What Have You Become?

Although I myself will admit that I am only young and have not been around to appreciate the true greatness of rock music I am pretty sure there once was a time when Kerrang was known as a metal magazine. It covered bands made of men with long hair and actually appreciated their music for what it really was. It didn't care whether a band was big and famous, in fact it aimed to present new bands and get them known.

So, where did it all go wrong? Was it when Kerrang started thinking about bands that would sell their magazine? Was it when it became more about the photoshoots than reviewing the music? When did music become based on appearance? More importantly why is that all that Kerrang care about these days?

Now, I will admit that I once regularly bought Kerrang. I hadn't really been listening to rock music for that long and I wanted to discover new bands and find news on the ones I already liked. Shamefully I'll admit that my main focus behind buying the magazine was due to my obsession with MCR and my craving to find out everything about them.

But that's where I can prove my point! I was an obsessed fan girl who bought the magazine to find posters of a band that I already had posters of. If you happen to be one of those people then you'll do absolutely fine buying Kerrang. They latch onto the biggest band of the moment and constantly feature them, feeding you little pieces of pointless news, posting out posters every other week and reviewing everything that that band do whether it be live gigs or a new album. They cover it.

And then when that band fade out a little bit and head off to do something new Kerrang cut them out and move on to the next big thing. An example is obviously My Chemical Romance but perhaps of more frustration to me was Madina Lake. I have nothing against the band personally but I ended up going against them because they were always featured in Kerrang. During one year of buying the magazine I came across at least 10 posters of them. Now you may not think that that is not much but just think of the hundreds of bands that deserve to have their posters put in Madina Lake's place.

Another great annoyance is Kerrang radio. You would have thought that, being a Rock magazine, they would play songs by rock and metal bands. Well, you would be sorely mistaken. During one day of listening to Kerrang radio I had the absolute pleasure of listening to MGMT, The Kooks, Oasis, Coldplay, Scouting For Girls. The list continues but I fail to remember them all. Now, I like a few of those bands, the exceptions being Scouting For Girls and Oasis as I have a strong dislike for both of them but surely if I wanted to listen to MGMT I could lurk outside the NME office. [Alternatively I could listen to them on my iPod as I wisely invested in buying their album, it's very good]. The only redemption came from the fact that they played one Muse song, one Foo Fighters song and one Biffy Clyro song.

Thankfully, I no longer buy Kerrang and have found a much greater magazine that goes buy the name of Rocksound. Perhaps you should switch too...

Ps. RIP Playmusic. The greatest magazine I have ever read.