💙 Massive Thanks to Paolo Palmacci – Absolute Gent, Proper Chat 🤘
One of the best parts of running The Riff Report isn’t just blasting new music at irresponsible volumes — it’s getting the chance to actually talk to the people behind it. Real conversations. Real insight. No smoke, no mirrors. And that’s exactly what we got when Paolo Palmacci took the time to sit down with us.
From the first question to the last riff-fuelled ramble, Paolo was open, thoughtful, and refreshingly honest. No scripted answers. No PR autopilot. Just genuine passion for music, creativity, and the never-ending madness of making art in the modern metal world. 🔥
We want to say a huge thank you to Paolo for:
- Taking the time to chat properly (not rushing, not phoning it in)
- Sharing insight into the creative process and the bigger picture
- Supporting independent, community-driven music journalism — the lifeblood of scenes like ours 🖤
These are the conversations that remind us why we do this. Behind every crushing note and carefully crafted soundscape is a human being grafting, learning, evolving, and still chasing that spark. Paolo made that crystal clear — and our readers are all the better for it.
So yeah… massive respect and thanks to Paolo Palmacci. We’re buzzing to see what’s coming next, and something tells us this won’t be the last time our paths cross. 👀🤘
Stay loud. Stay curious. Support the scene.
— The Riff Report Crew 🥁🔥
🎸 OPENING RIFF: SETTING THE SCENE
- For anyone who wasn’t there at the time, what did the Italian punk scene of the 1980s actually feel like on the ground? Paint us a picture. Sweat, fear, freedom, police vans, dodgy venues… go.
The Italian punk scene of the 1980s was very lively, especially initially in the large urban centres of the north, in cities such as Milan and Turin, but then spread like wildfire throughout the peninsula. There were very few venues for playing that kind of music, so it was necessary to occupy spaces in order to perform. The first social centre occupied by punks was – in 1982 – Virus in Milan, which became something of a beacon for the movement in the early 1980s.
- Do you remember the very first punk fanzine you ever picked up or made? What was it, and did it instantly melt your brain?
In the 1980s, I formed my own band called Negative Existence (the first punk band in Latina) and made my debut in May 1982 in a cinema where there were 200 angry metalheads who hated me as soon as they saw me. (Link to my Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/artist/17124079-Paolo-Palmacci) Crossover was still a long way off, and in those years there was a clear contrast between punks and metalheads! I risked my life 😉 The first fanzines I read were made by the collective of the Latina scene. I made my first fanzine called Anexistenza in 1986 after the break-up of my second band, No Existence (which will be released in March, exactly 40 years after its release on audio-cassette, on CD by the Finnish label Bestial Burst!).
- Italy isn’t always the first country people think of when they talk punk history. Why do you think Italian punk was so fierce, political, and DIY-heavy compared to other scenes?
The Italian hardcore punk scene in particular has been greatly appreciated abroad, especially in the US thanks to Maximumrocknroll! Bands such as Raw Power,Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, Indigesti and Negazione played in the US! Italian punk and hardcore punk quickly became highly politicised because, at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the country was very politicised anyway. There was a strong ideological conflict stemming from the Cold War, and in response, a punk scene developed that rejected this very conflict and referred mainly to the anarchism of groups such as Crass in the UK.
📰 CUT, PASTE, REPEAT: THE FANZINE LIFE
- What pushed people back then to make fanzines instead of just shouting in the street or starting bands? What did fanzines give the scene that nothing else could?
Fanzines made it possible to raise awareness of bands and scenes that the mainstream press tended to ignore, either deliberately or out of laziness. So, through fanzines, it was possible to create a network of contacts and relationships that, given how it was done (with photocopiers, stamps and telephone tokens), seems truly incredible when viewed through today’s eyes!
5. How hard was it actually to make a fanzine in the 80s? We’re talking access to photocopiers, money, materials, and not getting nicked by your boss or the cops.
It was certainly not easy, and often people resorted to making copies secretly in a school or office. The advent of the photocopier certainly made it easier to make copies, but the costs remained high and not everyone could afford them. Fanzines were sold at a very low price, which was normally intended to cover expenses and guarantee income to produce the next issue, but it was not always possible to sell enough copies to bring out another issue, and many fanzines ended up as “one-offs”.
6. Were these zines mostly about music, or did they drift into politics, squatting, anti-fascism, art, and pure rage?
The very first Italian fanzines were purely musical, although the influence of the early 20th-century avant-garde (Dadaism in particular) was immediately apparent. However, cultural, social and political issues soon took centre stage alongside music. Anti-fascist themes, squatting, animal rights and pacifism were therefore very prominent.
