I just found out about this chunky magazine after the minds behind it contacted C-Blast out of the blue. Already on it's fifth issue, this exceptionally designed and edited pro-printed mag is well put together and looks terrific, a perfect bound magazine printed in black and white with a layout that's somewhat similar to Unrestrained (R.I.P.), packed with 128 pages of text, photos and artwork.

Convival Hermit focuses on all of the dark, obscure music that I'm generally obsessed with. You could call Convivial Hermit a black metal zine, but once you start leafing through it's many pages, it's clear that editor Yuri has much wider musical tastes beyond the BM spectrum. Issue five covers all kinds of stuff that I dig: dark industrial, black metal, doom, visual art, occult folk, and even has some intelligent, well-written articles on film, including lengthy interviews with Finnish funeral doom masters Skepticism and Czech avant-garde black metal legends Master's Hammer, an article on British occult folk legends Comus, and a huge label feature on Russian doom metal label Solitude Productions. There are interviews with dark ambient master Raison D'etre, Chinese neo-folk artist Baishui, West Virginian naturalist black metallers Nechochwen, Korean (!) black metallers Sad Legend, Russian black metallers Walknut, Norway's Wallachia, Sweden's Algaion, German neo-folk outfit Rome, experimental psych/folk guitarist Steven R. Smith (aka Ulaan Khol), Lovecraft-obsessed funeral doomsters Fungoid Stream, Brazilian doom metallers Helllight, French death metal squad Affliction Gate, Spanish black metallers Beelzeb, and more black metal coverage on bands like Drengskapur, Adversam, and Aorlhac. In addition, there's that article on Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, an essay on the art of the underground extreme music comp[ilation (with a look back at classic comps like Land Of The Rising Noise: Music From Japan and Death Is Just The Beginning), an interview with legendary French illustrator Chris Moyen and Chinese black metal/neo-folk label Pest Productions/Midnight Records, a long piece on a Behemoth/Septic Flesh show in Philadelphia, and a thoughtful essay on record stores and their role in the underground/extreme music and art culture. On top of that, there's over 200 extremely in-depth dvd, magazine, book and record reviews. Definitely one of the better underground/extreme music rags out there and highly recommended.