If you were getting Penthouse and didn't like Rolling Stone (and who does?), I'm surprised you didn't try Spin, which was put out by the same people, and usually much better.
I did pick up the occasional issue of
Spin off the newsstand back then, but like
RS, they only rarely paid attention to hard rock/metal and even when they did, it was the usual over-exposed suspects like Metallica, Nirvana, etc., etc. who I was sick of reading about anyway.
When it came to metal mags back then I preferred
Metal Hammer and
Metal Forces from the U.K. Most of the American metal mags, which were basically glam rock pin-up rags, flogged the same ol' crap month after month. The British mags were more in tune with my tastes, which was more "underground."
Unfortunately, subscribing to them would've been prohibitively expensive for me in the U.S., so I contented myself with picking up issues when I I came across them at record stores/newsstands/bookstores.
During the 1990s, the only decent metal mag from the US was the greatly missed
Metal Maniacs, which I read religiously. I even had a couple of letters printed in their "mail" section during that time, which was a fanboy bucket list thing for me. :D