In the past, the sanctimonious preaching of Alternity has been annoying and even offensive to us here at broken pencil and we have, accordingly, not bothered to review it. However, recent issues of Alternity have been somewhat less strident. The Christmas mini-zine is fairly innocuous. Basically this is the Christmas zine, with Tyler telling us about Christmas toys, activities, music etc. Except for the Editor’s Page on which Tyler makes the mistake of assuming that everybody he sends his zine to celebrates Christmas and worships the baby Jesus, this is mostly feel good kinda stuff, and Tyler certainly doesn’t seem like the evil right-wing zealot we first labelled him as so maybe all we need here is a little more dialogue since Tyler is certainly not offending us by his being a Christian or enjoying Christian culture and Christian bands. We especially like the part of Tyler’s favourite Christmas when he is stuck in Seattle Christmas eve and his flight might be cancelled but, hurray, Tyler appeals to God, it works, they escape the fog and Tyler arrives in Winnipeg safe and sound for Xmas morning. Meanwhile, the regular Alternity zine has given up on overt social critiques and turned into an “alternative Christian music” zine. It’s amazing how close it seems to a normal music zine, and how it makes you think, “Hey, maybe I’ll go to the next Christian hardcore show in my city.” And then you think, “Naah.” Here’s a sample, about Tyler’s trip to the Cornerstone music festival: “The time had finally arrived for the Crucified to play their farewell, and a huge mass arrived to send them off. The backstage was also littered with Christian music’s finest, who had come to witness this event. I thought the band was a little rusty, but I seemed to be the only one who did, because everyone else was moshing… Finally, the show ended and some more spontaneous praise and worship began. Greg Minier even stage dove…”
zine / #6 / main creator: Tyler Heshka / free / 1204 Degraff Place, Winnipeg, MB, R2G 1Y8