An updated version of Loud 'n' Proud: Fifty Years of Nazareth, drawing on copious images and items of memorabilia, this large format 240-page book is a treasure trove for Nazareth devotees — crammed full of live and off stage shots that portray the band’s journey through the decades. It also includes loads of super cool memorabilia including backstage passes, gig posters, media adverts and much more, all reproduced on high quality art paper. From the early days of the seventies through to the current day, nestling alongside the wonderful imagery, the band’s whole career is documented by esteemed rock writer Martin Popoff who was assisted through the whole narrative by Nazareth’s founder and only remaining original member Pete Agnew. Popoff also interviewed Agnew for the book in addition to previous interviews the author has conducted, not only with the bass player extraordinaire but with many other band members past and present, all neatly laid out in a timeline, making this the essential go to Nazareth book.

If any band deserves to have homage paid to them with a lavish, limited edition photographic book, look no further than Thin Lizzy. With their origins going back to the late sixties, by 1971 with the first album release, Lizzy's journey really began. Incredibly no one has published a visual biography before, but now that has been rectified. Drawing on several thousand images and items of memorabilia this large format 240-page book is a treasure trove for Thin Lizzy devotees - crammed full of live and off-stage shots that portray the band's journey through the decades. It also includes loads of super cool memorabilia including backstage passes, gig posters, media adverts and much more, all reproduced on high quality art paper. This is one future collector's item that every self-respecting Lizzy fan will want to own. Rounding it off, Thin Lizzy: A Visual Biography is topped and tailed with 20,000 words by Lizzy biographer and world-renowned rock author Martin Popoff. This lavish book will prove to be a valuable addition to any fan's collection.

Dublin's Thin Lizzy have become one of the most revered cult acts of all time, studious and discerning fans of hard rock the world over revelling in the storytelling acumen of the legendary Phil Lynott and the craft and class of his band. Through numerous interviews with most of the principals involved and a mountain of painstaking research Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era examines the band's career up to 1976 culminating in the superlative and sparkling Jailbreak, home of such hits as 'Cowboy Song', 'Emerald', 'Jailbreak' and 'The Boys Are Back In Town' and followed by Johnny The Fox that included the hit single 'Don't Believe A Word'. Along the way, alcohol and drugs wreaked havoc between band members, producers and managers, but despite line-up changes and a mostly grinding, rock scrabble existence, Ireland's favourite sons persevered, finally achieving the smash hit record they'd deserved for so long. Immerse yourself in Popoff's celebrated record-by-record methodology and emerge a rejuvenated Lizzy fan, newly appreciative of the deep album tracks hiding within this singular band's often forgotten early years. A revised and expanded version of Popoff's previous Dublin To Jailbreak Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era is based on interviews the author conducted specifically for the book with band members Eric Bell, Scott Gorham, Brian Downey, Gary Moore and Brian Robertson; managers Terry O'Neill and Ted Carroll; producers Nick Tauber and Ron Nevison; Nigel Grange from Vertigo; road manager Frank Murray and cover artist Jim Fitzpatrick. Revealing Phil Lynott in all his dastardly guises Emerald; Thin Lizzy's Golden Era, is an essential read for the devoted Lizzy fans.

Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 - 1981 documents the progressive rock pioneer's first twelve years from the release of their eponymous debut album through to 1980's Drama: A suitable name for a band whose career has been full of drama as documented in Popoff's narrative that charts Yes's ups and downs as the band glided out of the sixties with a full-on assault on the seventies music scene that saw them become one of the biggest global acts-selling out venues around the world from New York's Madison Square Garden to London's Wembley Arena. Popoff takes you on a journey from the early days of the band with original members Chris Squire, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Peter Banks and Tony Kaye; to the hugely successful seventies when the likes of Steve Howe, Patrick Moraz, Rick Wakeman and Alan White all added their individual stamps on the band's identity. Then the surprise union with The Buggles that saw Yes enter the eighties a world apart from the way they had entered the seventies but continuing to delight their legion of fans.

Through a confluence of grinding hard rock grooves, pioneering electronics and liquid lighting, Dave Brock and his assembled astronauts of mind and space have been defining for more than fifty years now what it means to be the ultimate cult band. Ripping into the public consciousness with the Space Ritual live album of 1973, Hawkwind have never looked back, discovering new ways to equate the subatomic with the infinite, the endless void of space with totality, using the exotic language of their ever-evolving yet complex musical language, one that defies genre classification, but perhaps creates a genre all its own, namely space rock. Accompanying their more than thirty studio albums and myriad companion pieces along the way are the graphics thereof, visuals that further attempt to explain themes that are hard to articulate. Hawkwind: A Visual Biography concentrates the third eye on this part of the package, presenting pretty pictures of record covers, promo items, advertisements, ticket stubs, paper goods pertaining to side-projects and numerous photos, most previously unpublished, of Brock and crew resplendent in their live space, in hopes that the Hawk manifesto just might become a little more knowable. Aiding in that cause, Martin Popoff has provided a detailed timeline of the band’s complicated and dramatic career goings-on, helping to guide one’s way through each year and era, each hiring and firing and misfiring, each cluster of notions, audio magic potions, each sailing upon inter-stellar topographic oceans. The ultimate aim is to send older fans as well as the next generation of blaster-offer back to the original scriptures, the studio albums serving as space-flung signposts, in search of the charming and astounding sounds that gave rise to Hawkwind: A Visual Biography.

A grinding celebration of the metal gods Judas Priest in all their sumptuous glory. A photo-stuffed coffee table book with the entire fifty plus year history in meticulous timeline order - a rock-hard reference book, with the facts presented mostly soberly and efficiently. This book contains all manner of facts that also takes a detailed look at offshoot bands and side-projects throughout the visually stunning pages.

The publication of Martin Popoff's Uriah Heep: A Visual Biography is something of a bitter-sweet pill given recent events. Following the sad loss of Lee Kerslake in September 2020, Popoff - having interviewed various band members over the past few years - was all set to conduct another interview with Ken Hensley in mid November when the tragic news of Ken's sudden departure reached Heep fans around the world. Undeterred, the decision that had already been made to immortalise Uriah Heep with a comprehensive visual biography remained. Popoff's celebrated and detailed timeline takes us through more than fifty years of massive rock history from this much-loved band. From the early days with legendary front man David Byron, through the John Lawton years; the John Sloman and Pete Goalby fronted periods and from 1986 with Bernie Shaw taking centre stage; all eras are comprehensively covered. This differs from previous Uriah Heep books through the inclusion of so many previously unpublished photos, along with rare memorabilia and artefacts that makes this an indispensable addition to the vast Uriah Heep catalogue.

Wild Mood Swings: Disintegrating The Cure Album by Album, Martin Popoff's innovative new project on iconic post-punk pioneers The Cure, celebrates 50 years now since key actor of the band Robert Smith got hold of his first guitar. And the form this celebration takes is a critical analysis of the band's 13 studio albums, utilising a panel of thoughtful and engaging music critics culled from the author's and Marco D'Auria's video channel, The Contrarians. Presented in easy-to-read Q&A format, Martin gathers these wise music swamis into small teams with an aim toward deconstructing and reassembling each album, hopefully generating myriad new ways for the reader and Cure fan to appreciate the band's seminal records, beginning with Three Imaginary Boys in 1979 and ending with 4:13 Dream in 2008. As bonus to the discussion, Popoff has created a detailed timeline linked to each album, echoing the format used for his many celebrated visual biographies issued through Wymer Publishing in recent years. The end result presents a fresh methodology with which to consider a band's catalogue, with the hope being that the mix of hard chronological reference material and freewheeling opinion, review and analysis makes for a lively celebration of-and subsequent richer appreciation for-everything Robert Smith has done for millions of Cure fans around the world, much of it therapeutic, redemptive and in so many inspiring instances, urgently life-saving.

In Dominance and Submission: The Blue Oyster Cult Canon, three-time BOC book author Martin Popoff turns the microphone away from himself to moderate a gathered and esteemed panel of Cult experts for deep-dive discussions on every Blue Oyster Cult studio album. No stone is left unturned, as we look at the personalities in the band, every song, every album cover, the band’s highly regarded lyrics as poetry, their music as ground-breaking and genre-defying. Dominance and Submission is set-up in Q&A format, allowing for pure and piercing prose that is also conversational and easy-access. In the end, the author is confident that the wise words from this cabal of music authorities—with Popoff not pulling any punches either, joining in the fun when the door is opened—will have you playing the band’s “canon� with a renewed appreciation as to the complexity laced throughout such albums as Tyranny and Mutation, Agents of Fortune—with its career defining hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper�—Spectres, Fire of Unknown Origin and the daunting Imaginos. But have no fear, Martin and his team have taken us right up to the band’s effusively received comeback album, The Symbol Remains, bringing band and fan full circle—umlauts included, of course. Finally, augmenting the learning (and listening) experience, Dominance and Submission provides a plethora of images that make these essays on the band’s fifteen albums that much more visceral. Bottom line: if you thought Martin had covered everything you need to know in his definitive Agents of Fortune: The Blue Oyster Cult Story, think again—the analysis proffered by his panel even sent Popoff back to the sacred texts for a rock ‘n’ roll re-imagining. If he’s been made smarter by what these guys have to say, you will be too.

They were the envy of all the more "earthly" rock acts scrambling to make it in the world of '70s hard rock, each and all aspiring to the success levels of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Styx and Angel label mates Kiss. But the story of Angel is of a band out of time, playing regal progressive heavy metal and then changing to try reach radio, in either guise, not quite clicking with enough Kiss fans-Kiss were the devils in black and Angel were the good guys in white-nor the fans of progressive rock or, later, those more inclined to Foreigner, Journey and Cheap Trick. Along the way, the band went first class, with the best gear, a killer stage show and tons of promotion from Neil Bogart and Casablanca until they had racked up a million dollars of debt by the end of their blessed run, the guys often oblivious to what lesser bands had to go through. Indeed, this is a story of a band hailed as rock stars and indeed often headlining like rock stars, without the record sales to justify the crazy spending that a believing Bogart threw at the band. Then it was all over and we heard virtually nothing from any of them (save for keyboardist Gregg) after 1981 until... well, both Punky Meadows and Frank DiMino stormed back with solo albums. And then, appearing outta nowhere like they did in their famous stage show, Angel returned in 2019 with a blindingly white and quite sprightly new album called Risen. Come celebrate what it was like to live as the alter-ego to Kiss as we examine the band's five studio albums of the original run, the crushing concert album, Live Without a Net, as well as where it all went wrong and the inspiring return of Frank and Punky through the spirited hard rocker that is Risen.

The Damned are forever in the history books as the first UK punk band to get an album out. Damned Damned Damned was a flamethrower of a record, led by the incendiary violence of "New Rose" (first UK punk single as well) and "Neat Neat Neat," two shocking punk anthems that defined the golden era of the new wave more purely pogo-mad than anything outta The Clash or the Sex Pistols. And the mayhem never let up, with the band already breaking up and reforming (another first!) by 1979 for one of the greatest punk albums of all time, Machine Gun Etiquette (by the way, The Damned were also the first UK punk band to tour America). More punch-ups and gratuitous vandalism ensued as the band expanded its palette through the years. Popoff has wanted to write Lively Arts: The Damned Deconstructed for decades, and now that it's finished, he's been all over video and radio calling it his favourite and best book he's ever done. For in it, Popoff got to analyse monastically - headphones and repeat button at the ready - every damned Damned song across all the albums and every EP and single. This herculean task represented a joy of an exercise from a penmanship point of view, but it was most satisfying in a proselytizing sense - Martin wants everybody joining him in poring over The Damned catalogue in minute detail. Let this long-suffering band of scrapping, scratching cats in a sack know how important and beloved they are before they're all dead!

In this scintillating sequel to Sabotage! Black Sabbath in the Seventies, Martin Popoff blows up the kaleidoscopic narrative of the Sabs over the ensuing twenty years, dissecting each and every of the band's ten studio albums and two (and-a-half) live albums produced over that time period. So this is the book where we hear the gripes, snipes, swipes and thumbs-up likes from Ronnie James Dio, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Tony Martin and finally once more Ozzy Osbourne, as they remark upon this institution coddled by the anchor of the band Tony Iommi, who valiantly held Black Sabbath together through many years of blood, sweat and Tyrs. Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, Live Evil, Born Again, Seventh Star, The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, Tyr, Dehumanizer, Cross Purposes, Forbidden and finally, extensively broken down, Reunion... they're all here, song by song, the hirings and the firings highlighted and explained. Incorporating talk from over 60 interviews conductive with band members and other relevant parties over 25 years, make no mistake-this is the most in-depth examination of the band during this timeframe ever executed. So come one and all, re-love modern-era Black Sabbath all over again-you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much dastardly doom there is from Tony Iommi that you need to know and embrace once again.

The first book ever on the classic British rock band UFO. Based around the author's many interviews with all the key players such as Phil Mogg, Pete Way & Michael Schenker. Noted author Martin Popoff takes you through the Schenker era in great detail; album-by-album, song by song along with touring anecdotes and of course, tales revolving around the wild and excessive behaviour that was very much a part of the band. Rounding if off is a full discography.

This new tome by the hugely prolific Canadian author Martin Popoff is a detailed re-write and expanded edition of his 2005 publication English Castle Magic. In fact the book is 50% bigger, a whopping 120,000 words and 318 pages including two swell colour photo sections. Sensitive To Light is without doubt the most comprehensive Rainbow biography to date and is based around multiple interviews the author has conducted with most of the key band members over many years including Ritchie Blackmore, as well as Roger Glover, Tony Carey, Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner, along with those who are sadly no longer with us, namely Cozy Powell Ronnie James Dio, Jimmy Bain and Craig Gruber. Loads more research has also gone into this new publication which is brought bang up to date with the Ronnie Romero era live shows and new songs, following Blackmore’s decision to rejuvenate Rainbow in 2016, almost twenty years on from the last incarnation that had concluded in 1997. From the raw and fiery Dio years, through the criminally under-rated Down to Earth album, the smooth crooning Joe Lynn Turner era and into one final somewhat forgotten record fronted by Doogie White, it’s all examined here, track by track, fascinating tale by trick. Ritchie Blackmore and his reputation is legion. But is it warranted? This is the book you should read to find out why as we look at the man’s career as reigning lord over the constantly evolving consortium of monster talents known as Rainbow.

Quite simply, Martin Popoff’s Sabotage! Black Sabbath in the Seventies marks the most intensive analysis of Black Sabbath’s first eight albums ever attempted. This is a big book—129,000 words long, every song analysed in detail, loads of first-hand interview footage from close to 50 interrogations. In the baking, Popoff interviewed all of the principles—Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward—repeatedly, along with myriad other folks who are part of this remarkable tale. Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Never Say Die and Technical Ecstasy… these are the building blocks of heavy metal, and within these awesome audio chapters, Popoff breaks down each and every song on each of these reverberating and cannonating records, while Geezer offers explanation of the lyrics, Bill poetically explains why these songs resonate and Tony and Oz look on with their characteristic sense of bemusement. Also touched upon are the band’s torrid troubles with money and management and drugs and booze, as well as tour tales, album cover stories and production tips ‘n’ tricks. Also included are two four-page sections of colour plates. All told, it’s everything needed to send the reader back to the catalogue, headphones on, for a second listen of this landmark run of records spanning 1970’s self-titled debut to 1978’s Never Say Die, the shambling, controversial last gasp before Ozzy’s shocking ouster from the ranks.