonetheless. To those who had something kind to say, I now say: "Many thanks." Some of those people will finally hear from me when I send out notifications once the new issue is completely posted.

THE ROLL CALL OF THE DEVIL KITTY STILL EXISTS: Yes, it is still possible to secure a place for all eternity in the Devil Kitty's good graces; The Roll Call of the Devil Kitty is still accepting donations. Did you know that you can buy a safe haven for your soul, and remain uneaten in the coming nightmarish apocalypse that will afterwards be known as Ragnarok, or The Great and Terrible Feast of the Heaving Devil Kitty? It's true! And since part of my FUBAR situation includes the fact that a) I am really, seriously broke and b) the monosite's yearly web hosting fee is coming up at the beginning of August, if you were ever inclined to demonstrate your love for DEAD ANGEL and save your eternally damned soul in the process, now would be an excellent time to do it. Note that I am still committed to running a totally ad-free site and insuring that the ezine remains completely free of charge, which means I'm not making any $$$ from this, so any financial support that comes my way through the Roll Call of the Devil Kitty is always greatly appreciated.

WILL THERE BE INTERVIEWS AGAIN IN THE FUTURE? Uh, that I'm not so sure about. It depends. We were hoping to run an interview with Buzzoven in this one, but that, uh, didn't happen. We're trying to make it happen in the next issue. Just revamping the site and finishing this issue, with its massive overload of reviews, was a headache enough without hassling with an interview on top of things. So interviews will probably start happening again in the next issue or so. They may or may not be done by me, but they should start happening....

A FINAL NOTE: Right now the current issue's "viewing reviews" link is dead because we don't have any current movie reviews in the issue. That may or may not change by the time the addendum rolls around. Just so you know.

-- RKF 7/1/05