Your Introduction To Metal...

[powermetal2000]

Let's go back to the mid 70's here. My mother had the first 3 Zeppelin albums (which she later gave to me, and I still have them ), although being a small child, I didn't like them. She was also the one that introduced me to Kiss. In 1978 she bought myself and my three siblings each one of the Kiss solo albums on 8 track, mine was Peter Criss. I remember listening to Love Gun and Destroyer all the time. The only other rock/metal album she had was AC/DC "Let There Be Rock" which I also didn't like at the time. These few bands were the only rock/metal bands I even knew of at the time.

In 1983 a kid moved in next door that was into metal. I was introduced to Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, and Ozzy through him. But I still wasn't "into metal". For Xmas 84 I got Van Halen's "1984" and Twisted Sister's "Stay Hungry" a few months later. Over the next few years I got into the hair metal bands. But it was in high school that I really became a metal head. Through this period I was also really into Pink Floyd, Rush, Blue Oyster Cult.

In 1987 I met a friend in school who (along with his 3 brothers) was really into metal. I was introduced to Maiden, Priest, Megadeth, Metallica and everything in between throught them. I went to my first concert in 88, Metallica on the Damaged Justice tour with Queensryche opening. I was really into thrash metal by the end of the 80's. During this time I saw practically every Bay Area thrash band play live. But I kept looking for heavier music and discovered Death and Obituary. Through the mid 90's I was really into death metal but started getting bored with it.

In 1997 I picked up Gamma Ray's "Somewhere Out In Space" and was blown away. I had been a fan of Helloween in the late 80's and had heard the first 2 Gamma Ray albums but lost track of them. This album is the one that got me into power metal and shortly after, I discovered Hammerfall, Stratovarius, Blind Guardian and many others. It took quite some time for me to get into progressive metal. I had tried a few progressive bands and wasn't into it, until I purchased Symphony X' s "V".

I still listen to just about every style of metal. I'm still a big fan of thrash, some death metal, a few of the old hair metal bands, NWOBHM, the occasional black metal band.

 

[J-Dubya 777]

Believe it or not, my intro to HR/HM started with raiding my older sister's record collection & jumping immediately from Alvin & the Chipmunks to The Beatles. As I delved further into it, I found Deep Purple, Sabbath, Hendrix, Cream, and host of other cool bands. This is probably 1971 or 1972. Got into Boston, Kiss, VH in 1978, etc. in the mid-70's, then came the NWOBHM, Kerrang magazine (in the good ol' days they were all about metal...) Finding out about new bands became somewhat of an obsession for me, and still kind of is today.
As far as the modern Prog stuff goes, I would probably say DT's I & W was my first dose of "modern" Prog/Metal.

J-Dubya - Another old geezer who still enjoys his metal

 

[Purveyor Of Evil]

It all started with KISS when I was in fourth grade. I went to a Catholic school all 12 years, so being a kid in the fourth grade back in 1978 when the world was less tolerant of heavy music drove the nuns crazy at the sight of anything related to KISS or whatever was similar then. Oh, how the world has changed!

 

[Meanmistreator]

I know a forum similar to this existed once before, but in light of the Dragonforce discussion in another thread, I'd like to hear how all of us "elite metal fans" first got into this music we now so proudly defend!

ME: Was given Warrant's "Cherry Pie" and LA Guns "Cocked And Loaded" albums as a birthday present when I was 12 (crazy uncle) (1991). I liked them, but I was just getting into Nirvana really seriously so I somewhat discarded them. About 5 years later I was cleaning some stuff and ran across them again. I put them on and it was like a whole new experience for some reason. I slowly moved from that onto some other "popular" hair bands Poison, Dokken, Europe, etc. Around this same time my cousin married a TOTAL metalhead and we hit it off instantly. He introduced me to the idea of pawn-shopping for metal and also told me about a little place called Nuclear Blast. I've been going ever since.

So for me it was hair metal tapes and a "big-brother" figure. What about you?

My sister was raped my a dragon. Naturally, I set off to slay said dragon. Long story short, in what can only be described as an "epic battle", I gloriously defeated and killed the offending dragon. Shortly thereafter, I learned there was an entire genre of music dedicated to people like myself, and quite naturally, I was drawn to it.

Zod

Amen,
Seems like I just had this conversation two days ago!

 

[Creeps]

I grew up on KISS & Alice Cooper since I was 4 (thanks mom & dad). Listened to rock radio all growing up. After Kiss & Cooper albums the first other albums I got were Queen's the Game, Blondie's Autoamerican & Joan Jett's I Love Rock N Roll. From there through the whole 80s and beyond I've been into it.

The 1st "heavy metal" albums of the 80s I got when I was young that werent Kiss or Cooper; Stay Hungry, Out of the Cellar & Shout At The Devil.

