HM magazine runs into Christian bookshop distribution problems with latest issue.

FOLLOWING the major controversy about the artwork for the P.O.D. album 'Payable On Death', many American Christian bookshops have also banned the latest issue of long established hard music magazine HM. The magazine depicts on its cover the dark image of a shirtless torso of a puppet-man on a stick. The art accompanies the cover story The Ugly Truth Behind Christian Rock. In a letter HM magazine sent to LifeWay Christian Stores, the art director for the cover, David Allen, said that he chose not to pose the man as a marionette to signify rock artists as puppets, because the type of graphic has been "played and overused." Editor Doug Van Pelt said he had received positive feedback on the cover story from pastors, independent record labels and artists, including Ken Tamplin. CR

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