How did you first get into ......... Metal?

How did everyone get into metal?
For me it was when Nirvana hit big and some of my mates were metalheads and they loaned me various things, some I hated some I liked, then I started finding my own stuff via Kerrang and Raw Magazine (some grunge/alternative some metal,got into stuff like Godflesh, Fudge Tunnel, that to me was more interesting than Pantera or what have you.Then with the lines blurred between grunge & indie i discovered more of that kinda stuff in tandem. I wasnt really into music til then though i was one of the 1st in my year at school who had a cd player in like 1987 so had some various cds.

But I'm sure most of you will have far more interesting stories than I have! So let's hear them! Did anyone stop listening to metal then get back into it? For some reason when I hit 30 my tastes got heavier.

My story is fairly uninteresting. I read Adrien's year end list on Pop Matters and listened to youtubes of Genghis Tron and Meshuggah, and thought it was awesome. I wanted to learn more, so I tried to explore more things metal after that.

The first metal records I ever owned were all by Judas Priest - Hell Bent for Leather, British Steel, Sin After Sin, Unleashed in the East: Live in Japan, Screaming for Vengeance and Point of Entry, all bought (for me, by my dad) within the span of a year or so in 1982, when I was 11. I don't remember exactly how I heard about them; I definitely remember seeing the video for "Heading Out to the Highway" on MTV, though. I wasn't listening to many other bands until about '85, when a friend gave me a copy of Motörhead's No Remorse. By the following year I was listening to Accept, Metallica, W.A.S.P. and a bunch of other stuff and it's been all downhill since.

when i was 7 or 8 my brother and i had bon jovi's crossroads (my choice), the first rage against the machine album, the spaghetti incident by g'n'r (both my brother's choices) on tape, and a couple of beastie boys albums a friend had taped us (relevant in that they have some hardcore tracks on them). For the rest of my childhood, until i was 16 or so and my tastes became more catholic, we almost exclusively bought or taped albums that were rock, rap, punk or metal, although we did also enjoy chart stuff on the radio as well, i liked especially euro-dance and the prodigy, we just didn't tend to ever buy much of it.

"hair" metal was all over the radio and MTV when I was a kid: Twisted Sister, Poison, Europe, Whitesnake, etc. By the time I got to high school, there was a punk/mod vs. metal divide - you were one or the other. I was the former, because a lot of the metalheads at my high school were dumb jocks, and i was a sullen weirdo that was more attracted to the anarchic artiness of 70s punk and wore safety pins in my ears. Eventually i got over this division and decided i was going to like what i liked regardless of who was who in highschool in the late 80s/early 90s.

Iron Maiden covers. It was all about Eddie.

^^^^ ten year old gamers don't have the best criteria for picking up records.

Hearing Kiss for this first time as a 9 year old.

xp - i think the key phrase is "ten year old" rather than "gamer"

What's always astonished me is that anyone over the age of 9 likes Kiss. I mean, I can see getting into them as a kid - they're superheroes who play rock 'n' roll! What's not to love? I owned the comic books. But once you've heard actual hard rock/metal, how could you ever go back and listen to even Destroyer (their consensus best album, yes?) with a straight face?

alex i said metal ;)
xp

It was really gradual for me. Moved from tiny town to small city in 1983 at the age of 12, saw Ozzy/Maiden/Priest album covers & t-shirts for the first time, got Quiet Riot's Metal Health late that year, but metal really didn't click until summer/fall of '84 with Ratt and Twisted Sister eventually giving way to Maiden, Slayer, and W.A.S.P.. By the end of '84 the obsession was all-consuming!

I was introduced to Sabbath when I was around 6 by an older cousin; l liked it but I didn't understand it was a different thing from the Eagles and Zep and Bad Co I heard on the radio. A couple of years later I started to get into D&D with some older neighbors who were seriously into Maiden (this was '81, so I guess the self-titled and Killers), which was a little scary and a little cool. That same year I bought the Judas Priest compilation Heroes, Heroes because of the badass D&D-esque cover. Heard Van Halen and AC/DC all the time - the older kids played Back In Black on the bus - but it was Quiet Riot's Metal Health that tipped the scale and got me buying Circus magazines and Dokken records. Was never really a metal head, but kept listening up through college; after I dropped out, I didn't have two nickels so listened to the radio and my old stuff. Skipped a bit more than a decade - '94-'05 - then got back into it through a friend at the local record store and hanging out and asking questions on here.

