Inside readers can experience the untold story of The World’s Greatest Rock Magazine, says Bauer Media, via the stories of iconic bands from ACDC to Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana to My Chemical Romance, Bring Me The Horizon to Iron Maiden. There's editorial from original Kerrang! Editor Geoff Barton and four pages of a special history-mining, four-page Pandora, Kerrang!'s iconic 2D comic book sidekick drawn by Ray Zell, where she walks the reader through the K! Vault explaining the magazine’s story, from the perspective of the office, the writers, the photographers and the editors.
Editor, James McMahon commented: “Even after 32 years, there's still a whole bunch of great rock n roll stories we've never shared. Fourteen pages worth! From hitching a lift of Metallica's private jet, to feeding raw meat to Paramore, to drinking tea and eating scones with Ozzy. We're celebrating passion, fun, giving a s**t… in short, all the things that makes rock and roll great and has lived in the pages of Kerrang! for over three decades.”
He added: “This issue is particularly special because Kerrang! rarely looks back, we're always trying to look forward to what's coming next. I think it's that zest for the new, talking about our current readerships musical thirsts, that has seen us survive into our 33rd year, where so many music magazines have fallen to the annuls of history.
Not only is Kerrang!'s history entwined in the personal history of so many of rocks biggest bands, but we're just as iconic as many of the bands who've featured in our pages. There has been almost four generations of Kerrang! readers – that's millions of rock fans! Throw in the reach of Kerrang! TV, Kerrang! Radio and Kerrang.com and there's not a single brand that embodies rock, globally I would argue. It's a superbrand.”
The Kerrang! brand engages with over 5 million music lovers each month through its multiple platforms online, on radio, on TV and in print. It’s the special relationship with rock fans that makes the brand so unique says James McMahon: “It's an incredibly personal relationship rock fans have with Kerrang! In the eighties we were the only people writing about 'this' music, literally existing to service that need – it was a magazine by rock fans, for rock fans, a mantra I believe we've kept to this day. In the nineties we helped shape the landscape of what rock had become by breaking a host of alternative rock bands. In the noughties, we grew into the bible of the disenfranchised, fighting the emo wars with the mainstream. And at any given time we've written about their favourite bands, showcased a world of music they may not have known anything about, soundtracked their life.”
He added: “Irrespective of gender or age Kerrang! fans consider the music they love more than just sound. They want community, a magazine that speaks about their lives, a magazine that hasn’t given up. They said it couldn't happen – that a magazine couldn't matter to people in that way anymore. But at 1501 issues and counting, Kerrang! is defying the doubters.”
