Mark Blake
Mark Blake is a veteran music journalist and author whose work at Louder centres on deep, narrative features about rock and metal bands, using long-form interviews and historical detail to tell the story behind landmark records and enduring careers. His writing focuses on the classic rock and heavy metal canon rather than day-to-day news, with a particular emphasis on bands such as Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd and Genesis. He has been chronicling rock royalty since the mid-1980s and brings that long view to his coverage.
Iron Maiden's long story
Iron Maiden are a core subject of Blake’s recent work, and he treats the band’s history as an ongoing narrative rather than a sequence of news updates. At Louder he writes a major feature marking Iron Maiden’s 50-year journey, built around interviews with Steve Harris, Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith and framed as a look back at how the band have stayed “50 years and still going strong.” In that piece he focuses on the musicians’ own voices, letting them revisit key moments, explain creative choices and reflect on how they still approach touring and recording after five decades.
His Iron Maiden coverage extends beyond the frontline players to the people who shape the band’s image and story. In a separate feature he profiles Iron Maiden’s creative director Ben Smallwood, exploring how visual design, stage presentation and storytelling help to present the band’s legacy to fans. Across these articles Blake treats Iron Maiden as a case study in longevity and creative reinvention, combining present-tense interviews with archival knowledge to show how their world fits together.
Pink Floyd, Genesis and progressive rock history
Blake returns regularly to the 1970s and the world of progressive and classic rock, using individual albums as anchors for broader historical pieces. For Louder he writes about why Pink Floyd did not use their usual artwork collaborators Hipgnosis for The Wall, turning what could be a footnote into a detailed story about the band’s relationship with visual art and the decisions behind one of rock’s most recognisable sleeves. His treatment of Pink Floyd emphasises both the music and the wider creative ecosystem, drawing connections between the band, their designers and the cultural moment in which their records were made.
He applies a similar approach to Genesis, writing the “true story” of the album A Trick Of The Tail as a narrative feature that traces how the band navigated a key transitional period. That piece focuses on the making of the record, the line-up change and the artistic risks involved, showing Blake’s interest in albums as turning points rather than isolated products. Beyond Louder, he contributes Pink Floyd-focused work to specialist titles such as the progressive rock magazine Prog, underlining his role as a go-to writer on that band and on prog history more broadly.
Album artwork and visual storytelling
Visual culture around music is a recurring strand in Blake’s work. His feature on Pink Floyd and Hipgnosis centres on sleeve art decisions, explaining why the band moved away from their “go-to” artwork team and what that meant for the look and feel of The Wall. In his profile of Iron Maiden’s creative director Ben Smallwood he again foregrounds the importance of imagery, stagecraft and design in telling a band’s story, showing how art direction shapes fans’ understanding of a long-established act.
Outside individual articles, his wider bibliography includes books on Pink Floyd and other major rock acts, which often take the form of oral histories and archival studies that pay close attention to album covers, photography and the visual branding of bands. This focus on artwork and presentation gives his Louder pieces a distinctive angle: they are not only about songs and records, but also about how those records are packaged and remembered.
Veteran perspective and outlets
Blake’s reporting is grounded in decades of experience across newspapers and music magazines. He is described by Louder as a music journalist and author whose work has appeared in national newspapers including The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and in leading music magazines such as Q, Mojo and Classic Rock. His Classic Rock work includes a cover story built around new interviews with Adrian Smith, Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson, reflecting his ability to secure access to key figures and build substantial features around them.
He contributes regularly to specialist rock publications and appears as a guest on rock-focused radio shows, where he is introduced as someone who has been chronicling rock royalty since the mid-1980s. Across these outlets his style remains consistent: he favours long-form, quote-rich pieces that reconstruct the making of albums, the evolution of bands and the decisions behind high-profile creative projects. For anyone looking to place stories, Blake is best suited to narratives that dig into the history, craft and visual storytelling of established rock and metal artists, especially those connected to Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Genesis and their extended creative circles.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alison Brinkworth
Alison Brinkworth is a freelance journalist who treats music as a gateway into place, history and everyday life, often through exhibitions, performances and city-centre events. She covers music within the wider cultural and lifestyle scene, leaning toward accessible, on-the-ground stories framed by familiar artists, venues and local attractions. Her work often focuses on music exhibitions and attractions built around well-known performers, alongside theatre reviews, live events and city attractions. She brings a lifestyle, travel and human-interest sensibility, using interviews and personal stories to show how people spend their time. With over 25 years of experience across print, digital, social media and internal communications, she writes clear, factual, audience-facing articles with dates, locations and organisers, suited to listings, guides and practical recommendations.