don't break the ghost

800 pages, A4, 3 kilograms of heavy metal

Into the cults! Svart Records branches out into book publishing with Isten Fanzine: Don’t Break the Ghost. The monumental anthology of this legendary heavy metal fanzine was too good to pass up. The hardcover book is published at long last on December 12th, 2014. It’s a definitive marker on a trail of heavy metal fanaticism that began 30 years ago in Tampere, Finland.

Says Isten creator, editor and publisher Mikko Mattila:  ”Isten has always been characterized by murkiness and a lingering quality. Indeed, it took us nearly five years to do this anthology. It truly is a treasure chest, a time machine and an open grave.”

Written by Mattila, longtime Isten co-author Janne Sarna and American devotee Professor Black, Don’t Break the Ghost is an unreasonable beast. This mammoth of over 800 pages is an exhaustive compilation of things published (and unpublished) under the Isten banner from 1984 onwards. It’s also a story of mad devotion to heavy metal witchery and the lost alchemy of the fanzine: it’s all about the ritual, the sacrifice, the demons. This is a life’s work, presented with all of the evidence.