Comments on: How Did You Discover Metal?

By: Margrét

Margrét — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:18:15 +0000

My father introduced me to metal/rock music when I was around five years old. Being 17 now I still remember the moment when he put Powerslave LP on and I fell in love. Later he introduced me to Motörhead, Deep Purplel, Frank Zappa and Mr. Big…

This was probably the only thing I would listen to for around seven years (sadly, along with spice girls as well…) until I was 13, I discovered Black Metal.

And since then I’ve been a die hard BM fan and still listen to the ones that got me into metal :)

By: Wes

Wes — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:51:51 +0000

I was 14 years old.. At that time the ‘hardest’ song was Bitch by the band Sevendust.. (Little did I know that wasn’t even considered hard!)

My mother had opened an aromatherapy shop in town and was looking for some advertising.. The only radio station in town as a hard rock / metal station.. So she advertised on that.. I had preferred listening to techno/pop (ick).. She would always have it on the metal station.. After a while.. I’d call and request songs.. and little by little. It infected my life.. 10 years later.. I discovered the ‘hair metal’ (Dokken, etc).. and have been searching for harder, and more obscure bands ever sense.. All I have to say is, I wish I hadn’t been so blind and narrow minded.. I would have discovered my inner peace at a much earlier age!

By: steff

steff — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:55:48 +0000

@Jenny – Yar! Thanks for sharing your story! I think Metallica are awesome for having brought so many people to metal – I think they have a gift for melody (especially the earlier, Cliff and Mustaine-influenced stuff) that makes their music accessible without loosing the heavy aspect. Keep up those music lessons – you will be so glad you know how to play instruments! I wish I had learnt an instrument in high school – I had guitar lessons for a year at uni but I was HOPELESS. Now I play the Irish whistle but it’s just for fun :)

Stay metal \m/ Steff

By: Jenny

Jenny — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 16:13:13 +0000

About the Metallica story, I had/have the same:
I’m now 14 years old and I’ve always liked Metallica a bit, but not much. I listened to Enter Sandman, Master of Puppets. Until I saw someone that had the Guitar Hero Metallica. I’ve always considered buying Guitar Hero, but I never did. I just didn’t want to. Too much money, didn’t have the time for it, and it would maybe get boring for me, thinking that I wouldn’t get better even if I tried to. But Because I liked Metallica more than I thought, I bought it. I just had to have it and I bought it as soon as possible, hoping that I have it 2 days later. Too bad for me, 2 days were already long for me to wait, but I got it after 3 days, late in the afternoon. Once I played it I became better, but I also became Metallica-fan. My parents were metal-fans too, when they were young, so I asked my dad if he had anything from Metallica. He had the CD “Kill ‘em all. But that wasn’t enough for me, so I started to look for more things. The first things I bought was off course Guitar Hero, but after that I bought the Metallica S&M concert. I became Metallica-obsessed. Bought more things from the and I also became a more metal fan. I’ve always liked metal, but now I listen to metal almost everyday.
I went on pianolessons like a year ago, but when I started to love Metallica and Metal I had to learn something else. I really liked the guitar and drum because of Lars and Kirk. But because my pianoteacher said that the fingertecniques of paino and guitar don’t match I choose for drum. I was most inspired by Lars, so I’ve always liked drum a little bit more than guitar, but when I listened to Metallica I started to doubt. I listened a lot to songs with drum and guitar, but still I couldn’t really choose. But piano is quit peaceful so I had to do something with music were I can really rock with and drum is with more movement than guitar. So after my teacher’s “advice” I chose for drum. Now I have pianolessons and drumlessons. Metal, especially Metallica, has a big influcence to my life and has become a very important thing for me. It changed my life a bit.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 01:13:53 +0000

