Metal Maniacs

Europe had Metal Forces, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and a host of language-specific publications—Rock Hard and Aardschok, for example—for literate longhairs to satisfy their hard, fast and heavy fix. The States, however, had no real unifying print magazine. Until Metal Maniacs. The staff had enough experience under their bulletbelts for it to feel like a veteran…

If there’s a select group of people responsible for Decibel becoming the magazine it is today, one of those people is undoubtedly Katherine Ludwig. Why? Because as the founding editor of Metal Maniacs magazine, she helped spearhead extreme-music journalism. Unlike the more popular Metal Edge, a sort of US Weekly of hair metal bands, Metal…