The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal with CD (Audio) [Paperback]

Martin Popoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1997

This guide contains 3700 reviews - with many from the original volume rewritten and rejudged. Besides reviewing the vast number of new releases that have transpired over the last few years, genres including punk, alternative, thrash, metal, grindcore, hardcore, death metal, originators from the 1970s, and collectables have been examined in detail. It includes a 19 track heavy metal CD sampler.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Martin Popoff is the author of The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal, The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal Volume 1: The Seventies, and The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time. He is the editor in chief of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles and regularly contributes to Chart, Classic Rock, Goldmine, Guitar World, Lollipop, and Record Collector. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Collectors Guide Publishing Inc (June 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896522327
• ISBN-13: 978-1896522326
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,213,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars After Much Deliberating..., March 21, 2003

By 

Jason P. Farrell (SHEBOYGAN, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal with CD (Audio) (Paperback)

Maybe nobody else has quite realized it yet, but this book isn't really about Martin Popoff's taste in heavy metal. It's meant to allow the Reader to engage in formulating their own taste--you're supposed to engage in a running dialogue with Popoff's opinions, and this forces you to think deeply and clearly about how Metal affects you, why it gets under your skin and why (when the day is over) it's important to you. Along the way, Popoff (who has a copious amount of knowledge about all things hard and heavy) acts sometimes as your ally, sometimes as your enemy, and sometimes as a Court Jester. Fact is, genuine metal obssesives are a microscopic minority subculture. I'm glad I bought Martin's book, because I finally have someone to talk to.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the be-all, end-all of metal criticism, but a great read, September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal with CD (Audio) (Paperback)

I, for one, find Popoff's reviews informative and funny (sometimes scathingly so) and his knowledge above reproach -- come on, he's one man! Though I've cursed him like a sailor when he slags a band I worship, reviews are, at the end of the day, one man's opinion, and this book is a compendium of just that. I think this book will be most enjoyed by fellow obsessives, the types who, when cleaning out an old closet, will get sidetracked for hours by years-old copies of magazines, re-reading decade-old articles and marveling at the ones who did, and didn't, make it. I proudly count myself among that group, and my copy of the 'Collector's Guide' is worn and dog-eared for that reason. I will concede that the title is misleading; it implies a more fact-based, soulless, statistical charts-and-graphs sort of book. But that's more a publisher's bad call than an author's mistake, I'd wager. The book's original title, 'Riff Kills Man,' is much more suitable -- a gigantic treasure trove of opinionated, witty picks and pans from a man who's lived and breathed metal in all its forms since he was lashing Priest LP's to the back of his bicycle and pedaling home as fast as his Canuck feet could take him. That enthusiasm sticks out, and makes this a great book for any discerning rivethead (at least one not mummified into one sub-sub-genre for all eternity, and if that's you, I didn't want you in my house anyway). Pick it up!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for metal fans..., November 23, 1999

By 

Michel Renaud - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal with CD (Audio) (Paperback)

This excellent book contains reviews of 3700 hard rock/heavy metal/alternative/punk albums by well-known reviewer Martin Popoff. I strongly recommend it to metal fans everywhere. While I do not agree with all of the reviews, I use this as an essential tool when shopping in a used record store or when ordering older CDs. It is also great reading as some of the reviews are simply hilarious! Note that it was published in 1997, so some albums published that year and more recently are not in this edition. The book is accompanied by a 19-track cd compilation of Century Media artists. This is a review book, you will not find biographies in there. One of my best purchases, looking forward to the next edition.