Capsule #5

By lots of people
www.capsule.org.uk

Capsule is a strange little music zine that seems to be more about promoting their website and certain concerts and bands than actually being a zine. Not that there’s anything wrong with just being a promotional guide to upcoming shows, but it’s not that useful to me since I don’t live in Birmingham.

We open with a piece promoting a show about krautrock band Neu, and it made me wonder why the term krautrock is even acceptable. I can’t imagine any other ethnic slur would be allowed to be used to describe a type of music, yet this one seems to be embraced and even the BBC has used the term as the name for a show in the last year.

This is followed by a piece about being on a game show. The piece is written in a strangely aggressive style, referring to the host as a hag, making reference to being kneecapped by the IRA, and other things. Still, it is interesting and it is unfortunate the piece is unfinished and you are directed to the website to read the full piece. Except you’re not pointed to a specific URL, but to a blog which is updated frequently enough that it has pushed this piece into the oblivion of the archives.

There’s a piece promoting a metal show that gives a decent introduction to Napalm Death and Godflesh (or at least I assume so, not knowing much about either band), some shorter pieces promoting other shows, brief (one of them is only a sentence!) reviews of shows, a rad picture of a creature from the black lagoon style monster, and a cake recipe who’s first page is devoted entirely to talking about how the author’s oven doesn’t work right any more. I love recipes like that.

Not that useful to me, but worth picking up if you live in Birmingham and are interested in shows.