About Rock Hard

Rock Hard

Rock Hard — the German heavy-metal music magazine published monthly from Dortmund since 1983 — is the independent voice of German metal journalism: founded as a photocopied fanzine by two Dortmund school friends, grown into the genre's "central organ" (as Der Spiegel called it), and still published independently with the slogan "kritisch, kompetent, unabhängig" (critical, competent, independent).

Overview

Rock Hard is a German music magazine based in Dortmund, specializing in hard rock and heavy metal and their subgenres. The magazine offers reports, interviews, specials, reviews and news. It was founded in 1983 by Holger Stratmann and Uwe Lerch; the first issue appeared in November–December 1983. The publisher is Holger Stratmann, through the Rock Hard Verlags- und Handels-GmbH; the editor-in-chief is Boris Kaiser. The magazine's ISSN is 1437-8140 and its website is rockhard.de.

Rock Hard is independent of the large media corporations — a deliberate positioning that distinguishes it from its Berlin-based rival Metal Hammer (owned via the Axel Springer Mediahouse). The German news magazine Der Spiegel has called it the "Zentralorgan" (central organ) of heavy-metal fandom in Germany; others call it a "Kultzeitschrift" (cult magazine). More than 300 issues have been published in Germany since 1983, and the magazine has appeared monthly since 1989.

History

In 1983, Uwe Lerch and Holger Stratmann — school friends from Dortmund who collected records and went to rock and heavy-metal concerts — decided to publish a German magazine for heavy metal, modeled on the Dutch magazine Aardschok. Through the classified ads of a German-translated Aardschok magazine, the two met Götz Kühnemund, who would become Rock Hard's editor-in-chief; Kühnemund was then still publishing his own magazine called Metal Maniacs.

While Metal Hammer launched as a newsstand magazine with a print run of 50,000 copies — 25,000 of which sold immediately — Rock Hard began as an underground fanzine. The first three Rock Hard magazines (issues 1 to 3) ran to about twenty pages and were produced in editions of roughly 110 copies, at a price of 3.00 DM, laid out in record shops around Dortmund. They were not printed but photocopied.

The first issue's contents read like a time capsule of early-1980s metal: a Japan special, concert reports on the bands Bullet and Accept, a Black Sabbath story, the lyrics to Judas Priest's Victim of Changes, an introduction of the then-newcomer Savage, and various record reviews. The album of the month was Kill 'Em All by Metallica — the debut album of a band that would become the biggest metal act in history, chosen by a photocopied fanzine in Dortmund. (A reprint of the first issue was enclosed with the anniversary issue 200 in December 2003.)

Issue two included a report on the Monsters of Rock festival, reports on Scorpions, Saxon and others, Iron Maiden lyrics and a special on the Newcastle label Neat Records; the album of the month was Guilty as Charged by Culprit. Issue three featured a Metal Blade Records special by Uwe Lerch covering the label's entire discography to date — and defined the grading system for album reviews that remains valid today.

From those photocopied beginnings, Rock Hard grew into a professional monthly: published monthly since 1989, with more than 300 issues in Germany. The transformation from fanzine to newsstand magazine took most of the 1980s — the years when heavy metal itself grew from a subculture into a mass movement, and when the German metal scene, centered on the Ruhr's industrial cities, became one of the genre's global heartlands. Rock Hard grew with its scene: the Dortmund record shops' photocopies became the magazine of a movement.

In 1993, several members of the editorial team created a parody band called Randalica — a sign of the magazine's embeddedness in the scene it covers, where the line between journalist and fan, between critic and participant, has always been deliberately blurred. Since 1990 the magazine's staff have organized the Rock Hard Festival, held annually in Gelsenkirchen on the Whitsun weekend since 2003. The festival is streamed by Spiegel Online and broadcast by the WDR television channel under the Rockpalast label — the fanzine's festival, now a fixture of the German metal calendar.

Content and Concept

Rock Hard covers music news, interviews, concert diaries, special features and album reviews across hard rock and heavy metal and their subgenres. The magazine's slogan — "kritisch, kompetent, unabhängig" — is also its editorial programme: critical distance from the industry, competence born of fandom, independence from corporate ownership.

The review grading system, defined in the third issue and still in use, gives the magazine's verdicts their authority: the scores are the scene's reference, debated by readers with the seriousness the genre demands. The magazine's independence — owned by its founder, not a media group — underwrites its critical credibility: Rock Hard can afford to pan a major label's album, because no corporate parent has a relationship to protect.

Coverage and Audience

Rock Hard appears monthly, in German, from Dortmund. Its audience is the German hard-rock and heavy-metal community — the fans, collectors and concert-goers of the Ruhr industrial heartland and beyond. The German-language edition's circulation has been reported at around 80,000 copies, making it — after the German Metal Hammer — the leading magazine of the genre in Germany.

The magazine also has independent licensed editions of the same name in France, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Slovenia — the Dortmund fanzine's brand, exported to the world's metal scenes.

Ownership

Rock Hard is published by Holger Stratmann through the Rock Hard Verlags- und Handels-GmbH in Dortmund — the founder still the publisher, more than forty years after the first photocopied issue. The editor-in-chief is Boris Kaiser (Götz Kühnemund, the Metal Maniacs publisher the founders met through the Aardschok classifieds, was the long-serving editor-in-chief). The magazine's independence from the large media corporations is structural, not just rhetorical: no group ownership, no corporate parent, the founder's company.

Digital Presence

rockhard.de is the magazine's online portal for rock music, complemented by a mobile app (since 2013) and a web portal dedicated to rock music (since 2018). The digital offering extends the monthly print brand with news, reviews and the festival coverage, serving the metal community between issues. The October 2026 issue — on sale from 7 October to 11 November 2026 — confirms the magazine in active, ongoing monthly publication, more than forty years after the first photocopied fanzine. The Rock Hard Festival — organized by the magazine's staff since 1990, in Gelsenkirchen at Whitsun since 2003 — gives the brand a live presence that few music magazines can match: the readers, the bands and the magazine in one place, every year, broadcast by WDR's Rockpalast and streamed by Spiegel Online.

From 110 photocopied copies at 3 DM to the "Zentralorgan" of German heavy metal: Rock Hard is the fanzine that grew up without selling out — critical, competent, independent, in Dortmund, every month, since 1983. The slogan on the cover is also the business model: owned by its founder, written by fans, read by the scene — the Dortmund fanzine that became an institution, still independent after four decades, still the scene's own magazine, every month. In a media landscape where music magazines have closed across Europe, the Dortmund monthly's survival — and its festival, its app, its international editions — testifies to what independence and credibility can sustain.