Prove Your Ends

In this age of storyboard apocalypse and ongoing natural collapse, it isn't easy to tell which ends are crucial. It's become one of the major platitudes of our times to maintain we're living a real-life dystopia that somehow mirrors the guises of fear and entertainment shaped by images and stories. Some will go as far as to say it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, whatever that means.
      What's clear is that in this golden era of doomsayers and death dealers, we have no shortage of obsolete futures. We're given pandemics, wars, energy crises, petrochemical spills and leaks, power grid failures, dam collapses, reactor meltdowns, wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, avalanches and weather extremes on a constant basis. Easy as it may be to paint pictures of real-world downfalls and gimmicky naturalistic Götterdämmerungs, it isn't quite as graceful to imagine the end of Isten, Northern Europe's longest-lasting heavy metal fanzine, long past celebrating its fortieth year of existence.
      The end as we've not come to know it is among us.
      Enter Tormentor.

Tormentor, the mythical third outing of Isten's Headwind Trilogy, is a world with an end. It is a terra obscura of wilful self-combustion, or, if you will, Pandora's playthings crammed into a bewildering black jar. Brought to us by the four horsemen of Mikko Mattila, Janne Sarna, Kola Krauze and Damhair, the first two issues of the Headwind trilogy, 1997's Mädchen and Twin Sister, unveiled some of the richest and most evocative storytelling in metal literature. Tormentor, the third instalment of the chronicle, isn't about wholesome stories as such. Rather, it is a mirage assortment of wasteful mayhems that warp, cremate and disseminate the heavy metal underground's most perplexing whispers in one final purgatorial surge. It is the last chapter of a longstanding Finnish heavy metal fanzine, but it's also the charred remains of a long flight of relentless ghosts, accidental legends and games of no consequence. Like Nero's lyre or Antoinette's cakes, it's to keep you occupied when the world's ablaze and tomorrow no longer answers your calls.
      Some of yesteryear's more astute Istenites will remember the original Tormentor cue put forth in the nonstop doll-blessed narrative of Mädchen. Provoking a battle cry for a very particular kind of heavy metal anthem, Messrs Mattila and Sarna imagined a funeral chorale where Destruction would begin the proceedings and all the bands in the world would gradually join in to play the most ecstatic “Tormentor” possible, a macabre ensemble piece which would eventually go to blow up the world in a mass of blood, vomit, shit and tears. That's the milieu one should conjure for this last piece of Isten. A conflagration of the dissonance and stark fury envisioned in the original Tormentor challenge, and then some. All voices be heard, all depths be plumbed, all pets and peeves be thrown into the gloomy cauldrons of heavy metal pandemonium. Everything cast aside by everything else.
      The Tormentor territory, in its full scope, is surely larger than Isten itself. It's the final frontier where all previous Isten missives go to burn and reform. It's not so much a neat coda where the Devil suddenly has all the answers, nor is it some self-congratulatory display of museal soundbite, but a chimeric blight that lives on in shards and fragments through the demise of its original vessel. Few can root for its qualities as a practical guide for the end of times, but it's an end alright, and with the stories of war, famine and pestilence exploding from all pockets of the planet, the time of its arrival couldn't be more accurate.

