Born in
Castlegar, British Columbia, Popoff's interest in heavy 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's
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." He does not identify any specific writers as being particularly influential on his own writing style, saying "it never registered who wrote what." Shortly after its publication, he co-founded
Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, which released its first issue in 1994. He soon returned to his reviews book, releasing a revised and expanded version in 1997 titled ''The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal'', which almost doubled the original book's number of reviews to 3,650. The 1997 ''Collector's Guide
received positive reviews from critics, with Johnny Walker of Addicted to Noise dubbing the book "the definitive guide to hard rock / heavy metal and its many related sub-genres". Volume 3: The Nineties
was published in 2007. Volume 4: The '00s
, published in 2011, was co-written between Popoff and fellow Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles'' writer David Perri. Popoff has stated that he considers the greatest record of all time to be Led Zeppelin's 1975
Physical Graffiti, followed by Black Sabbath's
Sabotage, released in the same year. He has also named
Queen's self-titled 1973 debut as his personal favourite record of all time, and often regards
Max Webster as his all-time favourite band. Newer groups that Popoff has spoken highly of include
Mastodon,
Opeth,
Lamb of God and
Dark Tranquillity. His ''Collector's Guide'' became rather notorious in some circles of rock fans for a particularly scathing review of
Def Leppard's worldwide smash hit
glam metal album
Hysteria (1987), to which he awarded a score of zero out of ten. Popoff continues to defend his opinion of it years later, citing "just awful production, lyrics, singing, clichés of every musical and lyrical sort." A number of Popoff's other books are biographies of notable metal bands, including Black Sabbath in
Doom Let Loose and
Dio in
Light Beyond the Black (both published in 2006). While the biographies are usually not officially authorized, a large amount of research consists of interviews between Popoff and members of each band. Popoff has said of his relationship with his subjects: "I censor myself because I don't want to write something to hurt people. You write a book on Sabbath and you don't want to write something to hurt (their) families – I love those guys." A Judas Priest biography,
Heavy Metal Painkillers, was published in 2007. In 2014, Popoff stated that he was working on a new book, entitled
Who Invented Heavy Metal? In March 2015, Popoff told Metal Shock Finland's chief editor Mohsen Fayyazi that he had finished writing the book and it would be published in approximately a month's time. Popoff is a reviewer for BangerTV and also appears frequently on the many shows featured on the
YouTube channel of music publication Sea of Tranquility. ==Personal life==