Kerrang!

• 1. Introduction

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  Kerrang! takes its name from a sound: the onomatopoeic crash of a guitar being struck with force. That name captures something essential about the magazine's character. It was never going to be subtle.

  On the 6th of June 1981, the first issue appeared not as a magazine at all, but as a one-off "Heavy Metal Special" supplement tucked inside Sounds, a weekly music paper. Angus Young of AC/DC stared out from the cover. The issue sold out within days. Nobody had quite expected that.

  What followed was four decades of noise: weekly print runs, radio stations, television channels, annual awards ceremonies, and a tours circuit that ran for more than a decade. Kerrang! would go on to overtake the NME as Britain's biggest-selling music weekly, survive two ownership changes, weather the COVID-19 pandemic, and reinvent itself multiple times over.

  But behind the loud logos and the skull imagery lay a publication genuinely wrestling with where rock music was going. The editors who shaped Kerrang! were not passive observers. They made arguments about which bands mattered and which genres deserved coverage. Sometimes they got it right. Sometimes they had to course-correct. What did it mean to be the gatekeepers of British rock? And how do you survive when the music keeps mutating beneath you?

• 2. A Special That Became Something Permanent

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  Alan Lewis, the editor of Sounds, was the one who first saw the opportunity. He approached Geoff Barton and asked him to pull together a one-off edition devoted to the new wave of British heavy metal and the wider rise of hard rock. The result was published on the 6th of June 1981, billed as a "Sounds Heavy Metal Special". Nobody planned for it to become a standalone title.

  The sell-out reception changed that calculation fast. Spotlight Publications, which was owned by United Newspapers, started putting out Kerrang! on a monthly basis. By February 1982, after only eight issues, the frequency doubled. The pace of publication kept accelerating: starting with issue 148 in 1987, the magazine went weekly.

  Those early years at Spotlight set the editorial tone. Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Kerrang! gave prominent cover placement to thrash metal and glam metal acts. Tigertailz, Mötley Crüe, Slayer, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Poison, and Venom all appeared on the cover during this period. One of the magazine's journalists, Malcolm Dome, contributed something more lasting than a cover story: he coined the term "thrash metal" in print, applying it to the Anthrax song "Metal Thrashing Mad". Before Dome's coinage, Metallica's James Hetfield had been calling their own sound "power metal".

  Barton remained the magazine's editor through this founding phase, presiding over Kerrang!'s transition from supplement curiosity to established weekly. The compilation albums that began appearing from 1982, originally on 7-inch vinyl, gave readers something to take home beyond the pages themselves.

• 3. The EMAP Years and Editorial Battles

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  In April 1991, Spotlight/United Newspapers sold Kerrang! to EMAP Metro. The magazine was profitable at the time of the sale: average weekly circulation of 58,685 copies and profits of one million pounds a year. But those numbers came with context. EMAP had been making life difficult for Spotlight through its own competing publication, RAW.

  British journalist David Hepworth, who had launched a number of titles for EMAP during the 1980s, was direct about what had happened. "We EMAP had made it nearly impossible for Spotlight to publish Kerrang! profitably because we promoted RAW and they had to promote back, and that ate into their margins," he said. With the acquisition complete, EMAP moved Kerrang!'s offices to Carnaby Street in London's West End.

  In April 1992, Barton left the editor's chair. Robyn Doreian replaced him. Her tenure was brief, but she shifted the magazine's attention toward the growing alternative music scene alongside heavy metal, taking note of what grunge was doing in the charts. Phil Alexander took over in June 1993 and pushed further in that direction. Alexander concluded that Kerrang! was trailing RAW in its coverage of newer artists. Glam and metal acts that had filled the cover for years gave way to Hole, Nine Inch Nails, Kyuss, Corrosion of Conformity, and Machine Head.

  During the Britpop era, the magazine carved out a distinct lane by concentrating on heavier "Britrock" acts: The Wildhearts, Manic Street Preachers, Terrorvision, and Therapy?. Then, starting in 1995, Kerrang! moved into nu metal. One of the magazine's journalists, known as Mörat, was introduced to Korn by Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn, and the door to a new genre swung open. Limp Bizkit, System of a Down, Deftones, and Slipknot followed.

• 4. Overtaking the NME

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  Paul Rees became editor in April 2000, arriving just as nu metal was reaching its commercial peak. A year later, Kerrang! achieved something that would have seemed unlikely to anyone who remembered its origins as a one-off supplement: it overtook NME as the best-selling music weekly in the United Kingdom. Nu metal coverage was a central factor in that rise.

  By mid-2002, the weekly circulation had climbed to 83,988 copies. Ashley Bird, the former reviews editor, took the chair from 2003 to 2005 after Rees departed to edit Q magazine. Paul Brannigan followed as editor in May 2005.

  The genre landscape shifted again in the mid-to-late 2000s. Nu metal's commercial dominance faded, and Kerrang! moved its focus toward emo, post-hardcore, pop-punk, and metalcore. More established names such as Iron Maiden and Metallica continued to appear on the cover, providing continuity between eras. In 2006, weekly circulation stood at 80,186 copies, still substantial but down from the 2002 peak.

