Geoff Barton (born July 1955) is a Britishjournalist who founded theheavy metal magazineKerrang! and was an editor ofSounds music magazine.^[1]

He joinedSounds at the age of 19 after completing a journalism course at theLondon College of Printing. He specialised in covering rock music and helped popularise thenew wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) after using the term for the first time (after editorAlan Lewis coined it) in the May 1979 issue ofSounds.^[2] In 1981 he edited the first issue ofKerrang!, which was published as a one off. This was successful so it became a fortnightly magazine. He left the magazine in 1995.

Barton's articles forSounds which covered the NWOBHM helped to create the sense that an actual movement was taking place, and in a sense helped to create one in the process. Barton recalls: "The phrase New Wave of British Heavy Metal was this slightly tongue-in-cheek thing...I didn't really feel that any of these bands were particularly linked in a musical way, but it was interesting that so many of them should then be emerging at more or less the same time."^[3]He currently works forClassic Rock.

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