The high-gloss City Slab is one of those magazines that, as a self-publisher myself, tends to infuriate me. They obviously have the resources and staff to fill up a magazine – a full-size glossy, no less; this ain’t no little dime zine – but is so ugly to look at that it actually detracts from the whole experience.

The writing is great, fanboy stuff – not perfection, but entertaining – with features on Sheri Moon Zombie and the film VACANCY. The fiction is silly and breezy, while two in-depth pieces that really caught my eye – one on Marilyn Manson’s new album as well as the history of the proto-industrial outfit Coil – are actually cool, yet scholarly enough to appear in a general music magazine (possibly Blender if it weren’t so focused on getting singers in their panties on the cover). Too bad that everything surrounding it is an utter eyesore.

Too many magazines like this just don’t know anything about design, settling for ugly pics found on the Internet interlaced with bad line drawings, poorly Photoshopped photos of chunky Goth-sluts – um, excuse me, “pin-up girls” – and pages of nothing but text and white space. No matter how good your words are, people do judge books by their covers, and City Slab’s was raped by the ugly stick. Maybe if they got a professional, skilled person to do their layout, I can see a real future for the magazine.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to talk for a moment about the ads in the mag. Now this has nothing to do with the magazine itself, so you can skip ahead if you’d like, but why does every advertisement have to feature a highly unattractive Goth skank in some form of nakedness to advertise a product? Do I need some topless skeleton-chick to sell me on absinthe? Am I gonna buy shirts from SighCo because of a purple-wigged model with a skull stuck in her bare cootch? And, no, “Vivica Love,” husky “pin-up,” I don’t want to visit your website.

If anything, the same ads over and over again not only desensitizes me to you, but actually builds up resentment toward your product. Are Goths and the like so fried on cloves that they have no imagination left? –Louis Fowler

Buy it at City Slab.