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu92/damien_stone/heavymetal.jpg

ignore Journey & Stevie Nicks & the Dan. focus on Sabbath and Nazareth and BOC.

I then denied my metal roots when I got into hardcore (punk vs metal teenage warfare) but then speed metal brought it all back home.

ugh - Hero, Hero. Cover is this:

http://www.readplatform.com/uploads/2009/11/Judas_Priest-Hero_Hero-Frontal.jpg

I was a KISS fanatic as a kid too and I always wanted more nasty Gene-demon songs like God of Thunder. hearing the first Black Sabbath album (bought with The Mob Rules a couple weeks after I got the Heavy Metal soundtrack) was like manna from Hell.

I grew up hearing pop hits on the radio in my parents' car when we were going places, and knew there was some elusive common quality to the things I liked best. I remember discovering Toto's "Hold the Line", and thinking "Man, this is the coolest thing ever." And then hearing Boston, and thinking "No, THIS is the coolest thing ever." And then Rush, and then Blue Oyster Cult, and then, finally The Mob Rules and Heaven and Hell. Then it was deep Black Sabbath for a while, interspersed with BOC and Deep Purple and UFO and BOC (and Rush and Boston, although I did get over the Toto thing), until I got to college (1985-89) and the combination of used-record stores and a part-time job suddenly expanded my musical world dramatically: Metal Blade samplers, Anthrax, Celtic Frost, Fates Warning, Hallow's Eve, Helloween, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, Metal Church, Queensryche, Savatage, Slayer...

No return.

My story is fairly uninteresting. I read Adrien's year end list on Pop Matters and listened to youtubes of Genghis Tron and Meshuggah, and thought it was awesome. I wanted to learn more, so I tried to explore more things metal after that.

― subversive time travel (FACK)

Glad to have helped in some way!

alex i said metal ;)

Fair point, actually, but Kiss were inarguably the gateway drug into all things metal.

Seriously you did man thanks

some guy on the internet sent me master of puppets (the song) when I was like, 11.

after that, it probably went something like iron maiden -> gothenburg -> real death metal and black/tr00 metal, and there was a dovetailing between metal and being generally into fantasy books and games.

nowadays don't really listen to metal

It was a long, gradual process for me. My folks were way into Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones so hard rock was always playing at my house.

Definitely love "Godzilla" by B.O.C. at age 5 because it was about Godzilla!

Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park was awesome to me, and I had a Kiss iron-on shirt, but I didn't listen to the records because I was too young to even own music.

Then Pyromania and Metal Health spun my world around... and "Big Balls" by AC/DC.

In middle school, I finally discovered Sabbath, while my friends were veering towards the Sex Pistols. I even bought a Celtic Frost tape because of the cover art. But I didn't really get it til later.

In high school, I was spinning the Spinal Tap soundtrack and Iron Maiden's Killers a lot. Eventually, And Justice For all, Reign in Blood, and Killing Technology took me the rest of the way.... which was Scream Bloody Gore, Symphonies of Sickness, Streetcleaner and the first Naked City.

I've always liked a lot of different styles, but metal must be at least 1/3 of my collection. So much to love.

I've kind of spelled this out before, but I've had a sort of twisted journey when it comes to metal. My first memory even close to "metal" was being fascinated with Kiss as a young child, I loved all their songs. Which dovetailed into a love for glam metal, especially since I was 11 or 12 and MTV was finally on our rural cable system. So Motley Crue, Poison, Ratt, Metallica... I liked a lot of that stuff. Then I got into Metallica, Megadeth, and Suicidal Tendencies through friends at school. Fell hard for G n R. But then Nirvana and Dr. Dre changed my listening habits for much of the 90s, delving into rap, punk, and indie for most of the decade. At the time I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything in metal, but I've since learned how much crucial shit I missed out on. I checked back in around 98-99, but outside of Slipknot and a little Korn I couldn't get into nu-metal at all. So I went a few more years pretty much ignoring it, until I bought Mastodon's Leviathan on a whim and fell hard for it. Ever since I've been moving forward with metal and returning to check on all the fantastic shit I missed during my years with blinders on.

