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Kickstarter for Heavy Metal Travel Guide

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A Kickstarter campaign has been created to help fund the creation of a heavy metal travel guide that’ll document Europe’s rock and metal scenes. The book will feature both prominent and underground venues, detailing the best places to grab drinks, rock out to your favourite bands and meet likeminded music fans. You can donate to the campaign HERE, and be sure to head below to learn more about it.

“The book, a heavy metal travel guide, will see myself Phil Weller, a freelance music and sports journalist and Editor of the website Manchester Rocks, along with an Australian photographer, Natasha travel across Europe for 3-4 months. On the road we will be exploring the underground rock and metal scenes, finding the best places for a metal fan to go in not only Europe’s biggest cities but also in smaller, less well known places too. Written in a Gonzo journalism style, with influence being drawn from the likes of cult figure Hunter S Thompson, P.J O'Rourke and Lester Bangs, as well as more light-hearted travel writers the likes of Bill Bryson and Michael Palin, the book will also look at how social, political and economic factors in each of the cities and countries visited will affect the success, popularity and overall health of the underground metal scenes. The book will paint a colourful and vivid picture of the current state of the continent’s metal scene, detailing the characters they meet along the way and the stories that unfold - of both highs and lows in equal measure. We’re happy to share any embarrassing moments in the name of entertainment. 

This book will include everything from the bars and clubs we visit, the bands we see, the beers we inevitable drown in and any other things that may interest a fellow metalhead - things like visiting Jim Morrison’s grave to Cliff Burton’s crash site. It will be a travel guide for the discerning metalhead, while aiming to appeal to a wider audience as well; something your mother could even bare perhaps. 

Together, we want to find out where rock and metal is blossoming, where is it depleting or non-existent and the reasons for that. For instance, how will the Athens scene, in a country struggling economically differ to scenes in Germany (Berlin, Essen) which is a nation currently flourishing? In Russia gigs are repeatedly being cancelled at the last minute on the ground’s of blasphemy and other ill-founded reasons; coupled with the high profile story of Pussy Riot, how does this impact upon the rock and metal scene in the country?”