Your thoughts on Metal Magazines

I just bought 10 vintage metal magazines called "Thrash Metal" by the makers of Cream. It lasted it about 2 years or so, first issue was November 87 I believe. They're awesome to look at- seeing the full-page back cover ad for "South of Heaven" with a Def Jam logo is something you don't see anymore-one of the issues I had even has a Vengeance Rising "Once Dead" full-page ad on the back. The other back page ad(seemed to be policy)copy I really liked is the one that says "This band is TROUBLE The New Album Is TROUBLE" and it shows a close-up of the Trouble plaque on the metal gate.
I was wondering who else collects metal magazines somewhat seriously and enjoys them for what they are-snapshots in time of what was generally "making the scene" whether it was '88 ,'95 or what ever era you want... I don't have a ton, maybe a couple hundred, but here are my nominations for the best metal magazines of all time...
1.Metal Maniacs-However a cliched choice this may be, they're number one for a good many reasons! Almost every issue was quite word dense and had intelligent editing through out it's existence.M.M. also had good balance as far as eclectic coverage of the broader metal spectrum and I thought their reviewers were really good at describing the quality releases that were out there.I have the last issue. I hope it goes up in price.
2.Thrash Metal-Like a "Tean Beat" for thrash metal, this mag had great pics and silly articles making it a fun magazine to see rare pics of thrash dudes.
3.Metal-Rules. I'm not sure if this is in print anymore or just on line,It was of fanzine quality, but had good writers and the editor was always obsessed with llamas!. Metal-Rules had LOTS of witty reviews, and had funny and unique interviews (the Jerky Boys in one issue I had) but it was black and white and had a poor distribution nationally as far as I know.I found a few copies at one of those independent bookstores.
4.Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles-High production values,slick paper,
nice choice of fonts/layouts and a healthy amount of glam/hard rock coverage, made this mag in the top five pantheon. Great pictures, in depth articles and interviews and for awhile, a CD too!.Haven't seen an issue for awhile but I think they're still around.
5. RIP- This was a fun metal mag, much better alternative to Hit Parader,Circus or Metal Edge.A plethora of coverage of everything from pop rock to death metal,it had something for everyone.Much missed.

Honorable Mentions:Terrorizer,Unrestrained,and various issues of Hit Parader and Kerrang.

I don't buy too many new issues unless they feature Immortal, these days.I'm mostly interested in vintage stuff.

Do you like metal mags? Why or why do you not have any? Do you have any prized issues?

I love Thrash and Burn, Snakepit Magazine, and Metal Forces.

I love old rock/metal magazines. I have several boxes in my closet full of issues of Metal Maniacs, Terrorizer, and various other 'zines.

Metal Maniacs was my favorite mag for a long time. It started to concentrate a little too much on no-name tr00 grimm kvlt blakk mettle and screamy metalcore bands for my tastes during its last couple of years but I kept buying it every month anyway (must've been due to some lingering, obsessive gotta-collect-'em-all impulse left over from my comic book geek days). I was sad to hear it was going under a year or two ago but wasn't terribly surprised either.

Metal Edge was always too hair-oriented for me so I ignored it for most of its run, except for a brief period in the late 90s when they were covering the hell out of the KISS reunion (the only one of the major music mags to do so). Once the KISS fever died down and they started putting Limp Bizkit and K-O-R-N on the cover every month again, I quit buying it.

I wish I still had my stash of mags from when I was growing up in the '80s but stupidly, I chose to get rid of'em when I was going through stuff before I moved in the late '90s. I must've recycled a few hundred old issues of Circus, Metal Edge/Metal Maniacs, Hit Parader, Terrorizer, Metal Hammer UK, Metal Forces, and Lord only knows how many self published 'zines. At the time it was simply a matter of having nowhere to store them (I was moving out of my parents' house and into a small apartment) but now I wish I'd saved them. I would love to read some of those vintage interviews again.

I haven't bought any current magazines in a while because...well, there really aren't many left are there? Occasionally I'll leaf thru a British edition of Metal Hammer or Terrorizer when I'm in a bookstore but the cover price (eight bucks an issue last I checked) is a little more than I'd like to pay.

