Rock Sound: Британский журнал о рок-музыке

British rock music magazine
the place

Rock Sound is a British magazine that covers rock music. The magazine aims at being more "underground" and less commercial, while also giving coverage to better known acts. It generally focuses on pop punk, post hardcore, metalcore, punk, emo, hardcore, heavy metal and extreme metal genres of rock music, rarely covering indie rock music at all. The tag line "For those who like their music loud, extreme and non conformist" is sometimes used. Although primarily aimed at the British market, the magazine is also sold in Australia, Canada and the United States.

The British edition of Rock Sound was launched in March 1999 by the French publisher Editions Freeway. The magazine was bought out by its director, Patrick Napier, in December 2004. The magazines offices are in London. Separate titles with the same name have been published under the same umbrella company in France since 1993, and in Spain since 1998. The first issue was published in April 1999. Issue 2 featured British band Reef on the front cover, and later issues 3 and 8 featured Terrorvision and Foo Fighters respectively. In July 2011 a host of "Through The Years" articles were written to celebrate the 150th issue of the magazine. 2017 witnessed the first annual Rock Sound Awards where £1 from every magazine bundle sold was donated to the One More Light Fund in memory of Chester Bennington. The magazine was known for including a free CD in most issues, which had tracks from bands' new albums that have not been released as singles. These were called '100% Volume' or 'The Volumes', with other past compilations named 'Music With Attitude', 'Bugging Your Ears! ', 'Sound Check' and 'Punk Rawk Explosion'. Sometimes whole albums were included with the magazine, particularly from bands wanting to gain exposure, including Futures' debut album The Holiday in March 2010, and Burn The Fleet's debut album The Modern Shape in May 2012. In more recent years, exclusive artist merchandise including t shirts have been sold alongside the magazine via the Rock Sound web store. In 2023, Rock Sound became part of WhyNow media group and a special edition magazine was published in partnership with Slam Dunk Festival featuring headliners Enter Shikari and The Offspring on the cover. A weekly digital cover feature, The Album Story, was also launched on ROCKSOUND. TV. Rock Sound's 300th issue was published in September 2023 with Fall Out Boy, Corey Taylor and Motionless In White appearing on the cover. The magazine will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024.

In 2019, Rock Sound introduced a new venture titled Rock Sound Records, a sub brand of Rock Sound offering and distributing music in limited physical formats, such as cassette tapes and vinyl records. Generally, this involves the exclusive physical release of a record released by a band that is signed to a different (major) record label. For instance, the first Rock Sound Records release was a cassette tape version of Simple Creatures′ debut EP Strange Love, while the band is currently signed to BMG.

# Artist Title Release date Format 1. Simple Creatures Strange Love 22 March 2019 Cassette tape 3. Boston Manor Welcome to the Neighbourhood 10 May 2019 Cassette tape 4. Real Friends Even More Acoustic Songs 17 May 2019 Vinyl record 5. Sum 41 Order in Decline 31 May 2019 Cassette tape 6. Crown the Empire Sudden Sky 24 June 2019 Vinyl record + magazine 7. Knocked Loose A Different Shade Of Blue 7 August 2019 Cassette tape 8. Issues Beautiful Oblivion 12 August 2019 Vinyl record 9. Waterparks Fandom 30 August 2019 Vinyl record + cassette tape 10. Grayscale Nella Vita 3 September 2019 Cassette tape