The other day I was looking through some old boxes. It was during this excavation of semi-ancient memorabilia that I found a bunch of old “Avalanche” magazines. This time I did not merely put them back in the box, but decided to scan them.

“Avalanche” was a short-lived pseudo-underground heavy metal magazine,  published  in the Netherlands but written in English. It was started in 1993 by brothers Jesse and Marijn Vermunt, together with some of their friends. I don’t remember how I got in touch with it exactly, but I was part of the writing staff from June 1994 to March 1995. My first contribution was for their first “regular” issue (1994 Issue 1), a Paradise Lost interview I had done together with a friend of mine, Erwin Jorksveld. It later gave me some great opportunities to meet all kinds of musicians, and it got me some real breaks, like visiting the Wâldrock festival to interview Gwar and Obituary, meeting Yngwie Malmsteen and, a few years later, meeting Venom. With subsequent issues I did more interviews and reviews, and was also in charge of spell checking. In the end I got rightfully chucked out because I arrogantly criticised some fellow writers’ English and journalistic abilities in a most unprofessional way. I also disagreed with the editor about him not wanting to use my Dream Theater interview because the band was too soft for the target audience. Well, I guess he had a point ;-).
The magazine sadly folded around the summer of 1995, after one promo and 4 regular issues. The final one was a real corker, very professional, on glossy paper and all. “Avalanche” could really have gone places.

Below you will find complete PDF scans of all issues…

Avalanche Magazine 1993 (promo)
Avalanche Magazine 1994 (issue 1)
Avalanche Magazine 1994 (issue 2)
Avalanche Magazine 1995 (issue 1)
Avalanche Magazine 1995 (issue 2)

P.S. When I Googled “Avalanche Magazine” I discovered that there was another magazine of the same name – an art magazine published by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp of which 13 issues were released between 1970 and 1976 (source: Wikipedia). Needless to say, that is an entirely different magazine.