Metal Hammer is a british Metal magazine, it was first released in 1986 and is a monthly release. It costs £4.25 and 138 pages. Metal Hammer always comes in a plastic wrapper as it contains free gifts, though these seem to be the reason for the high price. I am looking over the October 2010 issue of Metal Hammer which has Avenged Sevenfold on the front cover. Inside the plastic wrapper you get a free Iron Maiden sticker, a book about Dave Mustaine and a 16 track Cd. It is aimed at a Niche Market for heavy metal fans and maybe emos depending on their tastes.
When you look straight away at the actual magazine the first thing you notice is the colours of the magazine, the background is a firery orange which really catchers the reader's eye a lot better than magazines like NME. The magazine has a glossy cover and is a normal A4 size for a magzine. The front image is of Avenged Sevonfold, and there is a lot of detail in the front cover. In the background there are helicopters and bikes along with explosions, which cover the bottom half of the word Hammer in the title, but still make the title noticeable as it is white/grey. One main detail is hard to spot, the lighter which lead vocalist M. Shadows is throwing away has the years 1981 - 2009 on it, which is significant due to the fact they are the years former drummer James 'The Rev' Sullivan was alive for. The 3 main colours are orange, black and white. From this front cover I can learn that the contrast with bright and warm colours works well with very dark colours.
You don't immediately get to the contents of the magazine as first there is a Kawasaki Motorbike advert. There are 2 pages for the contents in Metal Hammer, but they are not on a double page spread, on page 3 there is a band advert then page 4 you get an entire picture for one page, this means it is something that Metal Hammer wants you to go and read. When you turn over the page there is a long and rather unexciting list of what is in the magazine and then a few pictures at the bottom. On the same page as the contents there is a letter from the editor, which is quite interesting reading and a nice addition to a boring contents. I don't like this contents page very much as the list gets a bit boring.
In the lead up to the main articles there are some interesting pictures that catch your eyes, immediately after turning over from the contents you see a woman eating bloody flesh in fron of a laugh Alice Cooper, this is eye catching and make you want to read the little paragraph on the page. Though disturbing it's rather cool.
Turning to the main thing from the contents and it is about the most Metal Horror Films EVER! I think these are good little pieces, it's not too much to read and it's rather fun reading on the most metal horros films, there are pictures for pretty much ever film and it gives you a little synopsis. This is good to have in a magazine as it links medias of music and film. Having the films in there then gives them good publicity for this type of market. You also end up reading them and thinking, 'Oh I've seen that film.' or 'Oh I might go check that out.' I think this is a good piece to have in as it doesn't get too boring unlike a full band review all the way through the magazine.
I think Metal Hammer is very good, it has a good variety of articles and some interesting ones at that, I prefer this a lot to NME. The front cover is very catching and it's nice that it is glossy. The fact you get gifts with your magazine also helps to attract customers. From this magazine I will take away teh idea to make my articles short and snappy so not to get too bogged down, to also have interesting pictures which makes the reader want to have a look at what is going on.
4/5 Rating
Picture Source: http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/magazine/
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