Where it all began...

[Midi]

Well, we are all here on this forum, but where did it start? How or by what or whom did you get into metal?

[Os Abysmi Vel Daath]

I ignored metal for the longest time when I was younger. I was mainly a fan of old prog rock and was really snobby. Then at some point I discovered Mastodon. I hated the vocals at first but the combination of prog and brutality (and not in a widely way like fucking Dream Theater) drew me in. I eventually started digging deeper and deeper and at some point realized that extreme music was where my heart really lies. I was 15 when my life changed

[FatherAlabaster]

I hadn't experienced much rock, let alone metal, until I was ten years old. My dad borrowed a tape of Rush's "Moving Pictures" from a co-worker, which I copied one stereo side of with a boom box, and listened to obsessively. Then he brought a tape of Ride The Lightning for me one day. Shortly after that, the first album I bought with my own money was Appetite For Destruction. Right around then, MTV introduced me to Justice, the black album, Queensrÿche, White Zombie, Sepultura, and lots of grunge. By the time I was in high school a year or two later, I had my first electric guitar, and I was begging tapes off anyone who would lend them to me and copying them at home. That's how I met a bunch of the other metalheads, and got turned on to Fear Factory, Prong, Pantera, Manowar, Slayer and a bunch of Floridian DM. Over the next couple of years, I got into more DM, Meshuggah, and Gothenburg melodeath and stopped listening to most of the rock-based stuff. After I left school, I got into black metal - Darkthrone, Ulver, Satyricon - discovered Opeth, and was introduced to Swans. I got into a lot of goth/industrial around the same time. I stopped listening to DM for a while, but got back into it in a big way in college, where I was introduced to most of the hardcore-influenced music I like: Converge, Dillinger, Isis, Neurosis, Disfear. After that, the next big wave of new bands came when my old drummer gave me a bunch of grindcore, about seven or eight years ago. Through all this time, my interest in various styles has waxed and waned. Some of the bands I used to love, I've never gone back to; others I've discovered all over again. I've come to appreciate quite a few things I started off hating, too - Type O, Tool, Black Sabbath. I've found that I can forgive a lot if I like the vocals, that I mostly prefer awkward but inspired songwriting to polished but predictable, and that my taste is always changing. So even if I haven't listened to something in ten years, I'll keep it around, because who knows?

[BlutAusNerd]

Os Abysmi posed this question to me in that interview we did recently. In Utah, metal is not mainstream at all, so all I ever heard for music was what my family played, which was confined mostly to pop/country. I thought music was stupid, until I started hearing something more energetic from the pop/punk acts that littered the grounds of my middle school. I kept gravitating toward music that was faster and/or harder, but my biggest heavy breakthrough albums were Tool's Lateralus (my friend left his copy at my house because his mom threatened to throw it away), and Ride the Lightning, that an ex-girlfriend's step mom got me into. I dove in headfirst from them, but the internet is what led me to pretty much everything else, as again, the scene here is pretty small. Once I broke in, I was able to find some like minded people, but until then I was the only guy into metal in our high school, except for the few people that I turned on to it myself. My initial internet metal exposure was just taking reviews from websites like metal-archives.com, but my first forum experience was on Amazon.com. The few regulars there were extremely knowledgeable and opened my eyes to a ton of different stuff, and when we were exiled from Amazon, we started our own forum, and I still post with that group to this day, the same guys that I attended MDF with this year. I found this place when NTNR tipped me off to it, as I was on break from my main forum at the time. I dig it here, it fulfills a totally different purpose for me than my other main forum, which is great for me. I'm interested to hear from the rest of you on this matter as well, post away.

