Why is Kerrang! so Kerrap?

As you may have noticed while casting your eyes over my page of deranged ramblings, I have a problem with Kerrrang! magazine. It started off as a minor irritation, but now it has blossomed into a full scale issue epidemic, so much that I wonder why I even bother to read and buy the thing anymore.

I started reading Kerrang! about seven years ago, when I first became interested in rock music. While round at a mate's house, looking sullenly out from under my hoodie, nodding along to Fred Durst ranting away about how nobody loves him, I picked up the magazine out of boredom, and immediately became engrossed in a whole brave new world of rock. I didn't know that this kind of thing existed! It was brilliant, there were all these other bands on the pages who I'd never heard of, but by God did they look cool, with their baggy jeans and long hair. "I want to listen to these bands" I thought to myself. "I've found my true calling and this glorious magazine is going to show me the way!"

So I began buying it every week, counting down the days till it came out so I could get my fill of all that was happening in the metal world that week. At the start it was brilliant, as all the main bands featured were ones I liked, and the smaller ones I soon got into, even though they were given such little coverage. That's when the problem started. As I got older, my tastes changed, and so did the magazine. The only problem was, they went in completely the opposite direction. Kerrang! continued to put the same old boring mainstream bands on the front cover, where reading the article only confirmed my belief that the band in question were boring musically, and had nothing to say for themselves. Surprise surprise!

I got more and more into the heavier side of things, scouring the album section for the most brutal and nasty sounding recordings on offer. My CD collection increased ad infinitum, helped along the way by a couple of more underground metal monthlies I had began to pick up. Yet I still kept buying Kerrang! even though I normally read about ten pages of the thing, I couldn't break the habit. This continues to this day. Sometimes I feel downright ashamed to walk to the counter with a big picture of My Chemical Romance staring out, all doey eyed and 'feel-my-inner-pain'. I get home and sift through the crap, read one article, two reviews and end up feeling like I've just been cheated.

A recent case in point is their inclusion, three weeks back of yet another '100 Greatest Gigs Ever'. Only this time it was a list compiled by readers. On Myspace. The resulting countdown turned out to be one of the most infuriating things I have ever had to endure reading. Of the 100 gigs, over 50 of them occured within the past three years. How a Paramore gig got rated 30 places higher than the first ever At The Drive In gig in Camden Barfly is beyond me. Or may'be it's because the voters have an average age of 14, and have only ever been to two gigs before in their life (the other being Gareth Gates), with Daddy watching their every move to ensure that they're home for bed at 10pm and that the band don't say a naughty word.

I have nothing against these kids getting into rock music, but Kerrang!, I beg you, please remember that the magazine is for THE FANS, not teenyboppers only into it because it's cool to be an emo at the moment. So come on, pull your head out of Fall Out Boy's arse, forget you ever heard the words 'Plain White T's' and put some real metal back in the mag. Otherwise, THE FANS will just keep deserting you in droves, as the teenyboppers will when alternative music goes out of fashion again in 6 months. It's not too late to change, so please consider it.