Hello, Dark Ones. How do you survive the heat waves?
This week I joined the speleology team mapping a wonderful Balkan cave and spent a lot of  hours in 8-10 degree temperatures and in near total darkness – a nice escape from the summer plague,  at least for a while.

Today I’m continuing the Q&A column by answering a few questions with shorter answers. Here they are.

Q: „Who would you like to interview?“
A: I never had any special wish list for interviews.
It’s just that when I sense an intriguing person in the genre, I immediately strike up a conversation and ask for an interview – when the person across from you is interesting and you see in them the potential for a valuable conversation more or less outside the cliché, then things just happen. 
Naturally, I would be happy to present interviews with the musicians who sparked my love for the genre, but there is a small detail – a large number of them are dead, others are no longer active and would not like to go back to the past, some are not available for interviews  and with others our relationship to date is personal and although I know they would be happy to give me an interview and help me for  The Void, to me they are much more valuable as friends and I would not want to cross the line between professional and personal, it does not seem right to me to take advantage of my personal contacts in such way.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that I haven’t planned quite a few other interesting materials in the future with amazing figures (I always have a few surprises up my sleeve…).

Q: „Is there any  journalist you really like?“
A: Yes! Niklas Göransson from the well- known  Bardo Methodology.
To me, he is an amazing person and professional whom I feel like a wizard when it comes to interviews. He is the one who inspired me to start doing interviews  and I will always look up to him as a giant. I enjoy reading all of his materials and I hope there will be many more in the future.
Other journalists I like are the guys from No Clean Singing (they were among the first to give The Void a nod years ago) and last but not least, the author of some of my favorite books written in honor of black metal – Dayal Patterson, who you may also know from Decibel, Terrorizer and Metal Hammer.
These are the individuals that I have recognized as truly valuable in the field and that inspire me to do what I do and do it as well as possible with each subsequent material.

Q: „What is your opinion about the other Bulgarian music webzines & media?“
A: I will try to be as clear as possible in order to be well understood. Before the creation of The Void, black metal was always either non-existent in the pages of the Bulgarian media of any type, or presented as some kind of secondary matter, next to news about … Guns ‘n’ Roses, for example. And this happened only if the band is well-known(Mayhem, Marduk , Watain and etc.)  or deemed to appeal to the audience.

I can’t believe that for so long no one in the Balkans felt the need to separate black metal from commercial music and dedicate an online space to the genre and its values, to the underground in its entirety. But it’s a fact.

In this line of thought, the Bulgarian music media has never particularly attracted my interest, because I have always been devoted primarily to black metal, and to those bands that almost no one knows or has heard of. Many years before I started the webzine, I was always a few steps ahead of the existing media with information on the topic – I just like to follow what’s happening in my favorite genre and stay informed since the 90s .And I’ve been doing it long before BandCamp took off as a music discovery platform and before black metal YouTube channels made it so easy for fans of the genre.

Therefore, I would not say that I have formed an adequate opinion about the other Bulgarian webzines or media – I have never been a huge fan of them and I have not followed them as perhaps other people do.

And although I am alone with my ideology and purpose, and have pioneered my own (and empty) rut since the beginning, there are names in the small Bulgarian media community that have made a good impression on me at certain times, and these names are Werock.bg and The Other Side Zine. They have nothing to do with my goals, I know, but in specific situations I have noticed the presence of similar values, nevertheless.

There is hardly anyone who does not know that Werock.bg continued in many ways the work of  the great Pro-Rock magazine and is also the heir of the website Metal Katehizis. Also they showed courage and character in their position about  the war in  Ukraine, similar to The Void, which definetely earned my respect. While in the blog The Other Side Zine I notice a similar love for the underground culture and as far as I know it is also maintained by a single person – Mrazek, who has been writing for so long… In general, if I want to read about rock and a bit more different types of metal, I would look there, as both sites actually do great photos and reports of events, including black metal concerts and etc.

