Customer Reviews

All Pens Blazing - A Heavy Metal Writers Handbook

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If the whole point here was to make metal journalism look credible, why is this book littered with typos, inane questions and pointless answers?
There are tons of insightful answers from the subjects interviewed, but reading a poorly written question followed by "I'm not sure" as an answer, repeatedly, is really boring.

Plus, the font is unbearably hard on the eyes.

Seriously, kudos to the author for trying, but doing a whole book of unedited e-mail interviews to try to make metal journalism look good just makes no sense.

Hey, I'm still glad he gave it a shot. Lots of fun/interesting stories here. It just could have been edited to get rid of the irrelevant/silly answers. We don't print those in magazines when we're trying to write a credible article, so they shouldn't be here either, as they take away from the reading experience in a huge way.

Perhaps a future edition can be edited and it'll be a kick-ass tome reminding the world (or, showing the world) that metal writing can be darn good writing.

Greg

I was very excited when this book was announced. As an aspiring rock/metal writer (translation: amateur hack), I was hoping to learn about the rules and tricks of the trade from those who do this kind of writing for a living. Instead, All Pens Blazing is a collection of interviews Neil Daniels conducted (via email, apparently) with rock and metal writers where the same dozen questions are lobbed over and over. Who are your influences? What do you think about the internet? What do you think about Kerrang these days? It quickly becomes tedious. I wanted to know more about how to better cover the music I love, not what the office politics were like at Metal Hammer back in the day. There isn't even any narrative from Daniels that might tie these interviews together or provide some analysis or context.

I usually go through a book or two a week, but I've been slogging through this one since Christmas. I'm determined to finish it, but I just can't handle more than a few pages at a time. Some of the answers are interesting or at least amusing, but mostly it's a boring read.

And then there's the format. Unlike most print-on-demand/self-published books I've encountered, this one is small - not much bigger than a paperback novel. And the print is absolutely miniscule. I have decent eyesight, but the text in this book was almost too tiny to read. Hopefully Daniels will correct that with future printings.

I'll give Daniels credit for the idea as well as for putting this together, but ultimately All Pens Blazing was a disappointment and definitely not the resource I was hoping for.