Martin Popoff

Martin Popoff (born 1963) is a Canadian-born music journalist, critic and author. He is mainly known for writing about the genre of heavy metal music. The senior editor and co-founder of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, he has additionally written over twenty books that both critically evaluate heavy metal and document its history. He has been called "heavy metal's most widely recognized journalist" by his publisher. Popoff presently lives in Toronto.

Born in Castlegar, British Columbia, Popoff's interest in metal began as a youth in Trail, British Columbia in the early 1970s, when bands such as Led Zeppelin and Iron Butterfly were in the collections of the older brothers and cousins of Popoff and his friends. Black Sabbath played even heavier music, and became the group his circle of friends thought of as "our band, not the domain of our elders". Other heavy rock albums of the era, such as Nazareth's Razamanaz and Kiss' Hotter Than Hell, further shaped his emerging musical tastes. Angel City and April Wine were among Popoff's favourite bands as a teenager.

Of popular music magazines around at the time, Popoff recalls being a regular reader of Circus, Hit Parader, and later, Kerrang! blew our minds." Popoff does not identify any specific writers as being particularly influential on his own writing style, saying "it never registered who wrote what."

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