[MacabreEternal]

At the age of about 12 I heard Gary Moore "Over The Hills and Far Away" and absolutely loved it. Just played that track over and over again. Up until that point I had expressed zero interest in any music other than whatever my friends were listening to. A few months later I was round at my cousin's place and he lent me his entire vinyl collection including the first 7 Maiden albums, Rush "Moving Pictures", Saxon "Power and the Glory" and UFO "Strangers In The Night" among others. Saxon and Iron Maiden stood out the most from the selection and I promptly went out and bought the same 7 Maiden albums myself. The first record I bought blind was "Slowly We Rot" by Obituary, looking back I bought it more to shock everyone rather than because I had heard any of it already and liked it. I got to appreciate it's brilliance very quickly of course but at the age of 13 picking up that record and viewing that artwork with my "young, dumb and full of cum" mentality I was never going to not buy it!

[GorboGorboze]

When I was 6(in 1976) I would demand that my brothers put on "Iron Man". They would spread a mattress out on the floor and I would jump around on it and go crazy. About for years later, something had gone terribly wrong with me and I was recording easy listening music off the radio on one of those brick shaped mono tape recorders of old. The wrong brother got a hold of me and tried to remedy the situation with a Chicago single and a turn table to play it on, so I was a long time in recovering. Dio posters scared me in my freshmen year of high school, but thanks in part to Rush I did recover a bit, but the crunchy set I hung out with in high school introduced me to Reggae ,then along came Afro-pop and world music, and fuck it if I was not lost for a decade or two. During that time I had a fond recollection of 80's pop, including the glam metal of the time ,for which I will not apologize. But I always liked the Scorpions ever since junior high dances and head banding to them. IN 2004 I bought The Scorpions "Unbreakable", and though it may well be AOR as BAN would tell you, it did get me back into metal, then I bought Iron Maiden's "A Matter of Life and Death" and loved it, then it was youtube that really came to my rescue when I bought "the final frontier" and didn't like it so much, because the next thing I bought was Electric Wizard's "Witch Cult Today" and I was restored! Always searching for those wasted years...

[RelentlessOblivion]

My earliest recollection of enjoying music was Michael Jackson when I was six or seven, I couldn't get enough of his music, some neighbours introduced me to KISS and The Offspring when I was eight and I dug it for a while. Then my cousin introduced me to metal four years later. Started with Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest which blew my mind. I'd never heard anything so heavy or energetic. A few months later I got my first taste of extreme metal again through my cousin who showed my Cradle Of Filth, Venom and Celtic Frost. I started digging around on my own and bought a ton of albums ranging from Pantera to DragonForce to Slipknot and Killswitch Engage. That all suited me fine for a few years before I started getting sick of it all. By the time I joined this place I was just about done with metal. I'd cut right back to only traditional metal and thrash with some melodic metalcore because I really didn't know any better. Through metal forum my passion for the genre has been re-ignited. I even discovered doom through this forum and it has become by far my favourite subgenre.

[deathstorm]

Well guys. I was about baby. Starting bobbing to a song electric avenue my sister who was 13 at the in 1983 I was 3. Introduce me to iron maiden. Metallica. From that point I was hooked. On metal she was dating a guy who played in a band Monalisa it was cool seeing that. There was the bon Jovi came from I had a older sister. Then I got into bands like megadeth. I was in high school. Slayer cannibal corpse. Listeining to pop punk like green day. Got into fear factory Then got into broken hope I also got into a pop stuff like savage garden. Hey that cherry cola song. Was catchy. I was listein. To some electronica as well like effel 65 still listeing to metal. Then I got into more nu metal like KoRn as I joined this forum I got into more death metal. Doom. So that's. Where I am.

[Midi]

As for me, I had no interest in music whatsoever for a long time. I only started listening to music at the age of 13 after I had fallen in love with some compositions of Dvorák and Bartók. I started digging deeper into classical music and some softer punk bands (eg. Dead Kennedys, The Offspring, Sum 41) as well as generic rock bands succeeded in capturing my attention. My first acquaintance with metal was Nightwish. My best friend had sent me a few of their songs, but I never really bothered exploring metal any further than Nightwish. Then, around June 2012, I asked someone with whom I got along very well and who was living with me at the time whether it was possible to transfer his music on my MP3 player, as I had no computer and no music back then. Most of his music didn't appeal to me, except for Arch Enemy, Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold. Arch Enemy's End of the Line was the first song that really made me want to explore more metal. A few weeks later, some friends introduced me to metalcore, to which I sticked until a met someone at a discussion session. It was a guy who basically thought he was an omniscient metalhead because he knew a few bands who had only released a couple of demos and who lived to deposit his excrements on any band of which he thought it was not worth listening to, including mine. I was quite upset and decided to explore extreme metal to see if it really was that much better. Soon I bumped into Gorgoroth, whose Funeral Procession made a huge impact on me. From that point on, I've been exploring and that will to explore brought me here, where I've gained more knowledge of metal than anywhere before. And so I hope to keep having a blast here and keep my mind open for new suggestions

