Death by Salt is SLUG Magazine's 7th bastard child compilation showcasing underground acts from the City of Salt. Apathetic to any precedent or standard set before it, this 3-disc box set, complete with a full-color 64-page booklet of band photos and profiles, and an artfully crafted, screenprinted box, is intended to kick a nice-sized dent in the ignorance of those tragically unaware of the talent hidden behind the Zion Curtain. Come discover what living in the most socially oppressive and politically suffocating state in the nation does for that state's counterculture. Salt Lake musicians don't make music for scenester points, marketing plots, fame or fortune. They do it in order to create an alternate world, lurking just underneath the city's surface-a world where they can actually belong. Why else is there such kick-a** music in Utah? Isolation from surrounding states has helped in spawning Utah's introverted, original creativity. Our being constantly stigmatized and neglected by the national music scene has given us healthy perspective and outright mistrust of the music industry. Many of us grew up in LDS families, where learning and playing music was often akin to breathing. One final theory is that Utah has the biggest open-pit copper mine in the world, and one of the very few inland lakes of salt on the globe. Salt and copper make batteries, kids. We have so much damn energy that our instruments bleed with punishment. Last March, SLUG put out a call for submissions in our pages. Over the course of four months, SLUG received over 200 tracks from 200 different musicians and bands. A "secret panel" composed of seven of the worst-reputed, most nefarious criminal elements within the stinking bowels of SLUG's underbelly took up the somewhat unlovely task of objectively listening to 17 hours of solid music of all different genres, shapes and sizes, not to mention production levels. The Seven listened and voted on the songs blind, not knowing who they were hearing. It took three months of weekly meetings to listen to every last speck of music, and the panel listened to all the songs from beginning to end. The next four months were spent designing the artwork for the compilation, box and booklet, going undercover to secretly take pictures of bands and writing up their bios without them knowing what it was for. SLUG photographers and writers went to great lengths to lie and deceive local bands as much as humanly possible, photographing and interviewing them under the pretext of students doing photo collages for college art projects, editors beginning new zines and features in SLUG on "Why local stoner metal bands should rule Utah." Bands didn't know they were on the compilation, or about the existence of the booklet, until the Death by Salt release party and SLUG's 15th Anniversary Party, held on Feb. 19-21, 2004 at the Urban Lounge and Kilby Court in downtown Salt Lake. Death by Salt is the most extensive compilation of Salt Lake bands ever released. It will not be our last.