ABOUT

trust who?
well this is basically the online version of our print fanzine which has been around forever (1986, i.e.) and on a two month basis continues to cover all aspects of the music we love and the stuff that comes along with it. the focus has always been somewhere between punk and hardcore, yet trying to avoid the pitfalls of a narrow minded music taste by occasionally listening to something else.

trust online?
there’s excerpts from every issue, usually 3-4 band stories/interviews as well as stuff by our columnists, fanzine reviews, and gig dates. we do consider our print issue to be our main focus (and we don’t water it down by handing out freebie cds either) so the online interviews & such do not contain any layout & it’s meant to be that way. it’s all in german as nobody has the time to translate, sorry.

trust gig dates?
at this point we print/list what we like. if you do shows/are a band we strongly urge you to send us the dates. as always: shows get cancelled. that’s not our fault, so before driving 3 hours please call the venue.

trust future?
i have no fucking clue. we’ve beed doing this for long so i guess there’s no reason to stop. want to write for us? send something!

making hardcore a cocktail again,
daniel / trust

16 things people might want to know about TRUST(answered by publisher dolf)

1. You can buy TRUST in many main train central station Germany wide – Isn’t TRUST selling out ? Why don’t you support the underground?

We are the underground, so why should we not support ourselves, that’d be stupid. We do support the underground and would prefer to only use cool outlets (mail-order, stores, people selling it at gigs, etc.), but unfortunately most kids buy it at the train stations It is also good to find people who like what we do but otherwise would have never heard about us.

2. I heard your zine sucks! You are not covering the real Hardcore-Punk-music, you only listen to Fugazi, No Means No and strange free jazz.

You might have heard that, but it is not true. We not only cover hardcore-punk-music but we have always covered punk/hardcore/underground music, also some strange/experimental stuff here and there, but most important, the music the people at TRUST like to see published. There is a wide varity of people working on the zine, so naturally they have different taste as well as different age – therefore people also develop.

3. I haven’t read a single issue of TRUST since 1991, but I think that your zine is half-dead: you call yourself underground but you have ads from big companies, your review staff covers major label outputs, you have a barcode and all your writers don’t look crust punk anyway!

That is where the problem starts, how you can think about an underground publication like TRUST if you have not seen a copy in many years. It is true, we have (once a year or so) a major label ad and we do cover all kinds of good music; the barcode is a tool, so workers can work less. And for the look, dude, don’t judge a book by its cover!

4. Why is TRUST a zine of and for the students? What subjects did the publisher studied?

We are not a zine for students or non students; we don’t care if, or if not. I can ensure you, in the TRUST staff there is people who have studied, still do or never have. The publisher did not study.

5. Is that true that the Zap Zine ­founder Moses was in 1986 in the founding crew of TRUST? Why was zap more popular than trust?

Yes it is true, the founding crew was Thomasso Schultze, Mitch Alber, Armin Hofman, Dolf Hermannstädter, Anne Ullrich and Moses Arndt – but he (Arndt) had to leave, the first issue of his zine in 1988 was ca. 60% of what should have been in the issue of TRUST back then… old storys. I don’t know, because they had better marketing strategies, like following popular trends in the scene, be loudmouths and not to care what they said in the past… but you should not ask TRUST about other publications anyway…

6. Tell me, is there a difference between TRUST and the big German music magazines?

Yes, we feature what we want; the others feature what the music industry wants them to feature .

7. Why is the layout so boring? Don’t you guys have an access to the newest layout programmes?

We don’t think the layout is boring, it is constant, and it is mainly done by one guy who is not very interested in layout programmes.

8. Why do you feature so many bands I never heard of? You are too avant-garde for me.

Then maybe we are the wrong publication for you. There are people that want to read about what they see on their favourite music TV station or site, in other words, what the industry wants them to read. And there are people that want to discover new interesting bands, they read TRUST. We are not avant-garde.

9. Why do you feature so many bands I have heard off? You are too mainstream for me.

Then maybe we are the wrong publication for you…. just kidding. Because in TRUST you really get to read what the bands have to say in length, most of the times and only if they have something to say. We can not be too mainstream, that is like “too pregnant”, you either are or you are not, we are not .

10. Is that true that there was a photo-split issue with Trust and Maximum Rock´n´Roll in 1988? Wow, did you make other special issues since then?

Yes it is true, unfortunately it is sold out. No, that was the only one. Well, we had a few “theme issues” about music & drugs, sex & music…. check the index. But ther e is a PDF of that photo-split issue at http://www.operationphoenixrecords.com/mrreurophotozine.html

11. Why don’t you have Cd´s with the zine?

For the same reason we don’t have flip-flops or beer with the zine. We want to publish a fanzine, a Cd is always a by-product, but nowadays it is the main reason people by a magazine, we think that is a problem and therefore we never had a Cd with the zine and probably never will.

12. Why is your homepage so lame?

You probably have not seen it since its relaunch in March 2007 – so you better open your fucking eyes.

13. Why don’t you do an interview with my band? We’re around since so long!

Why not, if any of the TRUST staff writers is into doing it, it might happen…. get in touch.

14. Why did you give us such a bad review from the best band from our label? We wanted to run an ad inside trust!

We give you a good review if we like your music, no matter if you do an ad or no. Therefore we expect that you also run an ad, if you like, no matter how good or bad the review is. Take it as it is.