Early to mid '90s for me; the grunge thing passed me by originally, I got put off my Kurt Cobain's tatty sweaters and stringy hair (or maybe it was just the tatty sweaters and stringy hair of his legions of fans round these parts). Anywho, then I got into Soundgarden in 1994 and delved more into the Seattle stuff; meanwhile, friends into the same thing copied me tapes of Metallica, Sepultura, Napalm Death -- anything that was considered good back in the day -- and it went on from there. I've never considered myself a metalhead as such, just someone who's into metal (among other genres).

Pasted from the Sigh thread (which I'm assuming inspired this one):

I'd been listening to grunge and pop punk most of my musical life. Hints of Metallica, early Korn etc.

Wasn't till about 2000-2003 (and a little before these times) my group of friends in Letchworth where I lived were die-hard true metallers. I used to get a bit tired of them banging on about what was "true" (Emperor, Enslaved, Manowar, Ulver etc) and what was "false" (nu-metal and its preceders plus stuff like Dimmu Borgir), and growing up I often couldn't discern what made one or the other.

Still after going round people's houses and being exposed to hours and hours of stuff, it eventually clicked. That said I couldn't get as enthralled as they did, much preferring techno, reggae, IDM, indie etc.

The stuff that I did like was the more avant/experimental/epic stuff like Ulver, Sigh, Arcturus, not so much things like Immortal or Darkthrone (a bit too dissonant and trebly for me). I also loved Electric Wizard and some of the stoner/doom stuff. Still I never felt I truly identified with it all and it was more to do with having to learn to enjoy it rather than it being something instantly appealing.

When I left to go and live in neighbouring Hitchin I didn't see that crew quite as much and they all went separate ways. The guys I shared a house with really didn't like metal at all and would actively complain or take the piss if I put it on, so I eventually stopped keeping up with it due to lack of exposure.

Nowadays, I have a lot of metal on my HD but I seldom listen unless I'm in a particular mood. I'd like to get back into it and was saying to my gf I may attempt to get back into metal. Sigh's album is definitely helping, and also, strangely, Rodrigo Y Gabriela's stuff is reminding me of why I did like a lot of it.

I was seven. It was the first week or so that we had cable and I discovered MTV, which was one channel over from Nickelodeon. I took my little cassette recorder and pressed record. My dad had been recording cartoons for me this way on Sunday mornings while I was at Sunday school - we didn't get our own vcr until 1989. They played "Locked In" by Judas Priest and "In My Dreams" by Dokken. The only other song I remember from the tape was "Let's Go All the Way" by Sly Fox(chuff chuff zinny ninny). I got the impression that Judas Priest and Dokken were somehow different from all the other musicians. I guess my mom did too, because she put MTV off-limits.

That summer, I heard some of my cousins talking about Motley Crue and Cinderella. Then we moved to a new town and the neighborhood kids had Girls, Girls, Girls and some other hair metal.

In '88 or '89, my dad's boss's son got a bass guitar and when we were over at their house for Thanksgiving, he played Anaesthesia (Pulling Teeth) and the bass interlude from Orion, which blew my mind and sent me headlong into thrash.

It's funny seeing lots of people say they discovered metal ages 9-13 as when I was that age , I did not know anyone into it at all. It wasnt until Appetite For Destruction got big(aged 14 or 15 i guess) that people i went to school with were into it, one of my mates got into the whole Poison, Warrant,Motley Crue etc thing purely because they were in the charts (he never read a music mag in his life).

Metal/Heavy Rock just seems to have been far more mainstream in the rest of the world, especially the US, than in the UK. (I guess this may have neen because of Kiss? Because they were never as big here. I never even heard of them until crazy nights was a top 5 hit here.)

It was definitely more a cult middle class thing (like indie) until grunge went mainstream and nu metal got really big with 12 year olds. Then you would see loads of 9 year olds wearing slipknot,linkin park or korn hoodies and limp bizkit had a #1 single, which not even Nirvana managed.

My Revolver editors are gonna kill me for sharing this, but I was 100% a hip-hop kid until the alternative boom of the '90s. Then around Nirvana time, me and my best friend would raid his older brother's records and I quickly fell into "alternative metal" as 12-year-old: Ministry, Primus, Faith No More, Rage Against The Machine, Nine Inch Nails, etc...

Throughout high-school and college I would get into avant-rock thanks to the bands the alt-metal guys said influenced them: (Residents, Naked City, Zappa, Napalm Death) and eventually noise (Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, Negativland) and the newish metalcore that reminded me of the alt-metal bands I grew up with (Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, Cave In).

