Textual Analysis --> Music Magazine Front Cover

Kerrang magazine
"Live life loud"


Kerrang magazine is the world's biggest selling rock magazine and covers all forms of music with attitude from Slipknot to Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit to The offspring and everything in between. ( link from Great magazines.co.uk)

Kerrang is a heavy metal music magazine. The target audience of such magazine is 15 to 30 year olds. It would also appeal to Emos, Goths and heavy metal fans, as they would be able to find out about the latest music thats coming out from their favourate bands, another reason is that they get to find out about up coming concerts.


Avenged Sevenfold is represented as a heavy metal band. The are all dressed in black with sunglasses on making them look threatening as you can not see there eyes. Another way they look threatening is because three members a visibly holding objects which can be seen as weapons such as a sword, stick and chain. One band member is standing in front of the other members this suggest that he is more important and that he is the lead singer. The facial expressions of the band members are sharp and harsh. We cannot tell if some the band members are looking straight at the camera because three of them are wearing sunglasses. The two members that are not wearing sunglasses are seen squinting at the camera almost a threatening look.


As well as the main image there are two sub-images. These images do not look as dark as the main image. The first sub-image of 'funeral for a friend' has white background giving it a cleaner cut then the other sub-image and the main image.I think that the photograph of 'Panic at the disco' looks more casual then the pother two images because the band members are wearing what seems to be their own clothes , also the photo looks as if it was taken in the local pub.


The masthead follows the image of aggression as it looks like it has been slashed with a knife. This effect is done by putting white lines through each letter. Also the masthead is sans serif which is a connation as it breaks the mould. It breaks the mould because the majourity of magazines the font has sharp edges while Kerrange's font does not have as much of a defined line. The colour scheme of the magazine uses blacks,reds,yellows and whites, this also follows the theme of violence as red and black are associated with anger and destruction.

The ideology of this particular Kerrang magazine is violence. This idea comes across through the text,images and colours. The main image has the words “sex,drugs, violence” printed on top as well the words “the worlds most dangerous band”. These phrases associate well with the ideology primarily because they have  the words “violence” and “dangerous” in them. The main image looks violent because it is dark and the band members are wearing sunglasses, covering their eyes and therefore adding  to the fear factor. Another reason why the image looks violence is because some members of the band are holding weapons. These give an impressions of gangs fighting.

The magazines sologan is "live,life,loud" which is correct for the genre of the magazine. The sologan is perfect for the genre of heavy metal because heavy metal and rock music cannot be listened to quitely.