Words: Jerry Ewing
Malcolm Dome, the pioneering rock and metal journalist and long-term contributor to Classic Rock, Prog, Metal Hammer and Louder, has died aged 66.
Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. Among other things, Dome is credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. He would later be a founding member of RAW rock magazine in 1988.
In the early 90s, Dome was the editor of Metal Forces magazine, and was also involved in the horror film magazine Terror, before returning to Kerrang! for a spell. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1988 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and has also been a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009.
He was actively involved in Total Rock Radio, which launched as Rock Radio Network in 1997, changing its name to Total Rock in 2000. In 2014 he joined the TeamRock online team as Archive Editor.
Dome was the author of many books on a host of bands from AC/DC to Led Zeppelin and Metallica, some of which he co-wrote with Prog editor Jerry Ewing.
"Malcolm was a great friend to me from the very first time I met him as a writer just starting out, as he was for many other writers as well," says Ewing. "The word legend gets bandied around far too often these days but Malcolm most certainly was. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge about music and was one of the most genuinely widely loved and respected men I know. I will miss him terribly."