The 1st "thrash metal" album ever purchased; Spreading the Disease shortly followed by Ride The Lightning, Peace Sells and Yngwie's Marching Out & Manowar Fighting __ album.

 

[longshot9]

All started in '77 for me when I was 7 years old. A neighborhood kid came over to my house one day with a paper bag, told me he'd stolen a record from his uncle and couldn't keep it at his house as he was afraid he'd get caught, so he gave it to me. Since I couldn't explain where it came from to my parents, I hid it in between my mattresses and studied/played it diligently for a year or so after that when they weren't home, the record was Kiss Alive 1. Year or so later I met a kid who was a big Kiss fan and I discovered they had 7 other records out, so those were next on my list over the next 3-4 years.

In about 1980 or so I stumbled across Columbia House... WOAH... I get 12 records for a friggin penny!!! So I sent off for them, never hearing of any of the bands I ordered, I just went for anything that looked remotely like Kiss' lp's. Ended up with AC/DC, Foreigner, ZZ Top, Eagles, Queen, and Van Halen. Then my mom realized I did it and told me I had to buy 12 more over the next 3 years... somehow she got out of that and I got to keep the records.

Then in '82 or so when I moved to San Diego, I discovered the local rock station and their weekly friday night Metal show. The first week I listened they debuted Bark At The Moon and Shout At The Devil. I was hooked. Mostly into hair metal in the 80's, did like Metallica, Slayer, Testament, and Anthrax though too.

I think it was '89 when my non-metal brother discovered WDADU from DT and came storming into my room saying I "HAD" to check them out... too weird for me at the time. Keyboards turned me off big-time. Then a few years later I was driving for a job I was doing and "Pull Me Under" came on the radio, instantly became a DT fan.

Symphony X and Stratovarius were my first "new" power/prog metal bands and I was turned onto them by Impulse Music who played them for me over the phone in around 97 or 98! That was really cool, ordered Visions and DWOT instantly and haven't looked back.

 

[BROKENSPIRIT]

For me it was totally hair metal in the early 80's, I was about 12 I guess.
It all started with Bon Jovi and Cinderella, then I moved on to Gun's N Roses,
Metallica, & Ozzy along with most of the other popular 80's bands. Can't forget Iron Maiden. I still appriciate all of theses bands, but in the 90's I discovered Savatage and Dream Theater. Now I am totally PROG!!!
I just can't get enough.

 

[ragingsaxmachine]

My brother found an AMV online with Stratovarius's "Destiny" as the background music and he went out and bought Elements Pt. 1. I listened to the first 3 tracks of that album at least 100 times each during 8th grade...then I went on to buy a Symphony X CD from FYE and then later while searching for Rhapsody songs on LimeWire, I came across a mistitled song that turned out to be Freedom Call. And from that, I sort of just discovered everything else.

 

[RiffDaemon]

I grew up listening to Country since that's what my parents always had playing in the house. They used to be the kind that despised any electric guitar sound in country music so I became that way, too. I remember Dad telling me, "Yeah boy, stay away from that hard rock, heavy metal, and shit. None o' this Metallica or whatnot." So it was put into my head that Metallica was evil, haha. However, I started growing out of that and began listening to general, on-the-radio rock. Well, satellite TV came into my house .... and MTV along with it. A couple of years later, I see the video for Metallica's 'King Nothing', and the first thing I noticed was that the music (and the video) was kind of eerie and wicked, much moreso than other stuff I heard at the time -- and I thought James looked really cool with that goatee he had going. So my older brother, who was watching it with me at the time, tells me that they used to be the shit years ago; this started my interest in Metallica - I wanted to know what they sounded like. Fast forward 2 weeks - On an MTV commercial segment, they play the 'No.1 video this day back in 1991' thing where they show a little snippet of the video: It was 'Enter Sandman'. The song was heavy as Hell and James looked as grimacing as the music; I was immediately enthralled. My brother saw how enraptured I was, so he asked me to sit with him in his truck. He put in this pitch-black CD, and his Rockford Fosgate (however you spell it) speakers drilled 'Enter Sandman' into my body. I fell in love with that disc. Then he put in Ride the Lightning after talking about how old the band was, but I was kinda turned off by the vocals (thin and not as mature as the Black Album) and the guitars were so fast (e.g. 'Fight Fire With Fire') that I couldn't make sense of what I was listening to - kinda gave me a headache. After a month of listening to NOTHING but the Black Album, I forced myself to listen to Ride the Lightning all the way through. 2 spins of that disc and I was craving it more than the other one. That's when my journey through Thrash Metal began, and I left the rest of the music world behind.