15. I heard that most of the staff are male and old, means over thirty, even over forty – how can you write then about a youth culture like punk?

Some of the older staff writers are indeed old. But we also have young people, as well as female writer. Because some of us have been young 25 years ago when punk was still a culture, not a product like today, and therefore we are qualified to still write about it. And, some of us are still young in mind, you’d be surprised.

16. So TRUST never had a CD coming with the mag, but I hear there was some flexis in the earlier years?

Correct, we dont have a CD for good reasons, we publish a fanzine and we are not a label. Here is a overview on the 7″s:

Trust # 12 Barn Av Regnbuen – ‘Helter og Kurker’ ep Flexi with Cover
Trust # 13 Trust-Vinyl with Raped Teenager Flexi (some are left over, get in touch with the HQ)
Trust # 17 Trust-Vinyl with Destination Zero Flexi
Trust # 19 Trust-Vinyl with Alien Boys
Trust # 20 should have had the Spermbirds “one sided” 7″ (hard disc) but all you got was a card saying in german “there is no single included”
Trust # 23 Haywire/Nonoyesno 7″ harddisc

Folgender Text wurde bereits im Februar 1998 (Trust # 68) im Heft abgedruckt – das meiste davon ist heute genauso gültig.

Abt.: Aus UNgegeben Anlaß

Auch heute wird man durch Zungenküsse nicht schwanger, aber einige wollen das ja wohl immer mal wieder bestätigt haben….

Warum es das Trust 1998 immernoch gibt…..

Es gibt einige Dinge, denen viele Leute heute hinterherweinen, ohne die Realitäten anzuerkennen. Es gibt (leider?) nicht die eine Szene, die einmal existiert hat. Dem Nachzuweinen sei gestattet, man sollte es aber nicht zur einzigen Existenzberechtigung seiner selbst stilisieren.

Es gibt dafür aber 100 versprengte Grüppchen, die alle das Banner “ihres” HC hochhalten und letztlich von dem jeweils nächsten Grüppchen nur belächelt werden – obwohl viele davon sehr häufig Worte wie “unity” verwenden. Ob jetzt Ignite vor 1000 Menschen, Biohazard vor 10000 Menschen, oder die Peechees vor 10 Menschen spielen, und wer jetzt welchen Begriff abbekommt, ist keine Frage, sondern einfach nur egal.

Alles nur Begriffe und leere Hülsen.

Es gibt das Trust!

Auch weil es es schon sehr lange gibt und Kontinuität wie auch der entsprechend geregelte Umgang mit dem “Shitwork” gegeben ist – das wird von manchen als “langeweilig” bezeichnet. In Wahrheit ist es so das hier meistens alles und jede/r funktioniert.

Weil wir immer noch mit leuchtenden Augen nach einem Konzertabend vom Tanzen durchschwitzt den Plattenstand leerkaufen

Weil wir immer noch an DIY glauben

Weil wir uns immer noch AUSSUCHEN, was wir selbst tun wollen

Weil wir nicht nur ein Forum für musikalische Ausdrucksformen, die sonst nicht oder nur spärlich erwähnt werden, bieten, sondern uns auch nicht scheuen – auf unsere Art – Musik anzugehen, die aufgrund ihrer “popularität” eigentlich gar nicht wirklich im Trust erwähnt werden “müßte” – es geht nicht nur um das “wer”, sondern auch um das “wie”.

Weil wir glauben, das unsere kulturellen Interessen zu stark vom Massenmedien dirigierten Mainstream abweichen, sie aber für so wichtig halten, daß wir uns mir keiner bloßen Konsumentenrolle abgeben möchten.

Weil wir im Laufe unseres Lebens so viele Dinge innerhalb eines Untergrunds für uns als wichtig erachtet haben oder gelernt haben, als wichtig zu erachten, demzufolge unsere kleinen Gehirne davon so grundsätzlich positiv beeinflußt wurden, daß wir den Wunsch hegen, daß auch noch viele andere Leute mit oder nach uns daran teilhaben können.

Weil wir uns weiterentwickeln und vielleicht kurz vor dem Altersstarrsinn noch einmal offener und ehrlicher zu uns selbst werden, über unseren eigenen Tellerrand hinausschauen wagen und uns nicht mehr mit der Wiederholung dumpfer Phrasen abgeben wollen, die auch keiner mehr auf seine Jacke schreiben möchte.

Weil es kaum andere Fanzines gibt, bei denen so unterschiedliche Menschen mitarbeiten und Ansichten existieren, Leute sich dennoch akzeptieren und eine gemeinsame Basis gefunden haben. Eine Basis (eben das Heft) die weder auf so einer “wir müssen uns aber ganz doll liebhaben”-schiene läuft, geschweige denn nach dem lausigen Motto: “wir kleiden uns gleich, denken gleich und (meinen deshalb) am gleichen Strang zu ziehen”. Wir sind verschieden, “den” Trust-Schreiber gibt es nicht.

Weil wir immer noch mehr Spaß haben als alle anderen – und selbst wenn unser Leben in anderer Leute Augen als in sich nicht konsistent erscheinen mag – Pech gehabt. El Korrekto kann jemand anders spielen.

Infos über TRUST: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_%28Zeitschrift%29