Terminally rad metal zine Chips & Beer is back with issue number three, subtitled the "New Yawk Street Metal Special", of which it's got gobs of. This rag has developed a ton of attitude, and while I'm always likely to be shaking my fist at one opinion or another expressed with a great degree of vitriol in these pages, I'm also always in awe at the erudite observations on metal art/culture/insanity, the knowledgeable history of the underground, and an eclectic coverage that makes it impossible for me to devour the mag from cover to cover whenever a new ish comes in the door. In this one, you've got that aforementioned "Street Metal" focus which gives us an expansive "New York Metal Primer", a retrospective of the early New York club scene as seen through the eyes of Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French, a talk with Manowar's Ross The Boss, a fucking insane re-envisioning of the KISS mythos Adam Ganderson, Todd DePalma's excellent essay on Willaim Lustig's classic NYC sleaze-gore masterpiece Maniac, wisdom from Dan Lilker on the NYC vibe, an interview with the awesome shred-bastards in Frigid Bich (mucho thanks to C&B for turning me on to this band), and a very cool, very long interview with former owner of Long Island's Slipped Disc Records. Beyond this issue's NYC theme, there's also a couple of entertaining interviews with Finnish death metallers Krypts and Swallowed, imperial death-thrashers Ares Kingdom, pirate-obsessed death metal weirdos Cauldron Black Ram, Chicago's criminally unrecognized musical Midas Chris Black, cult metallers Cirith Ungol, a neat piece titled "Kali Yuga Moonstomp: The Metaphysics of the Cro-Mags", the sexual debauchery of black metallers Weapon, comics, reviews, and a crapload of other stuff to soak up. Essential.