Burrn! (Japanese: バーン, Hepburn: Bān, stylized as BURRN!) is a monthly Japanese magazine for fans of heavy metal music, published since September 1984.[1] It is the major publication on heavy metal music in the country.[2] As of 2013, it is published by Shinko Music Entertainment in Tokyo. The magazine's content is in Japanese and largely focuses on Western artists, while the covers are predominantly in English.
History
Despite being a Japanese magazine, a Japanese musician was not featured on the cover of Burrn! until the January 2016 issue featured Akira Takasaki on its cover.[1] This does not include the separate Burrn! Japan magazine, which was published for six volumes between 1987 and 1990 to focus on Japanese artists, before being revived in 2016.[3] This has been said to have been the policy of Burrn!'s editor-in-chief from 1984 to 1993, Kō Sakai.
Burrn! has held a readers poll annually since its founding in 1984. In 2019, Mari Hamada become the first Japanese musician to top the vocalist category in the poll's 36 year history.[4]
Metallion is a special issue of Burrn! first published in 1986 before being suspended in 1991.[5] It is now published irregularly since 1999.[5]
In a now-infamous November 1985 review, Sakai gave Seikima-II's debut album, Seikima-II ~ Akuma ga Kitarite Heavy Metal, a rating of 0.[6][7] For the next 35 years, the band did not have any contact with Burrn!.[6][8] At the end of 2020, current editor-in-chief Kazuo Hirose went to a Seikima-II event and offered to interview them for the magazine.[8][9] They were subsequently featured on the cover of and interviewed for the March 2021 issue.[6][9]