Temple of Blood wrote:

Snakepit Magazine

Snakepit is/was a great mag. Is it still around? I only have two issues of it, and the last one I bought had to be at least four or five years ago by now. I haven't seen it since.

*EDIT* Yup, it still exists...looks like it's an "annual" thing now.
http://www.truemetal.org/snakepit/magazine.htm

When I was a kid had hundreds of Hit Parader, Circus, Faces, Metal Edge, Creem any other magazine you care to name, like Freddy when I got older got rid of all them, with the exception of few Guitar Worlds and Guitar for Practing Musician, I sort of regret it now.

Now I subscribe to Revolver which I got as a gift ( it is utter Crap), Rolling Stone Magazine, not so much for the music but for the political coverage (yes I am lean more to left then the right), Guitar World and my fav mag Classic Rock Magazine.

I use to love Circus and Grooves when I was a kid. In the 80's and into the 90's, it was RIP, Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Heaven's Metal and Kerrang. I use to get a lot of indie zines too.

I forgot RIP and I agree with TM way better alternative then Hit Parader who suspected were stories written by the band's press staff, I had almost the full run of that magazine.

It is funny before the internet this is how I used to get my music news.

Oh yea, I forgot RIP! That was a great mag too. Even though Lonn Friend (editor) was something of a tool. Remember his annoying "Friend At Large" segments on the old Headbanger's Ball? He was like the '80s version of Eddie Trunk. Except where Eddie will go on and on about how he's a close personal friend of Ace Frehley, Lonn was a close personal friend of Axl Rose. Haha.

Fun trivia fact: RIP Magazine was a product of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP), the same fine folks who bring us Hustler magazine! No kiddin'!

Metal Edge, Circus, RIP and Hit Parader were the only ones that I looked at with any sort of regularity back in the day. I used to work in a supermarket and they were the ones they stocked.

I'd take 'em to the break room with me and if they were any good, I'd throw them in my backpack when I left for the day. Never paid for a single one.

If there was a cool cover story, I'd occasionally pick up a Guitar World or Rolling Stone.

The only music mag I read these days is the occasional Classic Rock Magazine that I'll pick up if I'm in Barnes & Noble. I'd get it more often if it wasn't so dang expensive.

Quote :

Oh yea, I forgot RIP! That was a great mag too. Even though Lonn Friend (editor) was something of a tool. Remember his old "Friend At Large" segments on the old Headbanger's Ball? He was like the '80s version of Eddie Trunk.

Lonn Friend. That guy couldn't have been a bigger tool even if he had "Craftsman" tattooed on his forehead. His book blew too. Where's he been hiding out these days?

EDIT: Know that I think of it, I think I may still have a box of old mags (mostly RIP) in the basement somewhere. I remember packing them up when I moved out of my apartment, but don't remember where they went after that.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Metal Edge, Circus, RIP and Hit Parader were the only ones that I looked at with any sort of regularity back in the day. I used to work in a supermarket and they were the ones they stocked.

I'd take 'em to the break room with me and if they were any good, I'd throw them in my backpack when I left for the day. Never paid for a single one.

I worked for K-Mart in the late 80s/early 90s and I did the exact same damn thing with those mags. Pinched quite a few comic books off the rack when I worked there too.

ultmetal wrote:

I use to love Circus and Grooves when I was a kid. In the 80's and into the 90's, it was RIP, Hit Parader, Metal Edge, Heaven's Metal and Kerrang. I use to get a lot of indie zines too.

Yep!!! Back in the pre-internet days, that was how we got our Metal news!!!!!! Circus when I was younger, then Hit Parader and Kerrang in the mid 80's, then Metal Edge, RIP, etc in late 80;s/early 90;s. Heaven's Metal too, back when it was good and cover good band before it turned to smurf poo.

I wish Freddy had not reminded me of Lonn Friend, that guy was a major wanker!!! His magazine was good, I wish they would reprint those magazines in book format but I do not know if there would be much of market for a book like that.

i still have a ton of old ones. stopped buying altogether when Metal Maniacs folded. the internet is more up to date.

