Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from Canada's The Metal Voice recently spoke to rock author and BraveWords scribe Martin Popoff, Martin Popoff, about his new book, Hit The Lights: The Birth Of Thrash, the first of a three part book series on thrash metal.

Popoff told The Metal Voice, "The main questions answered in this book is who invented thrash? This book starts in the late 70's it gives some key touchstone points from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that thrash guys had really appreciated and that sound somewhat like thrash back then. But as we go on there is a little bit of the punk touchstones as well and then hard core as you get into 81-82. Then things really heat up with essentially with Dave Mustaine and his pre-Metallica band and James Hetfield and his pre-Metallica band Leather Charm where they do the song “Hit The Lights”. A very important thrash song, probably the first thrash song, made in the thrash environment and it also starts off with birth of Exodus. Before that Motörhead with Overkill which is one of the first double bass songs which is double bass all the way through plus a little bit of that low-fi recording on purpose idea, a gruff vocal on purpose and Motörhead is really the first band that had no mellow songs on their albums."

Martin now brings us Hit The Lights: The Birth Of Thrash, attacking heavy metal’s next wave of faster, heavier, angrier sounds, with a geographical shift in the axis to San Francisco and Los Angeles, with a bit of New York, Germany and Canada thrown in for good measure.

Come join Martin, along with dozens of his old school headbanging buddies (including multiple members from thrash’s big four and beyond), as they together tell the tale of thrash’s forging from the influence of punk, ‘70s metal and the NWOBHM. Venom, Anvil, Exciter, Raven, Exodus, Anthrax, Metallica… they’re all here and willing to explain candidly and at length how and why metal past the implosion of the NWOBHM suddenly found itself barreling down the tracks at breakneck speed.