As a child, I also sometimes watched the „Fracture“ show – it was a breath of fresh air in the sea of useless TV propaganda. Vasko Katincharov offers people from all over Bulgaria access to unique concert footage and interviews and will always be valued in this respect, but over time I realized that not everyone is given TV time on a Nova Broadcasting Group channel and I just don’t think that person is on the same frequency as me and what I present as values in The Void.
We are different, but I definitely have a lot of respect for his work – when he started „Fracture“, I was still a child. To this day, if I ever came across the show on, I would watch it out of nostalgia for those days, even if the show is still mostly oriented towards commercial rock and metal music.

Also, I almost forgot to tell you about Ivan Petkov and his site https://oldskull-metal.info – we started our websites almost at the same time, but  he, unlike me, is dedicated to the death and thrash metal scene – I don’t particularly like these genres much, but there is definitely a lot of passion involved there in his place – this is „his thing“ as black metal is „mine“, which I find as a parallel between us and makes me happy to be a  witness of. Ivan has a special relationship with music and it is definitely felt.

Medarov and his Terozin periodical zine editions are also close to my heart – the materials I’ve read thanks to him and all the tapes he’s released have always been very interesting topic  to me… the guy keeps the underground culture really alive and I have a lot of respect for him, I will always cherish his presence.
This is all I have to say about the music media in our country for now – I’ll probably have something more to add in future.

Q: „How do you manage to run the site alone and do it so well?“
A: First of all – thank you very much. Many people ask me this question, and especially in the last year you express your admiration for the fact that only one person is behind the place – I am glad that you are impressed, because this is one of the aspects that is important in the ideological context around (personal power according to Luciferian values).
Second, it’s very simple, actually. I’m not trying to succeed.
It’s just that for me, writing about music is like a daily mantra. That’s why The Void is followed by the word „journal“. I love listening to music and when I come across good stuff I just share it here with you. When you’re passionate about something, you don’t ask yourself a lot of „how“ and „why“ or „if“ questions, you just do it.
My discipline, my skills and my strong character undoubtedly play a role in this as well, but the biggest place around is occupied by true Love.
As Nietzsche said, “what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.“, in other words – it’s completely untouchable. There’s no stopping this fire, it’s just burning by itself.

Q: „What do you think about Facebook and social networking in general?“
A: If I could describe Facebook in a few words, those words would be „an out-of-control online psychiatric clinic where everyone supports each other’s hysteria.“ I graduated  a humanitarian major in University, and after graduating years ago, I did an internship at a popular psychiatric clinic in our country for a few months – well, people there are many times more „normal“ than what the users of this social network represent. The intellectual and spiritual capacity going on in this place also does not make sense to me…

I am not in sync with this environment and would not want to be a part of it – the site is risky on many factors. Also, the censorship imposed and their standards are unclear to me. And if we add that I am basically a very private person who guards my personal space quite seriously, the picture becomes even clearer.
And while I don’t use the site myself, The Void’s page is still active there, and I share the articles on it through the webzine and the business suite to inform those who still use the platform.

And while I dislike most „social“ networks and stay away from them, there are two sites that I currently „approve“ – Instagram and Last.fm. The first one was created for artists in order to share their art, and Last.fm is a platform for sharing and discovering music (although some people haven’t been using the site for its intended purpose in recent years).

Q: „Are you considering putting things on paper?“
A: Yes. The first zine  is already in the works, but I won’t share any details at this stage. Besides that, I have planned other things that you might like, but I need time to iron out every detail.
You were especially inspiring in my decision to create a paper edition of The Void, for which I thank you sincerely – you motivate me a lot to return to my roots and provide you with more and more pure and quality materials. To Miroslav, I especially thank you for the ideas presented in one of the previous Q&A articles – you are very valuable to me when you give such feedback and push me.
Right now, working on the paper edition feels really exciting and my mind is like a wonderland… I have no idea where I’ll end up at the end of this adventure, but I’m sure it’s worth it.

To finish, I’m sharing some of the albums I’ve listened to the most this week:

Have a hellish Friday! ????