7. Did bands take fanzines seriously back then, or were they seen as scruffy little noise-makers stapled together in bedrooms?
For punk and post-punk bands, fanzines were often the only way to make themselves known! So they regarded them as an absolutely essential medium!
💣 POLITICS, PROTEST & PROBLEMS
8. Italian punk is famously political. How much risk was involved in putting certain ideas down on paper in the 80s?
The risk was quite high. Fanzines were often seized by the police.
9. Did the authorities ever crack down on zines or the people making them? Any close calls or horror stories?
In Italy, there is a law dating back to 1948 that regulates the distribution of newspapers and magazines, which must have an editor-in-chief who is a journalist registered with the Order of Journalists and then register the publication with a court. Anyone who did not follow these rules risked being reported for the crime of illegal printing. Marcello Baraghini, an activist linked to the Radical Party, in agreement with the party’s secretary, Marco Pannella, provided a “legal cover” for anyone who wanted to print and distribute a fanzine, allowing it to be published as a supplement to his newspaper “Stampa Alternativa” and becoming the editor-in-chief of very many of those fanzines.
10. Looking back now, do you think punk fanzines helped shape political awareness for a generation of Italian kids?
Absolutely! They were really important for the development of the thinking of an entire generation, which had built itself a “place” where it could express its ideas and freely exchange views with others! Without fanzines, there wouldn’t have been so many lively punk scenes all over Italy and all over the world.
🖥️ FROM PHOTOCOPIER TO ONLINE ARCHIVE
- What sparked the idea to digitise and put these fanzines online instead of letting them rot in boxes under beds?
About a couple of years ago, I began developing a web-based project that I called “Capit Mundi?” (a play on words paraphrasing Latin “Caput Mundi” – referring to the city of Rome – roughly meaning “do you understand the world?”). (Link to Capit Mundi? website: https://paolopalmacci.it/capitmundi/index.html) I like to define it as my own personal “anthropogenetic rewind”—ultimately a historical, cultural, and anthropological reconstruction—undertaken because I am deeply convinced that we are our own paths, and that this assumption must be kept firmly in mind, even to the point of vivisecting every step we have taken in order to truly understand where (but also how and why) those steps have ultimately led us. It is a profound reflection on how and why we have succeeded in the disastrous endeavor of dissolving that immense heritage of widespread creativity, desire for freedom, and artistic—as well as social and political—“subversion,” inclusivity and the need to conquer new rights, which still characterized my generation (also because it was undoubtedly an inheritance from the previous one), only to find ourselves within the current Zeitgeist, marked by the most regressive impulses denying all those achievements—achievements that cost not only years of struggle but also lives—and which has led to concepts such as “democracy,” “freedom,” and “equality” being read with a negative connotation. This is certainly not the first time this has happened, so one of the most decisive questions underlying my research is: are we once again “condemned to repeat History”? Taking them out of boxes crammed into warehouses, cellars or garages, digitising all those self-produced works and creating a completely free online archive for them is, I believe, giving them a second chance at life! A second chance, therefore, also for the ideas behind those self-produced works: doing things yourself and using your own head! At present, I have mapped nr. 695 productions, of which 676 complete issues are already available free of charge in PDF format for reading and/or download, in the full DIY spirit with which they were originally created. (Link to Capit Mundi? Graphic Map: https://paolopalmacci.it/capitmundi/fanzinet.html)
- Was there a moment where you realised, “If we don’t save this stuff now, it’s gone forever”?
Memory and history (which is, so to speak, its “solidification”) are the first targets that every Power seeks to erase, rectify, and rewrite in its own favour: for its own perpetuation. Therefore, it is always extremely urgent to preserve memory in order to prevent the rewriting of history by the Power.
- How difficult was it tracking down old issues, contributors, and permissions after all these years?
Finding copies of those self-produced publications has not been and is not easy, given that many years have passed (more than 40 in some cases!). Tracking down the authors is also not always easy because sometimes they are not mentioned in the fanzines or are referred to by nicknames. Some publications are truly impossible to find because they were printed or photocopied in very few copies, almost all of which have been lost. Fortunately, I found a great spirit of collaboration among the people who were involved in the production or enjoyment of those self-produced items at the time, and I received a lot of material from them free of charge. With a few exceptions, which unfortunately always exist, I found that the original DIY spirit is still alive and well in many of those people!
- Did anything surprise you when revisiting the zines decades later? Stuff that feels uncomfortably relevant in 2026?
