Capsule reviews are short. They've run up to approximately 700 words (with book reviews tending to run longer than music reviews), but are generally much shorter. Before sending reviews, you must query to make sure someone else hasn't already covered your unique idea for review material. Most of my reviewers are on staff and email their reviews as they write them. At the moment I am interested in taking on several more reviewers as I need to cut down on writing them myself. If you tend to receive a lot of print or music and need another forum for spreading the word about it, get in touch. We literally print hundreds of capsule reviews in each issue, so feel free to send a list of possible review items when you make your query. Reviews should be more descriptive than opinionated. If you love something, go ahead and say it. If something is pure garbage, it probably isn't worth the space it would consume in the magazine. If something is ok, but more or less sucks by your own standards, stick with merely describing it so people with different tastes can decide whether or not they might enjoy it. We aren't here to give people stigmas for having different opinions and interests in the arts fields. Submitted reviews must include band/ author/ editor/ director, title, label/ publisher/ distributor, and, preferrably, mail-order details.
Review Categories: The following types of releases are regularly reviewed in Cyber-Psychos AOD. Music (CD, vinyl, cassette, live performance), video (music compilations and films), books (both fiction and non), magazines (literary, music, film, non- fiction), and comics.
Examples: Following are some reviews, from each category, which have previously appeared in Cyber-Psychos AOD and remain indicative of our interests. Audio releases: Tod Dockstader's Apocalypse, Present's Certitudes, Little Fyodor's Dance of the Salted Slug, Arcane Device's Trout, Monochrome Bleu's Catfood, In the Nursery's An Ambush of Ghosts, Muslimgauze's Hamas Arc, Charnel Music's Arrythmia II, Sequentia's Ancient Music for a Modern Age, Dead Can Dance's A Passage in Time, Fields of the Nephilim's Revelations, Pigface's Fook, Nik Turner's Space Ritual, Tracy & the Hindenburg Ground Crew's Ouch, The Vandals Sweatin' to the Oldies (Live), Minor Threat's Complete Discography, and Tiamat's Clouds. Live performance: Crash Worship, John Cale, Christian Death, Hawkwind, Massive Deceleration Trauma, and King Missile. Video: Propaganda Video Magazine Vol I, J. Michael McCarthy's Teenage Tupelo, and Mars Attacks! The Art of the Movie. Books (fiction): Lance Olsen's Tonguing the Zeitgeist, Larry McCaffery's After Yesterday's Crash: The AvantPop Anthology, William T. Vollmann's The Atlas, Uncle River's Thunder Mountain, Jessica Erica Hahn's Elysian Fields, Brian Hodge's The Convulsion Factory, Maxim Jabukowski's It's You That I Want To Kiss, Lucy Taylor's The Flesh Artist, Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy, Bruce Boston's Stained Glass Rain, D. N. Stuefloten's The Mexico Trilogy, Brian Stableford's The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires, John Shirley's The Exploded Heart, and Bruce Bethke's Head Crash. Books (non-fiction): Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger III, Peter Lambourne Wilson's Pirate Utopias, Adam Parfrey's Cult Rapture, Stephen Flowers' and Crystal Dawn's Carnal Alchemy: A Sado-Magical Exploration of Pleasure, Pain, and Self-Transformation, Christopher S. Hyatt's Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation and Other Devices, John A. Keel's The Mothman Prophecies, Eric and Leif Nesheim's Saucer Attack!/ Pop Culture in the Golden Age of Flying Saucers, American Originals: John Waters, Exploding Hearts Exploding Stars: The Serial Art and Propagandart of George Petros, Katherine Dunn's Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook, and John Marr's Murder Can Be Fun Datebook. Magazines (literary): Back Brain Recluse, Xizquil, SF Eye, Bizarre Sex and Other Crimes of Passion, Dead of Night, Eulogy, and Bloodsongs. Magazines (non-fiction): Morbid Curiosity, Extraphile, FringeWare Review, Ongaku Otaku, Esoterra, Factsheet Five, Blue Blood, Propaganda, Snuff It, and Seconds. Comics: John Bergin's From Inside, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, J. O. Barr's The Crow, Al Columbia's Doghead, Matt Howarth's Starcrossed and Weirdfall, Andrew Vachss' Hard Looks, and Howard Chaykin's Batman: Dark Allegiances.
Back to the Cyber-Psychos AOD Submission Guidelines.