KERRANG! Magazine Celebrates 25th Anniversary

Alyson Fixter of the U.K.'s Press Gazette recently conducted an interview with Kerrang! editor Paul Brannigan — who took over the editorship a year ago — about the magazine's 25th anniversary, which is celebrated in this week's issue, dated, gloriously, 06.06.06.

With AC/DC's Angus Young on the cover, as he was on the magazine's first ever issue, a list of the "25 Most Important Rock Bands In The World" puts NIRVANA (number 10) side-by-side with BON JOVI (number 11),and places IRON MAIDEN at number one. It also takes in punks GREEN DAY (5),nasty numetallers KORN (12) and rap-rockers RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE (24).

This broad-church approach is seeing sales again hit high levels — more than 76,000 in February's ABCs, reportedly beating NME in U.K.-only sales. This compares with 61,844 a year earlier and 40,000-odd in the magazine's late-'90s doldrums.

Research has revealed that more than half of Kerrang!'s readers are female — as are more than half its staff.

"We only discovered that [about the readership] from a survey commissioned at the end of last year," Brannigan says. "It was the first research we'd done in a long time.

"Metal has always had a degree of sexism and laddism, and that still exists to some extent, but it's a much more open and welcoming community than it used to be. And there are no sexist overtones to the magazine. You're as likely to have a [male] member of PANIC! AT THE DISCO described as 'hot' as the [female] singer of LACUNA COIL." And, he insists, the shift in readership has not led to pressure from above at publisher Emap to refocus direction or content.

"For a long time Kerrang! was just a weird little magazine that sat on its own and did its own thing," he says. "And when the mag really took off it just surprised everybody, they didn't know how it got there, so it was: 'Well, they know what they're doing, so leave it.' A lot of people at Kerrang! have been there a long time. It's about being a Kerrang! journalist, not a journalist in the wider sense. Once they stop working at Kerrang! they stop. They're Kerrang! journalists and if it's over, it's over, do something else."

Read the entire article at www.pressgazette.co.uk.