Second, it appears that copies of Convivial Hermit 10 have FINALLY made it to Europe with our friends at Bleeding Heart Nihilist Productions in Germany!  Once I get a link and more info I will post it up, probably making another update tomorrow!  In the meantime you can write to Bleeding Heart Nihilist here to reserve a copy if you live OUTSIDE of God's Magic Kingdom!  

Third, defying all expectations and indeed, logic, Season of Mist's North American division based in my home city of Philadelphia has done the unthinkable, ordering copies of the new issue of Convivial Hermit!  These copies will also be distributed in France!  Incroyable!  Enormous gratitude and respect to Steve who manages their online store for making this possible.  I will put another post up online when the zine is available in their sites.  

2023.01.27
While recovering from the worst cold I've experienced in a long time, far worse than my experience with Covid last year, I've been returning back to France's Misanthrope and listening to their excellent discography.  As much as I dislike death metal these days, I make exceptions for non-Millennial and Gen-Z bands like this who actually know how to write a riff and inject fresh ideas into their songs!  The new album Les déclinistes and its reworking of classic tracks is quite something, too!  Great band... and of course Holy Records remains one of the finest labels to ever exist in respect to number of excellent releases, as loathe as I am to celebrate any label at all.

2023.01.23
Uwe Nolte von den mächtigen Orplid, Barditus und Sonnentau hat unser Gespräch hier veröffentlicht: Noltex. Wir danken diesem Verfechter der Kunst und Poesie von ganzem Herzen!

2023.01.22
Updated the sale list here.

2023.01.20
Promoting the magazine and trying to get stores to carry it feels like selling encyclopedias door-to-door... this huckster work may be easier if I didn't live in a landscape which has reduced the average human attention span to less than several seconds.  Intellectual curiosity and a desire to read about new bands blind to genre seems deader than death today - there's nothing left but scattered ashes.  Nonetheless, the drive to do something as stupid as make printed magazines disconnected from the internet continues.

2023.01.17
Hells Headbangers, Dark Horizon and Ancient Meadow will soon be stocking Convivial Hermit 10.  Enormous respect go out to all for their support!

I want to also mention that the early Funeral discography (the only albums that matter) will be reissued soon (again!) through some other label here.  I normally don't make such announcements but these are some of my favorite albums of my entire collection.  If you missed Tragedies and In Fields of Pestilent Grief back in the 90s this is a chance to check them out properly for the first time.

2023.01.14
Updated the For Sale list, please check it out.  Removed Siren Records from the stores links, slowly flushing references to any humanure out of the site.

By the way, I just "love it" when a postal employee lectures me on media mail when I've been using it for over 25 years.  They are so fucking insecure about it it's as if with every media package sent they get a deduction from their paycheck and Louis DeJoy personally drops a lump of burning coal into their underwear.

2023.01.07
Just trimmed my list down of all "brick and mortar" stores that can go fuck off in the links section (won't name names, but if you've been following the site you'll see the omissions).  It's not easy walking door-to-door peddling wares, driving in some cases hours back and forth.  The mentality one often encounters shows that many of these store owners will not last long and it's a damn miracle that they have lasted as long as they have.  I will definitely be changing tack of how I go about my business packing physical stores going forward esp. when one person picks up the phone and another person ends up dealing with you, leaving you not knowing what to expect.  Will save health, time, energy, etc, for everyone involved.  

2023.01.05
As I hinted in the new issue I will be more supportive of Eastern, South American and African bands going forward.  Many of these people are living in dictatorships and mediocre economies that need all of the support they can get.  My next project will not be Convivial Hermit but when or if I do return to it, expect even more unknown names.  This is what the underground is about.  Independent support and a middle finger in the face of the corporate hoi polloi and all that is money-driven.  All hail the unterirdische Untermensch!  Gott ist noch tot!  Jawohl!  Поехали!

2023.01.04
I remember back in the 90s there was plenty of conformity but it was also a mark of pride to not follow trends and do your own thing.  Back then bands were playing one sound on one album and then something completely different on another.  Bands were experimenting, it was exciting!  It was possible to be surprised with new albums.  Now here we are in 2023 and the "coolest" thing is to write albums that sound exactly like albums that have already been recorded better years ago!  I refuse to believe "everything has been done", as some people say; this is just pure laziness.  In fact, I'm stunned at how low the standards have fallen where all it takes to win praise in hipster magazines and sources is capturing an existing style, having machine-like technical skills (who cares?) and recording professionally and neatly.  This has nothing to do with the underground I used to love.  Take death metal, for example.  No genre is as oversaturated and boring today as death metal, bearded hipsters in GenZ bands unable to write a memorable riff to save their lives!  I won't name any but I'm regularly hearing albums (I sometimes get 15-20 promos a day) with songs striving almost desperately to mimic earlier bands, almost note for note - and these pathetic recordings with not an iota of personality or vision are given huge points on the Archives.  Makes no sense to me.  Most black metal is total fucking garbage as well, particularly almost everything from Scandinavia (Finland and Sweden are the absolute worst) and Europe (Germany), but at least some of these fucking copycat bands still play incompetently enough and have yet to be absorbed enough into recycled consumer culture to have some interesting mistakes peak through that by accident reveal faint glimmers of individuality.

New Years resolution for 2023: spend less time listening to bad, over-hyped promos and focus on the bands that have something to say. My rant for today!

P.S. Issues for overseas distro are delayed again as my colleague may be sick with COVID.  More news to come and I apologize to the bands and labels that are waiting.

2023.01.01
Happy New Year to all readers!

First important update for the year is that payment methods are changing. 

First method of payment will be Zelle, with target info below.

Alternate payment method will be Paypal.me/convivialhermit using the Friends and family option only.  In both cases you will have to send me your address, contacting me here or through the Contact page.   Thanks!