Metal Author Takes Fanzine Writer Under Wing for ‘Hellbent for Cooking’
It wasn't like metal media figurehead Ian Christe had a ton of extra time last year to help an unpublished author put together a cookbook. He was working on his weekly show, Bloody Roots, for Sirius XM Liquid Metal and promoting his most recent book, 'Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga.'
Then there was the time spent toiling away at his own book company, Bazillion Points -- which has published 'Swedish Death Metal' by Daniel Ekeroth, 'Sheriff McCoy: Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks' by Andy McCoy and 'Once Upon a Nightwish' by Mape Olila. But there was something about Canadian fanzine writer Annick 'Morbid Chef' Giroux that inspired Christe.
"She's really young, in her 20s, and she did an amazing fanzine called Morbid Tales," Christe tells Noisecreep of the woman who came to author 'Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook.' "She knows everything about early doom bands, '70s bands, new wave of British heavy metal, current day, very extreme international metal bands. So her fanzine was just like a dream. And it was done in the old-school style, with really cool graphics and lengthy interviews with extreme cult bands like Pagan Altar."
As much as he loved the entire zine, it was the final pages of the final issue that motivated Christe to ask Giroux to do a cookbook for Bazillion Points. "There were five or six pages of recipes," he says. "They were in black and white, and it looked much more like a fanzine, but that was kind of a prototype for this book. I'd known her for a few years, so I emailed her about it and she was into it."
For Giroux, the idea was a culmination of a dream. Back in 2007, she had already thought about putting together her own metal cookbook, but she lacked the contacts and experience to make it happen.
"I had trouble getting in touch with bands," Giroux says. "I was a nobody going to record labels and stuff, and nobody would reply to me. So I did it more underground and released it as part of my fanzine. And then Ian picked it up and he freaked out, and he's like, 'Hey let's release this as a real book.' I'm eternally grateful to him for that."