Kerrang!
British rock, punk and heavy metal music magazine
Kerrang! is a British music webzine and quarterly magazine that primarily covers rock, punk and heavy metal music. Since 2017, the magazine has been published by Wasted Talent Ltd (the same company that owns electronic music publication Mixmag). The magazine was named onomatopoeically after the sound of a "guitar being struck with force".
Kerrang! was first published on 6 June 1981 as a one-off "Heavy Metal Special" from the now-defunct Sounds newspaper. Due to the popularity of the issue, the magazine became a monthly publication, before transitioning into a weekly in 1987. Initially devoted to the new wave of British heavy metal and the rise of hard rock acts, Kerrang!'s musical emphasis has changed several times, focusing on grunge, nu metal, post-hardcore, emo and other alternative rock and metal genres over the course of its forty-year publication history. In 2001, it became the best-selling British music weekly, overtaking NME.
After publishing a total of 1,818 issues, Kerrang! ceased publication of their weekly magazine in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, while continuing as an online publication featuring digital "cover stories".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kerrang!” as british rock, punk and heavy metal music magazine. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as british rock, punk and heavy metal music magazine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q43281. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1981, 1987 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kerrang!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.