Maximum Rocknroll Fanzine To Cease Print Publication After 37 Years

Maximum Rocknroll, the San Fransisco-based fanzine with over 400 issues, has announced that it will cease print publication this year, according to Pitchfork. This is far from the end, though: there will be three more print issues, then reviews will move online, accompanied by a weekly radio show.

“It is with heavy hearts that we are announcing the end of Maximum Rocknroll as a monthly print fanzine. There will be three more issues of the fanzine in its current format; later in 2019 we will begin publishing record reviews online alongside our weekly radio show. Readers can look forward to more online content, updates regarding the archive project initiated in 2016, and other yet-to-be-announced MRR projects, as well as new ways for punks around the world to get involved,” reads a statement on their website.

Maximum Rocknroll began as a radio show in 1977. In 1982, the print fanzine was launched. The publication has always centered around punk and hardcore, having “an unabashed, uncompromising love of punk rock.” Today, 42 years after the first radio show, there are well over 1600 episodes of Maximum Rocknroll radio, as well as over 400 issues of the fanzine.

“Needless to say, the landscape of the punk underground has shifted over the years, as has the world of print media. Many of the names and faces behind Maximum Rocknroll have changed too. Yet with every such shift, MRR has continued to remind readers that punk rock isn’t any one person, one band, or even one fanzine. It is an idea, an ethos, a fuck you to the status quo, a belief that a different kind of world and a different kind of sound is ours for the making.

These changes do not mean that Maximum Rocknroll is coming to an end. We are still the place to turn if you care about Swedish girl bands or Brazilian thrash or Italian anarchist publications or Filipino teenagers making anti-state pogo punk, if you are interested in media made by punks for punks, if you still believe in the power and potential of autonomously produced and underground culture. We certainly still do, and look forward to the surprises, challenges, and joys that this next chapter will bring. Long live Maximum Rocknroll.”