Through aaaaall that I fell backwards into grindcore, death metal and black metal--because it reminds me of avant/jazz traditions NOT because it reminds me of metal. I never owned a Metallica album but I loooove Carcass

Saxon, wheels of steel. some Accept, VanHalen, Tigers of Pan Tang. never liked Maiden/Crue. harsh end of metal-socialization by a DK live gig.

when i was 12 or 13 or so i had a friend who'd inherited his older brother's metal/hard rock record collection. i asked him to tape me nazareth and he filled up the extra space on the tape with four motorhead tracks (overkill/i won't pay your price/limb from limb/i'm the doctor), which to my surprise i really dug.

(years pass, discover sabbath etc. but don't really listen to that much metal)

circa 2001 a band i was in did a live-to-air on resonance fm. after we play, me and another guy go to talk to the presenters briefly, plugging a gig or whatever, walk into the studio and go "whoah! what the fuck is this??" to whatever it was that they were playing. it was mayhem, "wolf's lair abyss". the current obsession continued from there. also, (this is true!), when we left the station, who should be checking out the guitars in one of the shop windows on denmark street, but lemmy! his jeans were tucked into white cowboy boots and my friend got his autograph for his estranged wife.

Kiss when I was 8. Iron Maiden when I was 12, it was the covers (and a friend who borrowed LPs from his cousin). Then Metallica, Venom, Slayer, Accept, Possessed, Kreator (local library had tons of metal vinyl), and onwards to more undergroundish stuff like Hellhammer, Barthory, Root, Vulcano, Master's Hammer (through tape trades) and the like. Doom when Cathedral, Paradise Lost and Winter came up, by that time I had money to buy actual records. Full Black Metal convert with A Blaze In The Northern Sky, that's when I started to do some reviewing/writing.

It is kind of weird that I don't tend to think of my upbringing as especially sheltered, and yet when I think back to age 11 and me + pals sitting round with the cassette version of Use Your Illusion II in the dinner hall, feeling unanimously badass about the fact that we had something absolutely *peppered* with swear words on school property... it does give me pause to wonder

That's funny, at most schools the pupils pepper everything with swear words.

As a kid in the late 60s, I remember being spooked by the cover of the Black Sabbath debut, and I remember Led Zeppelin II lying around, though my dad didn't play those as much as other albums. Later my cronies in middle school were all about the Stones, Skynyrd, Alice Cooper, etc. We were also fascinated by Kiss for a while (my first big show, 1976). In high school, my friends and I listened to hard rock, prog rock, and scarce but intriguing scraps of punk and new wave. In college it was all college radio and Athens bands. Through all those years, I don't think I ever met anyone who was into metal per se. I guess it was just not a thing in Georgia then.

About 1990, a friend introduced me to Metallica, my first clue of current metal beyond MTV hair metal. By that time I was into jazz and 70s music I had missed the first time around (including Sabbath and Zeppelin). Those interests eventually led me to ILM and the Rolling Metal threads, where I learned that something had been going on over the previous 25 years that I might want to hear. Gradually I started getting canonical death, grindcore, black, and doom metal albums, reading Decibel, buying new metal, and going to shows. I still listen to other styles more than metal, but it has become as a steady part of my diet, and I know a few metal fans IRL now.

re: kerr's email.

I think the alternative 90s poll covered it p well, Space Jam OST had half of us covered.

that got you into metal?

you sent me an email asking me to start a thread like this for the autogoons.

it was vevezulas that got me into metal fyi

the first metal album I bought was Earth's Extra-Capsular Extraction but the band that got me into metal was Isis

I am fully aware this opening myself up for so much shit but y'all far too cool to unleash it right

correct

Though I thought it was a combination of Tool + francis that got you into metal.

That's funny, at most schools the pupils pepper everything with swear words.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, 15 June 2010 14:14 (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

So did ours, that's why it's weird - it wasn't a private or otherwise posh school

Think I've posted this before but Niel Kulkarni reviewed 'Aenima' by Tool in the Melody Maker and it was a total lightbulb moment for me, mainly due to the fact he mentioned a bunch of math-rock bands that it reminded him of - this is pretty shallow in hindsight but I was like 16 or 17, plus it planted something one way or another so ¯\(°_°)/¯

*Neil. FFS!

