Metal magazines focus on heavy metal, hardcore, and screamo genres of music. They target a young, mostly male demographic who find solace in the grim lyrics and themes of violence in metal. Metal magazines represent this niche audience through dark imagery like skulls, blood, and the colors red and black on covers. They use negative words like "death" and jagged fonts to create an aggressive aesthetic that reflects the social issues and escapism many metal fans experience. While some articles portray metal in a positive light as fun partying, most magazines emphasize the bleak worldview of their audience through graphic negative representations.

1. Metal magazine article
Metal magazines are a genre of magazine, which mainly focus on heavy rock,
metal, ‘screamo’ and hardcoregenres. Some might consider metal to be a sub
genre of rock music, but as time has gone on, it has managed to establish itself as
a standalone genre with its own individual characteristics, style, set of beliefs
and audience, and with all his, came metal magazines.
All metal magazines we know today are of a very similar style, and follow
straight rules and formats to one another in order to give them the character we
are familiar with. Good examples of metal magazines, which can clearly be seen
to have influence on one another’s styles, include ‘Metal Hammer’, ‘Kerrang’ and
many more.
The target audience for this genre of magazine centers largely around a young
demographic, mostly male. This is largely down to the fact that the type of people
who buy these magazines are the type of people who are anti mainstream due to
it’s niche style as a genre (usually young people are much more anti mainstream
than older people, who are often more tolerable of society and the way the world
works), and typically are very anti-establishment, often having problems with
mainstream ways of life and having a collective hatred towards society. This
audience finds solace in the grim and bleak subjects covered lyrically in the
genre of music, but also in the clothing worn by the artists involved and the
themes of violence and extremity. The Slipknot masks are a great example of
something that appeals to this young audience who are still learning about
themselves and experimenting with new styles and phases within the process,
take for example the fact that vey few middle aged parents idolize these
grotesquely masked artists. Much of what the whole metal genre is, is essentially
just a fad and phase within a young persons life, in which, as mentioned before,
they are experimenting, and metal nowadays is something that a great deal of
kids or young people will get into at some point, before eventually growing out of
with age.
Throughout metal magazines, it can be seen that this kind of audience is
reflected and represented, through images used on the front covers, fonts used,
the artists featured etc. and from a technical standpoint, the magazines are
focused around representing this niche subculture. Take for example the use of
words such as ‘death’, ‘pain’ and ‘heavy’ all being used on the same metal
hammer front cover within different sub headings. These words are all
associated with negativity and bad stuff, and the writers and editors of these
magazines use this choice of words in order to create an image that represents
how their audience feels about the world. To add to this, the colours red and
black are featured in almost every metal magazine of the 21st century every, and
help to form this reoccurring pattern that we can see, of negative imagery being
conjured up by the magazine’s editors. There’s almost a sense of ‘a cry for help’
that can be observed through the presence of certain images, colours and words
used on the magazines. Jagged and uninviting fonts are yet another reoccurring
feature found within the titles of metal magazines, and add to the aggressive
aesthetic, reinforcing this idea that metal, as a genre isn’t the friendliest.

2. A large reason for these negative representations within metal magazines can be
traced back to the social issues mentioned at the start. Much of this genre’s
audience have some form of trouble with their life, or a hatred for the way the
world works, and use this bleak genre of music as a form of escapism, and by
editors choosing to highlight these social issues, they are therefore adhering to
the genre and what it stands for.
Despite many negative representations of the world being presented within this
genre of magazine, it isn’t all negativity and hatred. Some metal magazines take a
more positive swing on the genre, and aim to represent it in a way in which
shows off a nicer side to it. In these instances, it is often represented as being an
extremely fun genre, full of partying and excitement. Words such as ‘radical’,
‘awesome’ and ‘insane’ are used as sub headings on front covers in order to
highlight exiting stories to do with bands on tour, or large organized parties
exclusive to metal genres, with themes such as mosh pits being painted in a
positive light, and contrasting against the negative portrayal that mainstream
media gives them. To add to this, images of artists (which are heavily featured
and made prominent without almost every metal magazine) are often full of
energy, and feature an artist or band who look like they’re having a good time.
This idea of high energy excitement is represented via the body language of the
artists being featured, and they’ll often be moving around, laughing, shouting or
even flailing their limbs around, which contrasts against a hip-hop magazine for
example (in which the artists featured will often look much more mellow and
laid back, and generally less exited).
Metal magazines haven’t changed an awful lot over the years, but there are
subtle changes here and there. It’s certainly noticeable that nowadays metal
magazines are a little bit more in your face. They’re often just accentuated
versions of the old school copies (which date back to the 70’s), but at the same
time, follow the same basic visual rules and themes. The change in technology of
course has also allowed for, and probably been a likely catalyst in the
accentuation of certain themes within metal magazines. What this means is that
as technology has got better, people become more desensitized to graphic
themes, due to things like the internet, films etc. thus meaning that magazine
publishers have to step up the graphic content of their magazines in order to
cater for the modern, desensitized audience. This would be a valid explicnation
for more graphic imagery being used in new metal magazines when compared to
the ‘classic metal’ magazine covers. To add to this, the fact that metal as a genre
has changed lots over the years is another likely reason for the changes that can
be found in today’s metal magazines and the way in which they represent their
audience and music.