What really struck me was, as I said, their ability to communicate despite using analogue means (photocopiers, letters and stamps, landline telephones), which made communication extremely slow compared to the instant communication of MacLuhan’s “global village” of today! Unfortunately, I don’t see anything like that today, as we are engulfed by the deliberately planned digital “divide and rule” of Web 2.0, which is increasingly in the hands of AI. Today’s fanzines, at least the Italian ones, essentially mimic the fanzines of the 1980s without having any of their spirit. They call themselves fanzines just because it’s cool, so it’s a marketing strategy.
🔥 WHY THIS STILL MATTERS (A LOT)
- Why should a young punk fan today, raised on Spotify and Instagram, give a toss about 40-year-old photocopied zines?
Should do so in order to have a chance to intuit alternative solutions to new media increasingly controlled by AI.
- Do you see parallels between 80s fanzine culture and today’s online DIY scenes, blogs, and underground communities?
No, at least very few. The platforms made available to users (except in very rare cases) are controlled by multinational companies that obviously supervise the content.
- Is there something modern punk culture has lost by moving away from physical zines… or has it just changed shape?
The original spirit has been lost, but that was inevitable. Punk had actually already exhausted its function by the end of the 1970s, giving rise to many creative offshoots of what was called “post-punk”. Today, it is much more about aesthetics than ethics. For me, punk is essentially ethics, a weltanschauung.
🇮🇹 ITALIAN PUNK PRIDE
- Are there any Italian punk bands or scenes from the 80s you think still deserve way more recognition internationally?
My Negative Existence and No Existence, haha, just kidding, of course. No, I think Italian bands that deserved international recognition basically got it!
- If someone dives into the archive for the first time, which fanzines or eras would you tell them to start with?
Starting with the earliest and most seminal: Archaeptoryx, Attack, Viva e Amen. But the lesser-known ones are also worth exploring, especially those that represent what I call “amniotic fluid,” without which even what eventually emerged would not have done so.
- How important is it to you that Italian punk history is preserved on its own terms, not filtered through UK or US narratives?
As I said above, memory must be preserved above all from the constant attempts by those in power to modify it for their own use and consumption. This is not simply a matter of cultural reinterpretations, which can be done if they are done in the right spirit, even from abroad. The danger is quite different!
🧷 PERSONAL & LEGACY QUESTIONS
- On a personal level, what does working on this archive mean to you emotionally?
I said that I define my entire Capit Mundi? project as an “anthropogenic rewind,” so obviously I am emotionally involved in it. It couldn’t be otherwise. At the same time, I try to maintain, where possible, a slightly more detached view in order to be less strictly autobiographical and instead tell the story of my generation.
- Do you feel like you’re closing a chapter… or opening a new one?
Both! I am definitely closing a big circle, one that I hadn’t closed but only paused in 1989. But I’m not just simply archiving and preserving memories. This work serves as a platform for me to open new creative chapters! In fact, the next one, which is now imminent, will be the release of a vinyl compilation entitled “No Capitulation” bundled with the fanzine “Capitzine?”. It is scheduled for release next May. Thanks to the interactions involved in developing the section focused on the fanzine medium, I have come into possession of some recordings of tracks by bands very likely from the 1980s, but so obscure that they seem to come from a parallel dimension, as well as a similarly obscure fanzine that speaks precisely about these artists. “No Capitulation” will be the summa of the journey carried out so far, precisely thanks to having brought back to life relationships with some of the protagonists of the Italian underground of the 1980s, with the hope of producing some small new state of agitation of letting at least a few drafts of the DIY spirit that characterized those years blow again—perhaps even achieving that butterfly wing beat capable of inoculating even just a drop of chaos into the cultural and ideological desert in which we find ourselves immersed today. And of attempting to rekindle a glimmer of critical spirit and greater awareness in the consumption of today’s new, dividing, digital media. That alone would already be an extraordinary result.
- If you could send one message back to your teenage punk self, hunched over a desk with scissors and glue, what would it be?
I would tell him: “I am immensely pleased that you have remained inside me exactly as you were then”.
⚡ FINAL RIFF
- Finally, what do you hope people feel when they scroll through these old fanzines for the first time? Nostalgia, anger, inspiration… or the sudden urge to start their own?
I hope that leafing through these self-published works will be like the beating of a butterfly’s wings in the current sad cultural desert of recent years.
________________________________________________________________THE END______
Note
My useful links, for convenience, I’ll list them again below:
Homepage Capit Mundi? Web Site
Capit Mundi? Blog
Graphic Map of Italian Fanzines in the 1980s
Alphabetical List of Italian Fanzines from the 1980s
My Discogs (Negative Existence – No Existence – The Bathroom Flowers – H.S.R.)
