Feature Spread Analysis - Metal Hammer

To get a better understanding of the common conventions of feature articles. I am going to analyse a double page spread featured in Metal Hammer that talks about Corey Taylor. I think the target audience would be 16-40 year olds because of the nature of the musicians feature id say it is suitable for people that enjoy the metal genre.

Layout and Colour

The layout is fairly simple it features a star vehicle image on the left of Corey Taylor. The right hand page features all of the text for the article and is clearly set into 3 columns of text with a large piece of text featuring for style reasons. The colour scheme is common to the genre of dark colours such as black the star vehicles tie is also a blood red both connoting misery and perhaps death liking to the common perceptions of the genre.

 Typography/Text

The “no” from the title has been made very large in consideration to space and features text inside the “o” the left of the “N” has been extended to form a border line towards the inner of the page. It has a 1940’s-50’s style this is very interesting as this is no common to genre. The period design could be to exaggerate the fact he has “done it before”  so therefore this style of 40-50’s could be connoting a previous life however I highly doubt this.

Imagery

The mid=close up of Corey is very dark, however his main facial features are still visible still allowing and audience to connect to the image. The clothes he is wearing are also 40’s-50’s style ( fedora ; tie ; waist coat ) this carries on the retro theme of the feature article.  A small image of bullets is featured in the lower right hand corner of the article this link with the time era clothing suggests that they are going for a old gangster feel which is very uncommon to the genre as common day gangsters are associated with Rap/ Hip-Hop music. The use of clothing however could also connote that Corey is all business when it comes to this sort of publication.

Lexicon

The text speaks like a friend and is therefore very common to music magazine genre