It was probably Neurosis and all those bands that got me back into listening to heavy stuff 8 or 9 years ago actually. I never stopped listening to grunge bands I liked or Helmet or Fudge Tunnel or Godflesh or Melvins or Ministry et al but Neurosis definitely got me back listening to newer metal after the whole nu-metal thing put me off, and I wouldn't touch any BM because of the whole nazi thing, it took me too long to realise that you cant judge a whole scene on one or 2 bands. I think hearing the Weakling album in about 2002 changed my mind.

Entombed still couldn't get me into Death Metal though.

Kiss Double Platinum advert on tv. 1977. dug the way Gene sang "Calling Dr. Love." older sister bought me Rock and Roll Over for 13th birthday soon after. it's been nothin' but hell since.

Mencap - first time I think I heard Cypress Hill when I was about 12-13 it sounded so illicit (swearing, drug and crime references) I was seriously worried about authority figures finding out about it.

How did you first hear ........swearing in music? ;)

I think hearing the Weakling album in about 2002 changed my mind.

I hadn't heard Weakling by that point but I was aware of the tUMULt thing and I did like Burmese. I bought 'Monkeys Tear Man to Shreds' from the label site and Andee included a thank-you card; I was really like "Oh! That's so nice!"

Yeah, I kind of forgot Black Sabbath there. My bad.

Anyway, I think it all depends on where you come from. If you listen to Discharge or John Zorn or Merzbow, then, yes, go for the extreme stuff. My instinct is that it's better to ease yourself in, though. And I definitely don't recommend starting with Reign in Blood. That is an intense, difficult record. I still have trouble listening to it all the way through.

but its short!

i love reign in blood but if you are coming into this with the general modern not sure about guitar solos bent, the loopy bullshit going on there will drive you insane

whoa wait you are also easing yourself in with Zao??

Grind records are short, and I definitely wouldn't recommend starting with those.

Yeah, Zao isn't a good idea, either.

I think i hated metal for about 5 minutes after hearing Zao for the first time tbh

I would say that Christian metalcore is not particularly representative of the genre as a whole.

see i love motorhead but i don't see them as being particularly representative of metal as a genre IMO

avoid all metalcore

They aren't, necessarily, but they are a good gateway drug, and they influenced about a zillion bands. Zao... um... exist.

Reign in Blood is pretty catchy though.

otm start with Sabbath. everyone's heard the big songs on Paranoid and the first is a little too bloozy, so we used to indoctrinate our anti-metal friends in college with a bowl and Master of Reality. they usually were hooked by the end of 'Children of the Grave'

i like slayer but not nearly as much as a person is supposed to.

the production of reign in blood could have been a lot better...kinda prefer seasons in the abyss tbh

Although a number of those bands are squarely metal IMO, but I don't want to get all metal police here!

It doesn't bother me if people call those bands metal, even if they are obviously not ;) While I'd call Black Sabbath's first as the first real metal album, in my collection it's tagged as "proto-metal" which plays well with other stuff of that era in mixes. I consider the first modern metal albums to be Sabotage (1975) and Scorpions - In Trance (1975), followed by Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny (1976). To me AC/DC is bloozy hard rock until Back In Black started getting more metal, and definitely after. Same with Kiss' glammy trash rock that became more distinctly metal on Creatures Of The Night (not necessarily for the better). I think Eddie Van Halen can be a big influence on metal guitarists without actually being metal.

Was dimebag darrell the 90s eddie van halen? if so who is the 00s version?

I think it's still Dimebag...

are the metalcore guitarists influenced by dimebag? I know every guitar mag/metal mag has an RIP Dimebag as often as Mojo has a beatle on the cover but I wasnt sure if he still influenced the actual bands in the 00s.

Just thinking though, a lot of kids will get into metal purely because of all the RIP Dimebag articles, in the same way kids in the past have got into Nirvana/Hendrix etc.

There's a lot of Dimebag ripping-off in metalcore, for sure. Kiddie bands veer into all sorts of flaccid Pantera homages.

One of the miggest metal guitar gimmicks these days is the Gojira pick-scrape. Everyone from Behemoth to As I Lay Dying is ripping that off and overdoing it to a comical degree.