I too had a lot of Circus, Hit Parader, and Metal Edge when I was younger.

I became a huge fan of Metal Maniacs, SOD, Pit, Kerrang and a few more in the 90's during my huge death metal phase.

Now days I just have all those mags as collectibles stored in my closet. I read them still every so often.

Magazines now days are pointless except for advertisements. Everything in the magazines can be read on the web long before the magazine is printed.

Circus and Hit Parader is what I remember reading, I used to cut out pictures of my fav guitar dudes and put them on & in my school notebooks(I recall having a really cool Rik Emmett pic) along with the band logos that were scribbled on them.

I think I might still have some copies packed away in the closet along with my Guitar World and Guitar For The Practicing Musician mags.

I still have many old mags that I have bought over the years like Metal Maniacs, Rip, Metal Mania, Power Metal and so forth. Some are not in very good shape, but they still have a place in my heart. It's interesting to look back at some of my 20`+ year old mags and see who made it, who didn't and who's still around.

The libary here has tons of metal magazines at least from the last 20 years. So cool! Could read for days.

I had a Heaven's Metal subscription back in the day. I also bought Metal Maniacs regularly. Some of my HM's are gone. The one I miss the most is the one with Kurt Bachman on the cover holding a cello. I hate that I don't have that one anymore. I got rid of all the MM as well as the majority of the "evil" part of my music collection as a result of "religious conviction." Boy do I regret that. I also had some sort of obscure mags such as Nordic Vision, Wild Rags, and some others I can't remember. I've got a couple issues of Wreath of Thorns, which is (or was) a pretty cool Christian 'zine. I still get out my old Heaven's Metals once or twice a year and read them cover to cover. I can't get enough of them. I'd do the same with the MM's if i still had them. Nowadays, I'll buy Terrorizer or Zero Tolerance if I see something interesting in them.

I had this enormous box filled with them (and also every other magazine out there - fangoria, rap mags, wrestling, etc. I was a mag junkie in the 80's). Unfortunately I stupidly left the box in my parents basement which then flooded and ruined the whole lot. And naturally it happened right around the time I started to get nostalgic about my youth and thought "I should really go get that old stuff".

Two music mags I loved were Spin and Billboard. Spin, before they jumped all in on the alternative snobbery train, used to be pretty cool and diverse. It was the one place I could read up on every genre I liked. Billboard was strange - I guess I just was fascinated with radio and radio charts. I did like their page after page of tiny new release reviews. I was probably the only person not in radio who actually had a subscription.

jstate wrote:

Unfortunately I stupidly left the box in my parents basement which then flooded and ruined the whole lot. And naturally it happened right around the time I started to get nostalgic about my youth and thought "I should really go get that old stuff".

I feel your pain. The exact same thing happened to a large chunk of my VHS video collection in the early 90s.

For some fortunate reason I ended up taking the VHS with me. Of course with DVDs those could've been easily replaced. Still kick myself over leaving the magazines.

I never really got into the metal magazines. I much prefer listening to the music than the stuff behind the scenes.

Love 'em in spite of their ever-shrinking numbers. Loved Rip, Metal Edge and Metal Maniacs. Still read Terrorizer, Metal Hammer, Heaven's Metal, Sounds Of Death, Decibel and Revolver.

Still buy them sometimes, like HEAVY ROCK, METAL HAMMER or POPULAR 1 and every month i get one from Holland, from the legendary AARDSCHOK, one of the first heavy metal magazines and still going strong.
When i read some of your posts i think that some of you just left metal when metal got out of the picture back in the early to mid 90s and came back to metal with internet. Thats just an impresion i got, i dont know.

I do like BW&BK. I used to subscribe to Decibel and Revolver, but not anymore. Now I buy Classic Rock magazine on an irregular basis and subscribe to the Heaven's Metal Fanzine.

Btw, Immortal is a great band. I received Immortal Live at Wacken 2007 DVD/CD in the mail earlier this week, and finally got to watch it last night. Awesome!

GODDAMMIT Why did I get to miss those mags? Why did I have to not be apart of the 80s? Good Thing for teh internetz