On a more singular note, Tormentor comes across as an unfathomable finale because Isten to me, like many of us, is a very personal story. Having been born in the town of Tampere, Finland a few years before Isten initiated its forty-year travel, I've pretty much based my life on this fanzine. From the very first glance, Isten seemed like the most enigmatic and quest-affirming guide in discovering the true bellringers, torchbearers and messiahs of underground metal. The education Mattila, Sarna and co. delivered to a somewhat estranged kid hooked on Death, Carcass and Napalm Death felt both luxurious and intimate. Like a living embodiment of that brilliant 1988 single by GOD, “My Pal”, I had been alone with my hunger for a lot of things in music and suddenly I wasn't. Isten was the head to a hand that was growing restless but didn't quite know what to do. Some years later, I would go on to start a small zine of my own, Qvadrivivm, and live a life of writing that probably hadn't happened if it wasn't for that other stubborn Mikko somewhere in the Peltolammi region.
      When I think of the Isten imp, an icon of demonic wit and perception, numerous stations of remembrance emerge. The intense dreams of unearthing unknown Isten issues in obscure second-hand stores. The countless times of reading #5 or Mädchen or Twin Sister, memorizing significant passages of the mischievous yet poised prose. Some of us would go to memorize even the early Isten flyers, promo plugs and back issue descriptions, collect all the sardonically funny Mattila and Sarna interviews we could find, prowl for reviews, editorials and other snippets that would make their way to other zines, Isten.net or some other corner of the information superhighway, inhaling them deeply in the dim-witted privacy of our Pentium kingdoms.
      Something spoke with incredible force through the hearts and tongues of Isten. Their perspectives on heavy metal and storytelling were so appealing it felt like the writers knew you personally. It was impossible to take their words out, to unread them. For better or for worse, these people and their words will probably be there as long as you'll be there, and then they'll vanish, like the good folks you used to see at gigs who aren't there anymore.

Learning that Isten started from family newspapers doodled in the dead of summer boredom always made perfect sense. That's how life must have felt to many zine mongrels, a deeply personal yet disproportionate endeavour to get rid of the long boring bits. It is nothing short of miraculous that cousins Mattila and Vuorenmaa would take their pens, scissors and glue—not to mention clippings from OKEJ and Heavy Heaven magazines circa 1984- 86—and hone their duplicative skills to produce anthologies of metallic fanaticism which would develop into lifelong personal endeavors.
      While 1987's Isten #1 may have been mostly copied content from Metal Hammer, Metal Forces and Mega Metal Kerrang!, it now feels like merely one way of building up the famous Isten notion that originality as such doesn't mean zilch, for style and quality are the currencies you operate with. In their wiry grimoires, the editorial team carried out the bravest of ideas in terms of layout, perspective and story arc, and they always did it with a level of focus and self-criticism that most zine editors would have everything to learn from. It's a life steeped in microcosmic zine lust—burning the oils of your youth buying stamps, recording cassettes, answering letters, managing delays, assembling layouts and toiling the soul away just to get a beggar's banquet worth of South Americans and East Europeans asking for free stuff. It's a life gathered from a priceless infusion of devotions and desperations, disintegrating with almost nothing.
      The pre-eminence of style and quality Isten harboured with its classic issues would later morph into a barbed-wire idealism—a kind of apotheosis of heroism, a be-all-end-all hammer of doom—which masqueraded as total disregard for other people's opinions. Early on, other zine editors voiced criticisms about Isten expressing too many of its makers' opinions, but over the years it became clear that Isten accumulated a vital compendium of strengths thanks to being so stubborn and singular.
      Through the pages of Isten, we came to see Mattila, Sarna and co. as compulsive minds, critical mouths and secure necks that had by some mean Mephistophelean pact managed to resemble their Hungarian namesake. Years later, when there was the chance to know them the tiniest of bits in person, you quickly sensed there was something else at play: an alliance of kind and humble characters who had found their way of fostering a lifetime curiosity and obsession with heavy metal. Anti-social, weary, tenacious and raising hell for Ilves they may be—all features that would hardly make anyone stand out in a group of Tampereans—but never rude or indifferent in person.
      Being invited to sit down with the infamous Mattila/Sarna pair to have a look at some of the Tormentor drafts at the Kahdet Kasvot pub a few years ago was eerie. Living in the same town with the editors hadn't meant much in the way of social proximity—Isten was always bigger than Tampere and Finland, never the byproduct of a local scene—yet there you were, trying to make sense of one of the most remarkable printed histories of the century reanimated and outshined by brilliant swabs of new darkness.
      When Mikko and Janne unrolled the Tormentor board on the table, there was almost nothing to say. Everything seemed figured out and near finished. It was the usual Isten deal. They seemed very conscious of their work but refused to oversell its assets. It seemed like they knew everything all along.
What didn't they know?

