Heavy Metal Magazine Adverts of the 1980-90s

Heavy Metal Magazine Adverts: '80s to '90s.

I dumped a large collection of Heavy Metal genre UK music magazines recently, from the late 80s to early 90s, titles such as Metal Hammer, Metal Forces, Kerrang, etc. I'd a quick scan through each one first to see if there was any articles that might be of interest and it struck me how adverts for album / single releases back then differed to how they are in today's world. Some were full page, but many were half or even quarter page size.

Obviously, the smaller the advert the cheaper it was to include, but the difference also speaks to how out of control advertising has become. It's no longer a helpful pointer to interested parties. It's now an insufferable shit-stain on almost all media. It even follows you around the web if you don't have your browser's cookie settings set up to prevent it. (And if you haven't, why the hell not?)

I scanned a few of the adverts for posterity's sake. Most are of albums that I own or bands that I still enjoy listening to, so the selection reflects my own tastes more than they illustrate any other point, but that's okay. This blog isn't high art.

Pics below the cut, for anyone who cares; in no particular order other than they looked like they might sit well beside one another based on colour or style. Most likely not chronological.

Nine Inch Nails: Tron: Ares (2025)

Tron: Ares. Music by Nine Inch Nails (2025)

I realised after making the Hesitation Marks (2013) post that I didn't want any of the really crap Nine Inch Nails releases on my main blog. That meant I didn't write anything about Not The Actual Events (2016), Add Violence (2017), Bad Witch (2018), or Ghosts V + VI (2020), all of which made me sigh for having dared hope they might take NIN back to its former glory.

Tron: Ares' first single, As Alive as You Need Me to Be, had a definite Fragile (1999) / With Teeth (2005) vibe, which gave me hope once again... but the end result was the same. I hoped. I bought. I sighed. [1]

But mostly I'm confused about why it even has the NIN moniker. With just a few exceptions, including As Alive as You Need Me to Be, it resembles a typical Reznor + Ross film score, which for me is something best summed up as lifeless, dull, musical enervation.

Whisky + Black Metal

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