  In 2008, EMAP sold its consumer magazine portfolio to Bauer Media Group. Brannigan left the following year. Nichola Browne took over as editor, then stepped down in April 2011. On the 6th of June 2011, exactly thirty years after the first issue appeared, James McMahon was appointed editor. McMahon had previously served as features editor at the NME and deputy editor at GamesMaster.

• 5. Going Digital and the COVID Suspension

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  In April 2017, Kerrang! was purchased by Mixmag Media, the publisher behind the dance music monthly Mixmag. The deal included the magazine's website, the K! Awards, and assets connected to the defunct style magazine The Face. Mixmag subsequently formed a parent company called Wasted Talent and repositioned Kerrang! as a digital-first title while continuing the weekly print edition. Phil Alexander, the editor who had steered the magazine through the 1990s, returned in a new role: Global Creative Director, appointed on the 3rd of August 2017.

  Bauer Media retained ownership of Kerrang! Radio. The Box Plus Network continued operating Kerrang! TV. A redesigned logo appeared in mid-2017, followed by a complete magazine redesign during 2018. That same year, Kerrang! announced plans to expand into the United States, opening an office in New York run by Ethan Fixell.

  On the 13th of March 2020, after exactly 1,818 issues, the weekly print edition stopped. The reason was the COVID-19 pandemic. The website kept publishing, and on the 29th of July 2020, Kerrang! debuted its first weekly digital cover story, a long-form piece announcing Corey Taylor's first solo album, CMFT.

  In December 2021, a one-off print edition returned to mark the revival of live music events in the United Kingdom. Sales were strong enough to justify a second stand-alone issue in April 2022. Quarterly print publication then resumed as the new format. Kerrang! TV, meanwhile, was closed on the 30th of June 2024 by Channel 4, which owned the channel and its Box Plus Network sister channels, citing budget cuts.

• 6. Beyond the Page

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  The magazine's reach extended well beyond newsagents. In 2000, EMAP launched Kerrang! as a DAB radio station broadcasting across the United Kingdom. On the 10th of June 2004, Kerrang! 105.2 went live as a regional FM station in Birmingham, carrying specialist programmes across rock's many subgenres. The FM signal went dark on the 14th of June 2013, after which Kerrang! Radio returned to digital-only broadcasting and relocated its offices from Birmingham to London. Absolute Radio took over the FM frequency.

  The K! Awards, running since 1993, became one of Britain's more recognised music industry events. The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums listed winners in its annual round-ups. After a year's hiatus, the ceremony relaunched in 2018 with guests that included Johnny Depp, Joe Perry, Tony Iommi, Corey Taylor, and Dave Grohl. The pandemic interrupted the ceremony again, and it returned in June 2022.

  The Kerrang! Tour ran from 2006 to 2017, typically announced in October of the previous year and staged across January and February. Relentless Energy Drink sponsored the tour for several years. Its lineup chart traced a decade of genre movement: Bullet for My Valentine headlining in 2006, Coheed and Cambria in 2008, Limp Bizkit in 2014, and The Amity Affliction in the final year of 2017. When the tour ended, Kerrang! launched a replacement concept called The K! Pit: free gigs in tiny London venues, with fans selected by random draw. Artists including Mastodon, Fever 333, and Neck Deep performed there; the series later expanded to Brooklyn, New York, where Sum 41 and Baroness were among those featured. Performances were streamed on Facebook and later posted to YouTube.

  Kerrang!'s website, www.kerrang.com, launched in the summer of 2001. The domain had been acquired from a Norwegian named Steingram Stegane, who had registered it as a cybersquatter. Emap bought it for a token sum of £666.

• 7. Forty Years of Album of the Year

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  Kerrang!'s annual Album of the Year list offers something a masthead can rarely provide: a longitudinal record of what a publication actually believed mattered, year by year, without revision. The Scorpions' Blackout took the first award in 1982. Def Leppard's Pyromania followed in 1983.

  The list traces every seismic shift in rock's commercial fortunes. Metallica's self-titled record won in 1991. Alice in Chains took it in 1992 with Dirt. Pearl Jam's Vs. won in 1993. Therapy?'s Troublegum won in 1994, the same band the magazine had championed as a Britrock act during those years. The Foo Fighters appeared three times in four years: in 1995 with their debut, in 1997 with The Colour and the Shape, and again in 1999 with There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

  Tool's Lateralus won in 2001, the same year Kerrang! overtook NME. Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf took 2002. The Darkness won in 2003 with Permission to Land. Mastodon won twice: Leviathan in 2004, The Hunter in 2011. Bring Me the Horizon won in 2013 with Sempiternal and again in 2015 with That's the Spirit.

  More recent winners include Slipknot's We Are Not Your Kind in 2019, Every Time I Die's Radical in 2021, and Nova Twins' Supernova in 2022. Knocked Loose won in 2024 with You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To. The Foo Fighters returned for a fourth time in 2023, winning with But Here We Are. Turnstile closed the list through 2025 with Never Enough, having previously won in 2018 with Time and Space.