Well, my story is interesting. As interesting as my musical tastes, which run the gamut from Classical to death metal. The first band I got hooked on was the Beatles, but I realized after a while that I didn’t really like them, my family just did. After that epiphany I realized I actually hated the Beatles, and still do. It was around this time that I discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This was around 1999 and they quickly became my favorite band, and still are. Soon after that I became addicted to the Who and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Around 2001 I got into Disturbed. This is the low point of my metal existence. I would glaze over it except Disturbed and Godsmack are what eased me into the next stage of metal (I refuse to listen to either anymore). My senior year in highschool I got heavy into Black Sabbath and Motorhead. My musical tastes probably would not have ever got heavier than that except I needed workout music. I started lifting heavily my senior year of high school for wrestling. I needed something heavier. I believe my first workout music was Rammstein, a band that I still enjoy on occasion. When I got to college however I needed something heavier. Rugby required me to put on a lot of weight. After 2 years of scouring youtube I finally found a metal band that I fell deeply in love with. Mastodon, my favorite metal band. From there I found thrash i liked (not a metallica or slayer fan and megadeth has since become a favorite but it had to grow on me) with sodom, and then I found my death metal giants, dying fetus and Necrophagist. In the past 2 or 3 years my metal library has expanded to include everything from Heidevolk to Sabaton, to Dying Fetus and Suffocation. I will say one thing though. I hate 99% of Black Metal. I can’t do it. The vocals piss me off and often times the lyrics do as well. Give me the death growls! \m/

P.S. sorry for the rambling hopefully you can decipher that, I have had a really long exhausting day teaching uncooperative 9th graders history.

By: Altáriel

Altáriel — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:09:58 +0000

I think I owe most of my music taste to my dad. He struggled to buy each Beatles LP back in the 60s as soon as they became available here in Argentina. He also discovered some less known bands like The Byrds. By the time I was born he was into Queen, who played in Buenos Aires when I was a baby. Legend says I watched the concert with him on TV. So I grew up listening to his music. During my teenage years the Beatles were my favourite band. I was an outcast in high school and there was no internet back then so my exposure to music was limited to the radio. And yes, there are 2 Spice Girls cds lying around somewhere in the house still. But I wasn’t happy with that. I needed music I could relate to.
Then I ran across a Bon Jovi cd and got into it and when I read that one of their influences was Kiss I gave them a try. I got really blown away with their music. I was finishing high school by that time and the following year in university I met a guy who had a Kiss picture on his folder. We became friends and started sharing cds. None of us had internet at home so there was no way we could download anything. Then one day he brought me 2 cds: Visions from Stratovarius and Angels Fall First from Nightwish. In Argentina we use the expression “me voló la peluca” (literally: it blew my wig away) for situations like that. I started to search for more bands like those in the university internet lab and got to download a few songs and samples. I found Rhapsody like that. Then when I finally got internet at home I could widen my horizons a bit more. I ran across Blind Guardian and fell immediately in love with them. The rest is history.

By: Steff Metal » Blog Archive » Metal Mixtape: Songs that changed my life

Steff Metal » Blog Archive » Metal Mixtape: Songs that changed my life — Sun, 02 May 2010 03:15:36 +0000

[...] given much commentary this week, as you can find it all on thursday’s post “How I Got Into Metal“, but here are, in rough chronological order, some of the songs that have had the most [...]

By: TheWitchGhetto

TheWitchGhetto — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:11:05 +0000

I wrote a blog about it today, inspired by this entry.

http://thewitchghetto.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-i-got-into-metal.html

By: Phoenixbird27

Phoenixbird27 — Sat, 01 May 2010 07:53:59 +0000

Indeed you should! I’d love to see it again! :-)

By: steff

steff — Sat, 01 May 2010 06:33:09 +0000

“We are stronger and more colourful individuals for the strength the music brings us.”

Never has a truer word been spoken.

Love ya too, and I LOVED your story! It would be awesome if we can see them together, but even if not, you are going to experience that grin for yourself \m/

7 hours I waited in that sodden mosh pit, and it was worth every. single. agonising. second. I will try and find that photo to put up.