Between 1984 and 2024, Isten must've logged a million words. It must've encompassed a million pauses and a million murmurs for the chosen few. While the brokeback Nostradamuses of our time will claim we are witnessing a world of unforeseen malfunction and disintegration, a slow-motion collapse where all the cataclysmic fires and floods strike together against a complex system of safety failures, when you try to capture the Isten arc in a single tendency, you soon come to notice it's impossible. Unlike the dystopian superstory of armageddon that has creeped into our brains in thousands of variations, Isten is a corpus of forces and urges that can't quite be summed up as one or the other. Exaggerated, judgemental and flowing with godlike gusto as their servings may have been at times, they've left behind a set of crossroads and contradictions for us to decipher. Looking at the imp today, I'm still trying to find out if its grin is a cunning or a cynical one. At the same time, it's easy to see this as one of Isten's prime strengths: understanding that meanings are at their most powerful when they address some form of their counterforce, be it anti-heroic or humorous. Isten's brand of brainwork has always seemed so dense, so full of paths branching out, that it's likely any form of description or disapproval you have regarding Isten is already contained within itself.
      Personally, I've always enjoyed the sense of time and purpose Isten has. There was never any need to be fast or cutting edge. They had a healthy sense of suspicion for all walks of retromania and nostalgia. When I go through the Isten back issues now for any secret lessons that may have been overlooked, the worlds and lives that ooze through those little dots of disappointment in their everyday notions are as monumental as the musical guidelines. Planes flying overhead? Boring rental videos? Was it really as shitty as they say in Isten? Well, might just be!
      Casual curiosities aside, there are numerous things Isten has taught us better than anyone else. The most important lessons are individual for each, but for me they boil down to these: Whatever you do, do it with great care. Never let go of your integrity. Don't say “I will” or “I won't” unless you really mean it. Question your need for the things that are pushed at you. World-weariness can be a great personal or professional weapon of consolation, but you need something else to keep it ready for use. Maintain a certain humility to your actions. It's always more interesting to inspect those remaining in the shadows than those taking the hilltops. Humour, at its best, is darker than hell. Then, finally, there's this: “You shouldn't look at metal as a whore you fucked when you had nowhere else to go.”
      Devised at the apex of Isten's most destructive phase, that last sentence is from an interview I conducted with Mattila, the Isten chief, in the autumn of 1999. I've been thinking about that statement for twenty-five years now. The way that sentence shook a shy teen who really had no other place to go is not the way it affects a middle-aged man humiliated by his infatuation for the music of his youth. But the idea still pierces. No matter how harsh or exclusive Isten has been in praising its truths, that's the gospel that should never leave us: Do not look at metal as anything smaller than a universe.

Ultimately, Tormentor can be seen as a test for the ends of comprehension and, invariably, the world. For long-time Istenites, it may feel stunning— or entirely fitting—that the once-omnipotent voice of this stubborn Finnish fanzine should now be pushed underground like those small survivalist communities retreating to grottoes, tunnels and bunkers in anticipation of earth's last pictures. For many of us, Tormentor as Isten's final prophetic burn came across as an unrealistic proposal upon its introduction more than a quarter century ago. Today, all messy and real, carried forth by the Isten hallmarks of intimacy and integrity, Tormentor feels like a crucial venture not so much because the world is burning but because it is the final configuration of the Isten universe.

In my late teens and early twenties, Isten used to be the ultimate drunkenness check, walking home shit-faced in the dead of night and reciting all issues in chronological order. Whenever I could still recall the month of release for Kalloharppu, #7B or Cold Lake, I was at my core self and safe from any peril that might roam the streets and forest paths of wintry Finland. Eventually, in November 2004, the test would fail and I would go underwater in the cold black Baltic sea—in an Isten shirt, of course—but that was an end unproven.
      These days, release dates don't carry the meaning they used to, but I still look at the Isten imp and all the twenty-one issues, including this one here, with the same innocent marvel. They seem beyond correction, perfect from start to finish. They translate heavy metal as emotion, intuition, direction, will and guardianship. Could I be happier that Isten has given me this—a life with such added meaning? Probably not.
      So, fucker. What would you like to read when the world ends? The armageddon needs you. This is Tormentor.

—Mikko Kuronen