Biggest. Not miggest.

report from the guitar store field: yes, the kids of today are all about the dimebag worship, to which i shrug and say "ehhhh" but thats just me

You were supposed to tell me ages ago who the biggest influences on your customers were , you said you would get back to me but never did. :)

Savatage is fine. You guys picking on them just made me reload Hall of the Mountain King. With bonus tracks.

off the top of my head (brace yourselves) dimebag, kurt cobain (yes still), dragonforce (lol), lamb of god, jack white

and what are the dads weekend band influences? eddie van halen?

*wonders if john is in a weekend band*

Obviously too busy to answer as he's jamming this weekend.

Here is my metal story:

I grew up in a strange household where dad loved that new rock and roll music as a kid but he married a woman who hated all forms of music (really, she had no time for music at all. A friend asked her about music in the background of movies and she said it distracted her.) and then he stopped caring uch about music save for what was on the radio. I had no older brother or sister so getting into music at all was pretty unlikely.

As a very young child in Hollis, Queens, I was in the middle of the disco era. I decided that I, like all of my black classmates (I was the only white kid in my class at PS 35) liked disco music.

A next door friend, Clifford, whose mom worked in some capacity for ABKCO Records at the time (she used to show off signed Rolling Stones contracts to friends to impress them) heard that I was into disco and he was offended. He, four years older and far wiser, was a rock fan and he was going to make me one as well.

Cliff dragged me into his house and made me listen to the LPs that he and his older brother had. It was then that I heard stuff for the first time, stuff like Yes "Roundabout" and Led Zeppelin "Stairway To Heaven" and even the B-52's "Rock Lobster" which the 10-year old me adored (as does the 42 year old me) and made me walk away happy to say "Disco Sucks" before it was a cliche, ironic, or wrong.

Not long afterwards, I was prone to strange hobbies, such as listening to AM radio late at night and trying to see how far away the radio stations were (I was always thrilled when I heard a Canadian station).

I was also somewhat OCD and loved lists even at an early age. So listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem was something I got into the habit of doing at a young age. Naturally, I kept a book where I counted down along with Casey, keeping meticulous record of chart movement, debuts and weeks on the chart.

(I was ignorant that I could have bugged dad for a subscription to Billboard Magazine which would have had all I craved and even more.)

This was all taking place in the early '80s. I remember just about every song on this list and this listwith alarming clarity and I had an unhealthy fascination with Stars On 45 (I was so psyched when it made it to #1, even though it was just for one week).

Well, two songs changed everything:

AC/DC's "Back In Black" spent only a couple of weeks on the countdown, peacking in the high 30s if memory serves. And around the same time, Billy Squier had a longer run with "The Stroke."

It was when those two songs entered the charts and my life that I made a profound discovery: Loud guitar shits all over "Bette Davis Eyes."

With that as my backbone, I was either going to be a metalhead or a stripper. I and everyone who knows me will agree I made the right choice.

At that point I started listening to rock radio (the countdown was on the local Top 40 station) and I started discovering all of the usual '70s classic rock suspects and the then-current stuff from the likes of Van Halen, Judas Priest, Dio, Accept (the first cassette I bought was "Metal Heart") and soon afterwards, the commercial metal of the time (Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, Ratt).

When I was in High School, I fell in with the stoners since no other peer group would have me. They expanded my Black Sabbath and Ozzy knowledge beyond the stuff radio stations played at the time ("Paranoid" and "Crazy Train" pretty exclusively) and also started exposing me to the burgeoning underground metal scene.

I was 14 in 1983 and 18 in 1987. If anyone can think of a better time to be a metal teenager than those years, I would argue you were wrong forever and there is no way you could change my mind.

I was also lucky enough to be situated in the suburbia outside of Washington DC as a teenager (having moved from Queens with my family when I was about 12). I went to high school with a kid named Kenny Thomas who actually took guitar lessons from Brian Baker of Minor Threat and Dag Nasty.

Between him and some punk friends in school (one of whom played me Fear on a field trip on her walkman and I immediately fell in love), I also was one of the first long hairs (to be fair, it was a mullet then - it was the '80s!) to get into the DC hardcore scene, the even-harder New York stuff and older punk. When metal and hardcore finally crossed over, I wondered what took everyone so long?

Hard to believe that two songs would have such a profound influence on my life from that point on but there it is.

How about you, Al?

― NYCNative, Friday, 4 March 2011 20:38 (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

As paul simon didn't say dont call me Al!

