A Brief History of Obscene Fanzine
Adam crossed paths with another local punker Marko Mark over a shared obsession with, the feral, the forgotten and the fiercely independent. Adam’s vision aligned with Mark’s, who was deeply embedded in the local scene with his band Disrupt Youth—a group that perfectly embodied the aggressive, DIY ethic Adam admired.
The two came together through a mutual fascination of B-grade cinema, obscure hardcore records, and the cultural detritus of the Sunshine Coast. What began as banter about Poison Idea, Hammer horror and Penelope Spheeris flicks quickly spiralled into deeper conversations about the state of the tiny punk scene on the coast and lack of opportunities for those not wanting to join in the mainstream.
Birth of Obscene Fanzine: So it all started with two punks, an idea and a refusal to let the underground stay buried. Fueled by frustration and the desire to build a community of punks, they began working on zine that would become Obscene — a folded A4 cut n paste fanzine with the war cry “Support Your Local Scene”. They weren’t just trying to recreate the past punk glory of other city’s and scenes around the world. They saw it as a call to arms. A way to bring together the freaks, weirdo’s and misfits from across the regional area. As well as documenting what was starting to ooze up from the underground with all the blood, sweat, and beers of an emerging scene in glorious photocopier toner.
The zine became a platform for:
- promoting bands that had not a chance in hell of getting any mainstream airplay or coverage. Bands like Disrupt Youth, Dry Heave, Must Kill Bobby, Punching Judy, Entropy, Tunnel Vision and Eisenstein's Lover to name a few graced those early pages,
- driving support towards local punk and independent businesses like Flex Your Head records, Backbeat records, the Gate T-shirt shop, Puncture body piercing in Maroochydore and Nambour institutions Nambour Music and the Nambour Book exchange,
- promoting local gigs like the Punk parties in Diddillibah and Woombye Halls, Primal Moves in the Eudlo Showgrounds, and Politricks in the Maroochydore AFL footy club house,
- showcasing local creatives artwork, and
- giving aspiring writers and punk journalists a place to write columns, print interview, publish review, lament opinion pieces, pose poetry, and generally document the oral histories of the regional punk scene.
• Aggressive and swampy, like the sugarcane fields it grew from
• DIY to the bone, rejecting polished city-core aesthetics
• Rooted in regional rage, born from cultural neglect and climate-induced delirium
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INTERVIEW:
CUT, PASTE, REVOLT – A CONVERSATION WITH ADAM OBSCENE (085C3N3)
Adam Obscene’s artistic vision for Obscene Fanzine was ignited by a volatile mix of cultural vacuum, visual rebellion, and a relentless need to document what didn’t yet have a voice. Adam’s vision wasn’t just to document a scene—it was to manifest it. With every photocopied spread, he sculpted an aesthetic that told punks in the least punk place on the planet: You’re not alone—and you’re not invisible.
Here’s a gritty, tape-hissed, DIY-as-hell- interview with Adam Obscene (aka 085c3n3) about launching Obscene Fanzine in what many might consider punk purgatory—sun-bleached suburban Queensland. This captures the spirit of a late-night photocopier session turned cultural revolution:
WASTELANDS: Adam, 1994, Sunshine Coast—a place known for surfboards and Bintang singlets. What possessed you to drop a punk zine in the heart of paradise?
ADAM OBSCENE: laughs Yeah, that’s the paradox, isn’t it? The place looked like utopia but felt like a vacuum. I wasn’t seeing myself—our anger, our noise—reflected anywhere. The idea for Obscene was a rejection of all that postcard perfection. I wanted to document the rot beneath the tourism brochure. We didn’t have city squats or warehouse gigs—we had heatstroke, sugarcane fields, community halls and apathy. That’s where Cane Punk was born.
WASTELANDS: You coined that term—Cane Punk. What defined it?
ADAM OBSCENE: It’s sweaty. It’s sunburnt. It’s punk that grows in the cracks of footpaths near servo carparks. It’s born from the isolation of being in a cultural wasteland. We were cut off, so we carved out our own thing. Bands like Disrupt Youth weren’t trying to be anyone else—they were loud, angry, political, and deeply local. And Obscene was the megaphone.
WASTELANDS: Talk us through those early issues. What did they look like?
ADAM OBSCENE: Chaotic. A blender of ransom-note text, Harry Chester-inspired lettering, smudged ink, grainy photos, and badly cropped gig flyers. But it wasn’t just about aesthetic—it was about urgency. Everything was hand-cut, glued, and run through photocopiers at the local print shop after hours. Ten issues in twelve months—pure insomnia, fuelled by rage and Red Eye.
WASTELANDS: Did you feel like anyone was listening?
ADAM OBSCENE: At first, it felt like screaming into a cane field. But slowly, letters came in. Tapes arrived in the mail. We started to feel like we were part of a bigger scene—it just didn’t know what it looked like yet. Obscene gave it a face.
WASTELANDS: And now, 30 years later?
ADAM OBSCENE: We’ve digitized it, given it a new lease on life. The energy’s the same—DIY, political, raw—but now we’ve got a digital photocopier and a louder megaphone. The world might’ve moved on, but Obscene is still here to disrupt the algorithm.
WASTELANDS: Final words to the punks hiding in beach towns and suburbia?
ADAM OBSCENE: Don’t wait for permission. Grab scissors, steal time, hit print. It doesn’t matter if it’s beautiful or polished—if it’s real, it matters. Make noise. Obscene forever.
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🔥 The Spark Behind the Scissors: Adam’s Vision for Obscene Fanzine
Here’s what brewed beneath the cut-and-paste chaos:
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🎨 1. Dissonance Between
Paradise and Punk
• Growing up on the Sunshine Coast—a postcard-perfect place
with little space for punks—Adam was struck by the contrast between pristine
beaches and the undercurrent of alienation.
• Obscene became a visual middle finger to that glossy
sheen. It sought to expose the cracks in the coastline veneer and broadcast the
rage swelling beneath.
🗞️ 2. The Zine as Weapon
• Adam saw zines not just as publications, but as artistic
acts of resistance.
• Influenced by raw, underground press and horror-pulp
aesthetics (think Harry Chester’s aggressive lettering and overdriven
compositions), he embraced imperfection: jagged lines, photocopy grime, visual
noise.
• This was punk not just in sound—but in layout, typography,
and ink-smeared attitude.
📼 3. DIY Grit Meets Art
School Rebellion
• While studying art formally, Adam bristled at polished
institutions. He channeled that frustration into Obscene—a defiant hybrid of
zine punk and avant-garde collage.
• His influences were tactile: glue-stained fingers, Xerox
toner, ransom note fonts, scratched-out margins. Every issue was a physical
outburst.
🔥 4. Cane Punk’s Cultural
Rebellion
• The rise of Cane Punk, the local genre Adam helped shape,
was a defining force.
• It rejected big-city punk elitism in favour of
Queensland-specific grit—sweltering heat, urban sprawl, rusted sugar mill
aesthetics, and isolated rage. Obscene mirrored that: loud, humid, hostile, but
full of honesty.
🖤 5. Community Through
Chaos
• Visually, Obscene wasn’t about clean lines—it was about
carving space for punk voices where none existed.
• Adam used visuals to build a subcultural identity, not
just reflect one. Each ripped photo and scrawled lyric was a call to arms: if
you don’t see yourself, make yourself known.