--RiffDaemon

 

[ashaman7122]

Grew up in a house where music was readily available...Dad listened to 50s & 60s R&R and R&B...Mom was a Beatles fan...kinda naturally led to Wings and Neil Diamond (it was the 70s ya know?)...temptation of the Kiss album covers on the grocery store album racks finally suckered me in...had an older cousin that got me into Priest, BOC, Nugent, and Seger...had an older friend that turned me onto early Maiden...later discovered Charlie Kendall's Metalshop radio show (M-m-m-m-m-metal shop!) which led to the discovery of bands like Armored Saint, Kick Axe, Helloween, Fates Warning, White Wolf, Fifth Angel, etc., etc.

Sigh...there was no hope for me...and no going back!

Rock on!

 

[Angrafan]

MTV did it for me!


Angra's Make Believe video was on MTV Brasill ALL the time.. I mean, they were on TRL daily, the top 20 countdown evey weekend.... I loved the song and started from there..
I still remember it... the very first 3 CDs I bought were in heavy rotation on MTV during the Time.. Angra- Holy Land, Silverchair- Freakshow and the Spice Girls debut! LOL

After that I got into Stratovarius and Helloween and the rest is history..

 

[thedelicateflower]

...even though the kids i played with were into kiss and the grateful dead...it wasn't until i saw/heard RATT, that i fell in love with the music and have been head over heels since...

 

[edgeofthorns]

...even though the kids i played with were into kiss and the grateful dead...it wasn't until i saw/heard RATT, that i fell in love with the music and have been head over heels since...

RATT N' ROLL baby!

 

[Greykiller]

I started with the original metal god: Weird Al Yankovich!


How do you define metal? Was Kiss metal? Was the New York Dolls metal? Was Jimi Hendrix metal? Was Iron Butterfly metal?

I would say my introduction to Metal (defined by me) was "Sad Wings of Destiny" by JP.

 

[rottingflesh]

I was listening to Alice Cooper with my Dad a 4 years old. Was supposed to see him live at 5 but got sick and had to stay with Grandma..cried all night.
It just stemmed from there.

 

[VenomGA]

Kiss in the 70's and I went from there to Priest and Maiden, then the whole LA scene. Once I discovered Metallica, it was all over!!

 

[Cacti]

When I was 14 and in the 8th grade, I met one of my still very good friends. I was already headed towards metal, but he gave me a little push. Actually a big push. He got me listening to bands like Arch Enemy, Dimmu Borgir, King Diamond, ect. He is also the one that got me in to the whole prog-metal genre. Now I'm 16 and still listening to tons of metal, mainly proggy stuff. And no, I don't plan on stopping anytime soon :Smokin:

 

[Hal9000]

I grew up in the 80's and my parents wouldn't let me listen to anything except Country. My grandmother felt that this was an inadequate measure to deter my musical corruption, so she would take me to see Brother Billy Mayo when he came through. Brother Billy would preach about the evils of Rock 'N Roll and Heavy Metal by playing some examples of this abomination. He would play Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Led Zepplin, Alice Cooper, and many more. I instantly fell in love with this music. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. He would even warn us about bands that were less obvious like Styx, Journey, Eagles, Rush, and The Police. Then he would play these evil records (yes, vinyl records) backwards so you could hear the blasphemy. Though, none of us could understand what was being said backwards, so Brother Billy would tell us what we just supposedly heard. My grandmother would also buy tapes and videos by David Benoit and Jeff Godwin, who would also preach about the evils contained within the disguise of Heavy Metal. I never found the holy spirit there, but I found metal, and my life changed forever. Then the 90's hit and music started sucking until the day I discovered Dream Theater and I fell in love all over again. So thank you Brother Billy Mayo, David Benoit, and Jeff Godwin for introducing me to Metal the Almighty.

 

[7thSaviour]

For me, it was bands like Ozzy, Quiet Riot, and Twisted Sister in the early to mid 80s.

 

[LunaTEKKE]

I grew up taking classical piano lessons, so by junior high school, I was really drawn to bands like Styx and Kansas that featured prominent keyboards.

A couple of years later, a former “easy listening” radio station changed formats and started playing not only my current favorites – like Styx, Kansas, Foreigner and Journey – but also Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest, and Def Leppard.

The station eventually started playing another band that I originally “discovered” watching one of those late-night video shows on an independent local channel. (I’m pretty sure we were the LAST family in the entire state to get cable TV). The song and the video for “Queen of the Reich” absolutely knocked me on my butt…and from that point, I was REALLY hooked.

(OK, OK, with 20+ years worth of hindsight, I now realize that the video couldn’t possibly have been any cheesier…but at the time, I thought it was about the coolest thing I’d ever seen OR heard. Which makes Queensryche's more recent offerings all the more disappointing.)