Another new issue of Chips & Beer, another opportunity for me to gush like a giddy twelve-year-old over this mag's unique and utterly unfuckwithable m�lange of classic subterranean metal, horror/exploitation movie lust, and underground comic weirdness. Issue five brings us another one hundred thirty-six pages of black and white print chock full of scathing criticism, stream-of-consciousness delirium and overall the finest taste you're gonna find in a contempo underground hesher rag. As with previous issues, the guys have assembled this around a central theme, and this time it's all about "Italian Metal", with some wild forays off into the fringes of Spagetti Cinema and other strangeness. The main features include a killer lengthy interview with Betsy Weiss from cult LA metallers Bitch and a massive "Italian Metal Primer" loaded to the gills with album reviews and examinations of bands like occult prog rockers Jacula and Antonius Rex, Italo-metal legends Death SS, influential proto-black thrashers Bulldozer, epic metallers Dark Quarterer, experimental black metallers Mortuary Drape and occult doomster Tony Tears along with gobs of other album reviews and writing on the mysteries and mania of the Italo metal underground; an excellent article on famed cinematic sleaze-master Tinto Brass and his filmography; and "A Brief Guide To Italian Sword & Sorcery Films" that has given me a whole list of z-grade fantasy trash to track down. Other pieces include an article on original Saint Vitus frontman Scott Reagers, capsule reviews of recent indie horror movies, a brief interview with House Of The Devil director Ti West, interesting (and often hilarious) band interviews with death metallers Bone Sickness and Morbus Chron, Michigan's Borrowed Time, 80's Ohio metallers Lester Maddox, Brit doom metal masters Moss, and Sweden's Inisians, an interview/article on prank call god Longmont Potion Castle, more amazing hallucinatory writing on AC/DC, scathing album reviews, and more of those bizarre comics laced throughout the magazine. Essential.