Pretty simple really - Nirvana. Got a cd player in our house in like 1987 or something. Had a few U2 & Queen cds that i listened to all the time so I got my own stereo at xmas, the first in my year at school bizarrely (nope we werent rich or middle class or anything ) so that got me sorta into music in that I would get my folks to buy me cds sometimes but it was all chart stuff like the aforementioned U2,Queen,Bon Jovi and the odd NOW or Hits comp and various greatest hits cds of bands.

Then in 1991 (aged 18) we moved to Hamilton (handy cuz i was a season ticket holder - a long story). in the summer with no football on i had some spare cash, and my new found non footy friends were into glam metal heavy rock some thrash basically average kid kerrang/raw readers stuff. Some of it i really hated (always hated the glammy shit as my mate at school was into it despite never reading a music mag in his life (he still hasnt) so i dunno how he heard of this stuff as i cant see radio playing it at the time. but a few things like ride the lightning,master of puppets sounded good and i did like def leppard as i had a well worn dub copy of hysteria from someone at school.
My footy mates (bar 1 metal/punk/indie guy) were all into indie. Madchester indie & the smiths.

then i heard my metal mates playing nirvana. bang. a revelation. i had been listening to the rolling stones & sex pistols and this music was just what i needed. I borrowed stuff off friends then started buying lps,tapes,cds of albums that got good reviews in RAW and Kerrang. Got into AIC just before dirt came out, bought all the other grunge stuff i could find, got big into faith no more,soundgarden,janes,pearl jam, then i dug deeper screaming trees etc Helmet,ministry,nin then the footy mate i mentioned loaned me pixies,husker du,sabbath,slayer,anthrax,megadeth,stone roses lps and i realised i liked that kinda indie rock and metal as much. Manics became my band along with Nirvana Quickly realised that pantera sucked despite everyone loved them while i listened to godflesh etc.

Then i heard aphex twin,lfo,fsol etc and i would listen to electronic stuff but non-dancy stuff til i heard underworld & orbital in like 93? Another life changer, but i did not abandon the grunge/indie/alt rock/metal stuff at all. got way into kyuss and monster magnet and all the stoner rock before getting into doom (while i still would listen to all that older stuff) i then got into pfunk,krautrock, jazz ,alt country and when i first got Napster i got long sought after albums i needed to complete collections of (like redd kross - neurotica that i finally did find on lp 10 years after getting their other records,but p2p meant i heard it a few years earlier). once i got my fill of finding stuff i knew i wanted but didnt have i then started to look for new music like post rock and the whole stoner/psych/doom/noiserock/post metal boom coincided with me listening to heavier stuff again resulting in really getting back into doom & sludge and finally hearing black metal that i liked.

not very interesting and im sure no one will have read of all that but there you go. and i cba proofreading that or spellchecking or fixing anything else :) I leave that to the actual people who write for a living!

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Friday, 4 March 2011 21:06 (2 days ago)

reposted from mordys metal thread

in my mind this thread title reads like

How did you first get into [power chord] ... [lettin it ring out] ... Metal?

Ah, you see for me it's: How did you first get into [sound of rainfall]... [bell tolls]... Metal?

How did you first get into... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOWy7s1F9LE&feature=related ... Metal?

hahahahaha

How did you get into metal Alan?

liked a lot of pop stuff when I was very young but the first rock bands that really clicked for me were metallica and nirvana. I was in 5th grade at the time. the black album and nevermind were the first albums I bought for myself. don't remember which one got picked up first but I did have a tiny collection of cds, tapes, and lps I had gotten as gifts prior to that. but those two made a big impression because they felt like things I had discovered on my own. (via mtv, heh.)

always liked more fringe stuff that wasn't metal proper like faith no more and nine inch nails but metallica led me to slayer, megadeth, etc. all downhill from there.

I was gonna repost when I saw this bumped and I see that Al is now my spokesperson, haha!

