Posted on: October 31, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Wonkavision gets more and more fancy with each issue. This is easily on par with Seventeen or any of the top-shelf music magazines out on the market (Spin, Rolling Stone). Glossy and easy to read, the topics employed by the staff of writers is diverse to say the least (covering topics as wide as movies, politics, music, and even school). The strength of Wonkavision is its price compared to the number of ads that litter the zine. Two and sometimes even three feature pieces go by without any commercial introductions, and the ads mainly feature other up-and-coming bands (instead of old, sold out and broken down stalwarts of the scene). These ads allow Wonkavision to feature bands that are nowhere near the spotlight – bands like Break Away and Center Lane, who hopefully will get legions of followers from their paragraph of information in this issue. The featured piece of this issue is “Metal: An Introduction To Heavy”, which gives a little bit of background on the metal scene before launching itself into a discussion of the current labels pushing metal to the masses. The information contained in this article will be enough to get thirty or forty new bands under one’s belt, and some of these bands will no doubt benefit (much like those in the Pay Your Dues section) from the press in this issue. With only a minority focus on music, Wonkavision is really attempting to bring a new form of magazine to the shelves of Tower and the other mega-chains; this is counter-culture rolled up into 104 pages.

Rating: 6.5/10

Wonkavision #28 / $2.95 / :45 / 104M / http://www.wonkavisionmagazine.com / PO Box 63680, Philadelphia PA 19147 / Reviewed 25 August 2005

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