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Joel McIver (born 1971) is a British author and journalist. The best-known of his 17 English-language books (20 more exist in translation) is the bestselling Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica, first published in 2004 and selling close to 50,000 copies in nine languages since then. McIver's other works include biographies of Slayer, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Ice Cube, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queens Of The Stone Age, and the Sex Pistols. His writing also appears in many magazines, including Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Rolling Stone, Rhythm and Record Collector.

In the introduction to the 2009 book All Pens Blazing: A Heavy Metal Writer’s Handbook by Neil Daniels, veteran writer Martin Popoff described McIver as "probably the top [music] scribe in the world right now".

In May 2007 McIver announced via the Blabbermouth news site that he was writing the first biography of Slayer, due for publication by Omnibus Press. Two excerpts from the book, The Bloody Reign Of Slayer, appeared at McIver's website in April 2008. A third and final excerpt appeared in June. When the book appeared the same month it received positive reviews in Kerrang, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Rock Sound and many other publications.

In July 2008 singer Glenn Hughes, sometime member of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, announced that he was co-writing his autobiography with McIver. On 15 August McIver was a special guest on Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson's BBC 6 Music radio programme, The Friday Rock Show, and discussed Hughes' forthcoming autobiography as well as his other projects.

McIver's next book, The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists, was published in January 2009 by Jawbone Press and featured a foreword by Glen Benton of Deicide. The author told Blabbermouth, "The idea for this book came to me a couple of years ago after I read a list of the supposed 100 best metal guitarists of all time in a popular guitar magazine that should really know better. The list contained all these non-metal guitarists like Neil Young and Kurt Cobain, so I wrote my own list, which became an 80,000-word book. The 100 guys I've included are pure metal: there's no-one taken from the hard rock world, as much as I respect the rock shredders. This one features musicians from heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, power metal, doom metal and grindcore bands and that's it."

The No. 1 entry in the book went to Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, who told Classic Rock magazine in September 2009: "It was especially sweet when I found out that Joel has written books on Metallica... Every page I turned, I became more excited. I [saw] Kirk Hammett, and I thought, 'Thank you, God’. At that point it didn’t matter [which position I was]. To be better than both of them [Hetfield and Hammett] meant so much — it’s been one of the pet peeves of my career and I’ve never known how to deal with it... All I thought was... I win!"

In February 2009 McIver announced two more books, the first a biography of Tool and the second the first ever biography of the late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, for which Kirk Hammett supplied a foreword. The books were published in April and June respectively, with the latter also available at Metallica's own website. International launches for the Cliff Burton biography included readings in London and Milan: at the Italian event, McIver read from the book and performed with a Metallica tribute band, playing bass on the song 'No Remorse'. The performance can be seen at Youtube.

In October 2010 McIver announced the publication of a biography of the late guitarist Randy Rhoads and a book devoted to Motorhead, both set to appear in spring 2011. The books include forewords supplied by Zakk Wylde and Glenn Hughes respectively.

McIver is an alumnus of Backwell School and the University of Edinburgh.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Joel McIver", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0