Nuzzy Zine October 2025

Ben handed me this zine along with the newest Tattoo Punk at Varning. At first I assumed this was just the latest issue of Nuts!, last seen as a huge newsprint zine I'd be lucky to find at a show or record store while visiting New York 10ish years ago. I realized that this was actually Nuzzy. I wondered, is this new Nuts!? Ben explains:

I changed the name cuz I named "Nuts!" when i was 15 and I just kinda got tired of the dick jokes. Also "Nuts!" was only about DIY punk and now i'm old and I want to make zines about whatever I want, I think the name change signifies that maybe the content won't necessarily be totally punk. haha but it's always kinda punk anyways.

It's a short magazine-style, cover colour, filled with some of Ben's and other's photography, collage, some visual content from Ergot, and a double-sided insert poster of live photos on one side and and graffiti photos on the other.

The meat of this issue if you are reading "for the articles" is an interview with NECRON 9 and an article covering the homophobic and anti-immigrant songs of NYHC of the 80s.

The NECRON 9 interview is very sweet since they are genuinely one of Ben's favourite current bands. The interview is quite and fun and digs into lyric inspirations for specific songs, and then what's good/bad about current punk and other such reflections.

"Reactionary NYHC in the 1980s - A Homophobic & Anti-Immigrant Playlist" is really interesting. Freddy Alva (an ABC No Rio main guy, who grew up in the 80s) goes on a very nuanced and critical journey though several infamous sketchy songs of that early period in NYHC, most of which were unrecorded and so only exist as rumours. He digs down through the exhaustive offline research to uncover the origins of the rumoured tracks, often asking original members of the bands who were there, and provides the whole story, not excusing anything but providing the necessary context to understand what actually happened with some of these songs as why. Really cool original research on a topic people like to talk shit about, but one really wants to get to the heart of the matter.

A nice B-side to this article is a recent interview Alva did for DIY Conspiracy: "SPAR: Skins & Punks Against Racism in Late ’80s NYC".

There's also a 2 question interview with ELECTRIC CHAIR, which you will have to read yourself if you want to know about the craziest thing to happen at an ELECTRIC CHAIR show.

I hope there will be more issues. RIP Nuts!, long live Nuzzy.

Find out where to get a copy here: https://tattoopunkfanzine.com/