The gateway drug for metal for me was AC/DC.. at about 6 or 7, my parents spent a lot of time with another couple couple, their boys were older and I remember being enchanted by the cover of the Highway to Hell record, simply due to the horns on Angus's head.. They put on Back in Black, and those bells tolling hooked me in from then on..
The first 3 taped I owned from saving my allowance were Quiet Riot-Metal Health, Def Leppard-Pyromania and Motley Crue-Shout at the Devil.. a few years of that at 9, 10, 11.. by 12, I had been taking drum lessons for about 4 years, then a guy at the music store I was taking lessons at was playing the new Metallica record, Master of Puppets.. It was fucking on! Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer,.. the more thrashy the better, and since I grew up in the Bay area, thrash was king anyway.. Vio-Lence, Exodus, Death Angel, Testament, Frobidden... every weekend when I was in high school we were going to see one of these bands ansd the shit ton of lesser known local bands that were playing at the time..
When I got to college to persue a music degree, I got into Jazz, Fusion, and some hip-hop, but I've alway kept the metal flag flying..

I was about 14 and I'd only been listening to actual music for probably a year. and even that was just Aerosmith. So I was at this lame middle school dance club and Enter Sandman came on, and even though I'd heard it before 3 years earlier when it came out, the heavy sounding guitars just excited the hell out of me. From there, I began listening to Mandatory Metallica on weekends and I heard "One" and "Damage, Inc" for the first time, and collected their whole discography.

I then moved to Megadeth, though I started with the way wrong era (ie, Youthanasia and Countdown). Managed to shoehorn a Crowbar album in there, and then picked up several Panteras, then stopped exploring for a while.

It wasn't until I walked into a store at age 18 and finally decided I wanted to give Slayer a go (with their very underrated Divine Intervention album) that suddenly I was thrown into extreme metal.

From then to the next two years I acquired about 350 or so metal albums.

this thread has reminded me that the first album I ever bought with my own money was Donna Summer and the second album that I bought with my own money was AC/DC "Back in Black". My grandmother was visiting at the time and I can recall putting the headphones onto my grandmother's ears and making her listen to AC/DC, feeling entirely certain that she too was going to think that this was the best music ever made. She didn't.

haha your poor gran

I never did.....

your point being?

we all know you have never liked Metal, Geir. Why did you have to post you never got into it. I don't get the point.

Celtic Frost. I was 15, and more or less an indie kid. Smiths, JAMC, New Order, The Cure. I also dug lots of stuff from the 50s through to the 70s - Eddie Cochran, Beatles, Stones, Byrds, Zeppelin.

I was at a friends house when another friend stopped by. He had the To Mega Therion tape and popped it into the deck. I was immediately blown away. I think it was the outside the box thing that captured me. Orchestral instruments, soundscapes, operatic vocals.

Over the next year, I discovered the big 4, the teutonic 3, etc. I didn't dive too deep.

By 18-19, my tastes changed back to the US indie thing. Sonic Youth, Sub-Pop, AmRep, K, Merge. I didn't really get back into metal until 2006. Weird trajectory. I never stopped liking metal, though.

my cousin Quitty is at fault. at one time he made a 'zine called Hessian Obsession.

basically whenever my family went to visit his he would make me and my brother listen to his Nugent and Priest and Maiden records and argue with my brother about why Motley Crue was better than Frankie Goes to Hollywood

but you stopped listening to metal
When did you stop listening to ................Metal?

waht

In high school I was really into MMA, jiu jitsu etc. So I joined the wrestling team. Most of the team were pot smoking farm boys, and one guy gave me that comp of early Black Sabbath. I'd never done drugs but "Sweet Leaf" made me want to; it was also my introduction to fat riffs. Before that I was into US Indie rock, and then 60's stuff (Stones etc.) Later, I got really into dance music, then jazz, and got obsessed with the concept of "swing". I couldn't really get into death or black metal, but the stoner and doom genres were right up my alley. My raver friend moved away, so I stopped being involved with that for a while, and spent a great summer getting into Kyuss and co. After a while I got back into dance music, esp. the really whacked out early darkcore, which made me hungry for more extreme sounds. Godflesh showed up next, I really love the dub remixes Justin does, and after that I rediscovered the Swans and Killing Joke, so black and death metal were a logical next step. Celtic Frost, Morbid Angel, and Darkthrone are all on heavy rotation now. I just started listening to Mastodon after unconciously avoiding them for a while; I guess I'm a sludgy prog guy now.

I was 12 and bought iron maiden's piece of mind when it came out in '83. I'd been fascinated by all the maiden album covers for a while, that one purchase really kicked off my grade school metal obsession.

I was a big kiss fan in the late 70s, and I bought the heavy metal soundtrack when it came out, but didn't really consider myself a metal fan... I was more into new wave or glam stuff like queen and bowie.