The Headbanger: Issue #1

Hey, metalheads! Strap on your spikes and squeeze into your leather pants once more, because The Headbanger is back!

The groundbreaking early '80s heavy metal music fanzine published by HardRadio and Shockwave Skull Sessions host Bob Nalbandian roars back to life in this 21st-century eBook reboot, featuring high-quality scans of the original master pages and an all-new introduction by Nalbandian.

This faithful digital reproduction of the inaugural issue features now-legendary all-female New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Girlschool on its cover and a review of the group's debut U.S. show at the Whisky on 4/25/82; colorful recaps of live performances by then-local L.A. bands Ratt and Steeler; and a no-holds-barred commentary on "new" albums by Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Rainbow and the first Metal Massacre compilation.

As a bonus, the eBook includes the original full-page "Los Angeles Metal Report" that Nalbandian and his Huntington Beach metal comrade Pat Scott wrote for the March 1982 issue of Ron Quintana's nationally distributed fanzine Metal Mania. It was through this "Report" that headbangers living beyond the smog of the Sunset Strip were to read the first words ever published about a then-unknown Orange County/L.A. garage band … named Metallica!

“Over the years I've received tons of emails from people asking about The Headbanger and whether I ever plan to reprint the original issues,” Nalbandian says. "We want to transport readers back to the ‘true’ days of the early fanzines, a time when there was no such thing as ‘spell-check’ and tablet computers were the stuff of science fiction. Welcome to 1982 revisited!"