[RelentlessOblivion]

So I'm not the only one here with shameful ties to metalcore? What a relief

[fourrobert13]

I grew watching MTV when they played videos. my older brother was into hair bands and I used to go through his tapes from time to time. I came across Iron Maiden Live After Death and thought the cover art was awesome. I took the tape and listened to it religiously and was hooked. then I got into thrash and here I am today still into it.

[SBird94]

Sitting on the computer playing runescape when I was 9 my mate put something on and I instantly loved it, "what is this?" I asked, he said "For whom the bell tolls" by metallica, he had previously heard of the band from his older cousin. I told him to burn me a metallia CD so I can take it home, I would listen to Fight Fire with Fire on repeat all day and just thrash around in my room, I was an instant thrash fan. I didn't really explore further until I was in high school, then I found prog metal and alternative metal, I later found some old school death metal and industrial metal. I keep exploring new things today

[Frostaudn]

Playing THPS 3 which featured Ace of Spades from Motörhead when I was 8 or somerhing. After that I ignored iy for some years, until I was 14 and discovered bands like BfmV (through mtv, lol), Disturbed, Soilwork, etc.

[Iceni]

I used to be a big 70's-80's rock fan; I remember enjoying Deep Purple, Def Leppard and ZZ Top when I was in middle school, but I wasn't very strongly into music until my parents bought me an Mp3 player for Christmas. I had wanted a ZZ Top album but they didn't like the lyrics all that much - and so instead they got me the Mp3 player and an emusic card. Now emusic had basically none of what I wanted because it was a fairly small site that apparently the big-name acts didn't patronize. I remembered hearing 'Enter Sandman' and thinking it was the coolest thing I'd heard at that point, so I found myself a cover of that and a couple of Triumph songs. So still about $55 to spend on the card; I looked at music lists where Triumph featured and discovered Star One, which I remember enjoying. However, when perusing the lists I came across Battlelore's 'Sons of Riddermark', which became my new favorite song for a while. Apparently Battlelore was power metal, so I looked for more of that and came across HammerFall; when I pursued the prog line I found Threshold, and my love for metal sprang from there! My mom has been kicking herself ever since.

[SOVTEKslave]

At the age of about 12 I heard Gary Moore "Over The Hills and Far Away" and absolutely loved it. Just played that track over and over again. Up until that point I had expressed zero interest in any music other than whatever my friends were listening to. A few months later I was round at my cousin's place and he lent me his entire vinyl collection including the first 7 Maiden albums, Rush "Moving Pictures", Saxon "Power and the Glory" and UFO "Strangers In The Night" among others. Saxon and Iron Maiden stood out the most from the selection and I promptly went out and bought the same 7 Maiden albums myself. The first record I bought blind was "Slowly We Rot" by Obituary, looking back I bought it more to shock everyone rather than because I had heard any of it already and liked it. I got to appreciate it's brilliance very quickly of course but at the age of 13 picking up that record and viewing that artwork with my "young, dumb and full of cum" mentality I was never going to not buy it!

Saxon did it for me too! My Uncle Steve showed me Unleash the Beast when I was good and aged enough...he started me out on AC/DC & Sabbath when I was in grade school to get my wheels rollin' with rock n' roll, but waited a little longer with Saxon, 'cause a 10 year old's brain can't fully grasp that kind of jammin'... Rush is great also btw, don't care what anyone says