I received issue #69 of Slug and Lettuce a few days ago, casually looking to review the material contained within, and to my surprise I notice a review of NeuFutur #1. I take a look, quite interested, and to my eyes I see a critical review. Leaning to the negative side of the spectrum, I obviously wasn't deterred by the review. In fact, this review encouraged me, as the reviewer was not afraid to directly ask me, in all bluntness, about my Christian music article: "Who gives a damn?" This is in direct opposition to the scores of smaller magazines who, afraid of losing valuable CD sources, only seem to look at a album's high points while completely ignoring the flaws in that album.

A second point to be made is the increasingly high number of bands bitching about poor reviews. An established magazine, like Maximum Rocknroll, has better to do then give a poor rating to a band for shits and giggles. In fact, magazines such as Flipside, MRNR, and Jersey Beat all have reviewers who pick albums concurrent with their taste. A few magazines even will review a piece a second time if the score is fairly low the first time around. With the days of such hacks as Sum 41 and meteorically rising bands like Jimmy Eat World plastered all of MTV, one can understand this sudden bitchiness but not excuse it.

Finally, one should not let a simple paragraph of text heavily influence their creative flow. If a comment is commonly mentioned, as was with the case with the magazine being without a focus, one can look into the problem and possibly correct it. However, it is not rational or advisable to blindly follow one solitary review, possibly alienating more of a fan base and compromising more of one's ideals then is truly necessary. Issue 2, for me, has more of a focus, due to more of an abundance of articles. Issue one was a bad, mad scramble for pieces, and resulted in the crummy layout of the Jeremy Gloff interview. The idea is that the quality of a work, whether it be a zine, CD, or a movie, is a quality easy to discern. I can go back to my Amish Drive-By days and notice that the quality level is much below that of NeuFutur.