It appears as if Terrorizer, the U.K.-based publication that’s been diligently and fearlessly covering metal for the past 24 years, has bitten the dust.

Although there’s been no official word from the magazine, Toilet ov Hell has compiled quite a dossier of evidence suggesting the magazine is dunzo. To wit: the most recent physical issue was sent out last November while the website was last updated on December 8th and the magazine’s most recent Tweet came ten days after that. What’s worse, while the magazine fessed up to production problems in September they’ve continued to auto-bill subscribers for renewals and haven’t responded to customer service inquiries. Terrorizer‘s social media accounts, understandably, are littered with comments from angry and confused subscribers wondering what’s going on.

Even the magazine’s contributors are in the dark. Toilet ov Hell (and MetalSucks) commenter AndySynn, who writes reviews for Terrorizer, left the following note underneath the ToH article:

“As someone who regularly wrote reviews and articles for them… I can attest that I too have NO idea what is going on, but by this point I expect that the lack of communication and plethora of customers feeling like they’ve been ripped off will mean that the brand is too tainted to hope for any sort of revival.”

When asked by ToH proprietor Joe Thrashnkill when the last time he heard from anyone at the magazine was, Andy added:

“Spoke to the Reviews Editor at the end of January/start of February, when he took it upon himself to email all the regular contributors just to apologise and say that he was just as much in the dark as the rest of us. He’d been doing a bang up job trying to keep things going and keep things afloat to be honest, and had even made sure that all the reviews and EOTY lists for December got done… only, for whatever reason, the issue never got published.”

Woof, that’s rough.

What I can’t understand is why a magazine of such stature as Terrorizer would leave their subscribers, readers and even their staff in the dark for so many months. Did they think no one would notice? (Indeed… it did take a lot of us several months to realize something was going on).

So, Terrorizer: what’s up? Your paying subscribers, and the metal world at large, deserve an answer.

In the likely event that Terrorizer as we know it has ceased to exist, all hope is not lost: in recent years Metal Hammer and Revolver have both come back from the dead after closing down. It would certainly be very sad to lose Terrorizer.

We’ll keep you updated. But in the meantime, I’d like to re-post this classic Terrorizer cover unearthed by Toilet ov Hell, because it’s too good not to share: