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Joel McIver | |
---|---|
Born | 10 February 1971 |
Occupation | Author |
Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
Genre | Biography |
Subject | Non-fiction |
Notable works | Justice for All: The Truth About Metallica |
Joel McIver (born 10 February 1971) is a British author. His best-known work is Justice for All: The Truth About Metallica , first published in 2004 and appearing in nine languages since then. McIver's other works include biographies of Black Sabbath, Slayer, Thunder, Ice Cube, and Queens of the Stone Age. His writing appears in newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian , the Daily Telegraph and Classic Rock , and he is an occasional guest on BBC and commercial radio and television.
McIver is an alumnus of Backwell School [1] and the University of Edinburgh.
McIver was the editor of Bass Player magazine from 2018 to 2022, having spent six years before that editing Bass Guitar magazine. [2]
Since 1999, McIver has written 35 books. [2] In the introduction to Neil Daniels' 2009 book All Pens Blazing, writer Martin Popoff described McIver as "probably the top [rock] scribe in the world". [3] In a review in April 2012, Classic Rock magazine described him as "...by some distance, Britain's most prolific hard rock/metal author..." [4]
As well as writing his own books, McIver co-wrote several musicians' autobiographies. The first of these was the memoir of sometime Deep Purple bassist Glenn Hughes, published in 2011. [5] Other memoirs co-written by McIver include those of Max Cavalera of Soulfly, [6] Megadeth bassist David Ellefson, [7] David Bowie's former drummer Woody Woodmansey [8] and blues veteran John Mayall. [9]
As editor of Bass Guitar magazine, McIver received the 2018 Award of Excellence for Best Educational Project from the Players School of Music in Clearwater, Florida. [10]
The same year, Sony's 35th-anniversary-edition reissue of The Alan Parsons Project's 1982 album Eye in the Sky , for which McIver wrote extensive liner notes, won its category at the annual Prog magazine awards. [11] Parsons, along with surround mastering engineers Dave Donnelly and P. J. Olsson, won the Grammy Award for Best Immersive Audio Album for the box set at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. [12]
In 2018, McIver co-hosted a podcast called Dead Rock Stars with fellow writer Mick Wall. In June that year, The Guardian named Dead Rock Stars their podcast of the week. [13] [14]
Megadeth is an American thrash metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1983 by vocalist/guitarist Dave Mustaine. Known for their technically complex guitar work and musicianship, Megadeth is one of the "big four" of American thrash metal along with Metallica, Anthrax, and Slayer, responsible for the genre's development and popularization. Their music features complex arrangements and fast rhythm sections, dual lead guitars, and lyrical themes of war, politics, religion, death, and personal relationships.
Glenn Hughes is an English musician, best known for playing bass and performing vocals in the hard rock band Trapeze and in the Mk. III and IV line-ups of Deep Purple, as well as briefly fronting Black Sabbath in the mid-1980s. He is known by fans as "The Voice of Rock" due to his soulful and wide-ranging singing voice.
Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! is the debut studio album by American thrash metal band Megadeth, released on June 12, 1985, by Combat Records. At the beginning of 1985, the band was given $8,000 by Combat to record and produce its debut album. The band was forced to fire their original producer and produce the album by themselves, after spending half of the album's budget on drugs, alcohol, and food. Despite the poor production, the album was a well-received effort that obtained strong reviews in various music publications. Killing Is My Business... and Business Is Good! played an essential role in establishing thrash metal as an authentic subgenre of heavy metal music. It explores themes of death, occultism, and violence.
Countdown to Extinction is the fifth studio album by American thrash metal band Megadeth, released on July 14, 1992, through Capitol Records. It was the group's second studio release to feature the "classic" lineup of Dave Mustaine, Marty Friedman, David Ellefson and Nick Menza, with all of them contributing to songwriting on the album. The album features some of the band's best known songs such as "Symphony of Destruction", "Sweating Bullets", and "Skin o' My Teeth", which enjoyed significant chart success and made a great musical impact.
Hidden Treasures is an EP by American thrash metal band Megadeth, released on July 18, 1995, via Capitol Records. The album features songs that originally appeared on film soundtracks and tribute albums. Four of the tracks were released as singles, and three have received Grammy Award nominations for Best Metal Performance. Despite having garnered mediocre or negative reviews, the material on the EP has been credited with helping expand the group's MTV audience in the early 1990s.
David Scott Mustaine is an American musician. He is the co-founder, frontman, primary songwriter and sole consistent member of the thrash metal band Megadeth. Mustaine has released sixteen studio albums with Megadeth, sold over 38 million records worldwide, with six albums platinum-certified, and won a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2017 at the 59th Grammy Awards, for the title track of their fifteenth studio album, Dystopia.
David Warren Ellefson is an American musician, best known for his long tenure as the bassist for thrash metal band Megadeth.
Thrash metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by its overall aggression and often fast tempo. The songs usually use fast percussive beats and low-register guitar riffs, overlaid with shredding-style lead guitar work. The lyrical subject matter often includes criticism of The Establishment, opposition to armed conflicts, and at times shares a disdain for the Christian religion with that of black metal. The language is typically direct and denunciatory, an approach borrowed from hardcore punk.
Clifford Lee Burton was an American musician who was the bassist for thrash metal band Metallica from 1982 until his death in 1986. He performed on the band's first three albums, Kill 'Em All (1983), Ride the Lightning (1984), and Master of Puppets (1986). Burton also received a posthumous writing credit on ...And Justice for All (1988) for the song "To Live Is to Die".
Soulfly is a Brazilian-American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1997, and later based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Soulfly is led by former Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera, who formed the band after he left the Brazilian group in 1996. To date the band has released twelve studio albums, one tour EP, twenty-three singles, one video album, and twelve music videos. Their debut album, Soulfly, was released on April 21, 1998, while their most recent album, Totem, was released on August 5, 2022
Soulfly is the debut album by American heavy metal band Soulfly, released on April 21, 1998, through Roadrunner Records. The record was released in memory of frontman Max Cavalera's deceased stepson and was the first album featuring Cavalera since leaving Sepultura two years prior. Soulfly has been certified gold by the RIAA.
Massimiliano Antonio "Max" Cavalera is a Brazilian musician. He co-founded the heavy metal band Sepultura in 1984 with his brother Igor Cavalera, and was the band's lead singer and rhythm guitarist until his departure in 1996. He currently plays in the heavy metal bands Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy and Killer Be Killed. Cavalera was also involved in a short-lived side project called Nailbomb.
Prophecy is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Soulfly, released in 2004. It is noteworthy for three guest artists – the completely different line-up for the album apart from leader Max Cavalera, the world music influence from a stint that Cavalera spent in Serbia, and explicit spirituality themes on the album. The album has gone on to sell over 275,000 copies.
Nailbomb was a heavy metal band formed in 1994 as a side project by Brazilian musician Max Cavalera of Sepultura, Cavalera Conspiracy and Soulfly, and British musician Alex Newport of Fudge Tunnel. The band recorded one studio album, Point Blank, and played a warmup live performance and their last ever performance at the 1995 Dynamo Open Air Festival two days later, after which the band immediately disbanded.
Michael "Woody" Woodmansey is an English rock drummer best known for his work in the early 1970s as a member of David Bowie's core backing ensemble that became known as the Spiders from Mars in conjunction with the release of Bowie's 1972 LP The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With the death of Bowie in January 2016, Woodmansey became the last surviving member of the Spiders.
Cavalera Conspiracy is an American heavy metal supergroup founded by Brazilian brothers Max and Igor Cavalera. The band originally formed in 2007 as Inflikted but changed its name for legal reasons. The group's creation marked the end of a 10-year feud between the Cavalera brothers who founded Sepultura in the early 1980s. In 2022, they adopted the name Cavalera in order to release re-recorded editions of classic Sepultura albums. These albums were released in 2023.
Inflikted is the debut studio album from Cavalera Conspiracy, the Cavalera brothers' first record together in 12 years - since the release of Roots by Sepultura in 1996.
Heavy: The Story of Metal is a four-part documentary special that aired on VH1 from May 22 to 25, 2006.
Omen is the seventh studio album by American heavy metal band Soulfly. It was recorded in November 2009 and was released first in Japan on May 18, 2010, and on May 25, 2010, in other parts of the world. It was released on May 24, 2010, in parts of Europe. It is the last album to feature bassist Bobby Burns and drummer Joe Nunez who were replaced by Asesino frontman, Tony Campos and former Borknagar drummer David Kinkade in mid-2011. At just over forty and a half minutes, it is the band's second shortest album while the shortest being Archangel at thirty-six and a half minutes.