Looking back, I really had no idea what I was doing when I started writing for the Chronicles about ten years ago but always received support from Gino and Pedro, who ran the site as a democracy where everyone's input was encouraged and considered. From new auditions for the writing staff, to ideas for columns, to the site's overall direction in the future, everything was a discussion, never an order. They really believed in you and I learned a lot from them about putting together a team of writers and managing a music website. There were quite a few of them at time, actually. Had been since around 1995 when this zine, the best of them, first began. So imagine my surprise after watching a recent video produced by the website Metal Injection, which endeavored to chart the transformation of metal media over the years, and learning that prior to Metal Sucks (founded in 2006, ten years after the website Metal Rules), Blabbermouth (founded in 2001) and Lambgoat (1999) the world of online metal publications "barely existed". The numerous webzines that have since gone offline no longer have a voice to argue against this kind of bullshit.

Although the Chronicles will no longer be publishing new articles, the fact that its archive from 1995-2015 will remain accessible to visitors is especially valuable at a time when music journalism, in metal particularly, has hit an all time low becoming indistinguishable from record label PR, a time when nothing online will ever again be ad-free, when a publisher's circle jerk can be presented as impartial history. There both the most influential and under-appreciated names in the genre will remain together in conversation, their works dissected, their rise and fall and rebirths recorded from the one year to the next. Lastly, it will show -– and the importance of this cannot be understated -– that I was correct in writing that Morbid Angel should never record another album with David Vincent.