FLICKING THROUGH THE
528 beautiful pages of United Forces: An Archive Of Brazil’s Raw feels like operating a lo-fi time machine. Our destination: mid-80s São Paulo. Our guide: Marcelo Batista, who launched the zine as a teenager and oversaw an era when thrash, hardcore, speed, death and black metal were all spawned simultaneously in an exuberant musical battle. As well as scanned reprints of each original issue - plus a dizzying wealth of photos and flyers -Marcelo provides a commentary on the zine’s development and his obsessive immersion in Brazil’s extreme metal underground, filtered through the giddy excitement of a kid falling in love with metal.