Who/what got you into metal?

[sleyja]

joe Anthony - back around 1976 or so.

http://www.myspace.com/joeanthonyrocks

[spice]

i came into metal through a back door it seems. in my more formative years (the 80's) i was really, really into punk. i spent waaayyy too much time at the metroplex. i was a punk snob that hated metal and all it stood for. i begrudgingly took my little brother to see rush (i thought it was boring), ozzy (a chubby man in spandex screaming "SING WITH ME!!"), and Iron Maiden. with maiden i admit i did sing along with run to the hills, i couldn't help it.

anyway, besides the bad brains and dead kennedys, which were THE hardcore bands to me, i liked a lot of metalish bands- suicidal tendencies, 45 grave, etc. i also was really getting into jazz. horrible skronky avant garde stuff. at this point i discovered john zorn and his bands naked city and painkiller. i started seeking out more "noisy" stuff in all different directions- napalm death, crass, godflesh, merzbow, neurosis. eventually my tastes broadened and my punk snobbery completely died around the time i went to see the operation rock and roll tour (91?) with metal church, motorhead, alice cooper and judas priest and seeing black sabbath on the dehumanizer tour at the atlanta civic center. i think danzig opened for them. (confession- i have never been a big danzig fan.)

as long as i am making a confession, in my punk snobbery days my secret shame was owning and loving ride the lightning and master of puppets. also, i always loved motorhead. i never missed a chance to damage my hearing when they rolled through atlanta. i am still a recovering hipster doofus music snob. looking for a 12 step program with team jackets.

[Diana]

I came in through the punk door too. I didn't dislike metal, it just wasn't angry enough for me. Then the 80s happened and ruined everything. Then rap happened and it was angry so I went there, until it got fat and happy and I left. As far as I was concerned metal was dead, so there was nothing else and I became very sad. Then one night I was drinking and painting and saw Headbanger's Ball was on, and I couldn't believe it because I thought that was dead too. It was mostly the same old shit I wasn't interested in, plus the Scorpions, plus about a million commercials. But I was drunk so I left it on anyway, and also Comcast is bullshit and there was nothing else, but I'm glad I did. Because that's the night I discovered that metal wasn't dead, it had just been hijacked and refined by the Europeans. Holy shit was it angry. And it didn't like Jesus very much. It was exactly what I was looking for. Into the rabbit-hole I went! But I went alone, because none of my friends listen to this shit, so I have to go to shows alone and I have to do all my own research. Which is why I eventually came looking for you guys. And here I am.

I'm pretty sure nothing will get angrier and more hate-filled than black/death metal, but if it does I will give two week's notice. I gotta go where the anger is.

[spice]

yeah, it was probably the anger for me too. anger and something crushing. punk had become a bit fascist in odd ways a few years earlier in the early 80's (SS Decontrol anyone?) it took a while for me to peel back the bloated layers of hair metal to find something brutal and crushing. trial and error and the "death is just the beginning" series.

[Diana]

yeah, it was probably the anger for me too. anger and something crushing. punk had become a bit fascist in odd ways a few years earlier in the early 80's (SS Decontrol anyone?) it took a while for me to peel back the bloated layers of hair metal to find something brutal and crushing. trial and error and the "death is just the beginning" series.

I had a friend in high school that wore the Look What the Cat Dragged In shirt about once a week. I was like, "Are they chicks? Is she gay?" but her ultimate goal in life was to marry Jon Bon Jovi (or, failing that, Richie Sambora), so I figured she was straight. Between them and Sabastian Bach and cheezer ballads, I deduced that metal = dead. Turns out that yeah, it was buried under bloated layers of Aqua Net. Just took a whole lot of digging.

[Knucklehead]

joe Anthony - back around 1976 or so.

http://www.myspace.com/joeanthonyrocks

I'm guessing that there is more to the story than that. A similar path to Spice and Diana, perhaps?

And I understand that Black Flag used to play here all the time. Anyone ever catch any of those shows?

[sleyja]

joe Anthony - back around 1976 or so.

http://www.myspace.com/joeanthonyrocks

I'm guessing that there is more to the story than that. A similar path to Spice and Diana, perhaps?

And I understand that Black Flag used to play here all the time. Anyone ever catch any of those shows?

Yeah. I was probably about ten years old when I discovered Joe Anthony on the radio. I remember playing with the radio dial one day and hearing Judas Priest's Sad Wings of Destiny - it had just came out and Joe played the whole thing. Thats all it took. I was hooked after that. He was on twice a day, afternoon and late night. It was freeform radio so he could play anything he wanted. He played a lot of new stuff as well as older hard rock, like Captain Beyond, Budgie and Trapeze. In the late 70's/'80 he started playing a lot of NWOBHM and popularized a lot of those bands all through Texas. In the early 80's he moved around to other stations in town. Radio had begun to change by then - freeform was out. He was able to have a few late night Metal shows though. Along with the stuff that was popular in San Antonio - Moxy, Legs Diamond, Accept, Rush, Budgie, he'd mix in newer thrash bands that were getting popular at the time - Metallica, Exciter, Slayer, Exodus and lots of obscure stuff that was passed along to him by listeners. Once in awhile he'd blow my mind with something like Possessed. When I moved to Atlanta in the mid 80's I got more into punk and hardcore. The scene was really fun here for a few years. There were always great shows goin on, warehouse shows, the Metroplex on Luckie street (later on Marietta street) and 688, where I usually hung out. I don't think I started listening to much metal again until the early 90's. Thats probably about the time I discovered what I had been missing.


About Black Flag. Yeah. I can't remember how many times I saw them. It was a lot though. Maybe about 12 times? I'd catch the daytime all ages show and then see them again that same night. Those were some of the best shows I've ever been to. I saw the Damaged tour in Texas. It was awesome, but I remember the My War show was one of those mind blowing life changing shows. It probably helped that I was tripping my ass off.

[Brian]

I made the transition from nu-metal to metalcore when I was around 14. Also, thanks to the Gamefaqs metal and rock boards, I liked Symphony x and Dream Theater, but that's about it. When I was 15, my Japanese friend showed me this band who was really big over there, but didn't have much recognition in the states at the time -- Sonata Arctica. Got really into them and the power/prog scenes in general, and then when I was 17 I discovered Morbid Angel.

The rest is history.

[egg yolkeo]

oops

[Ryan]

I was mostly into punk and hc type stuff like nofx, bad brains, rkl/lagwagon etc. when i was younger and then one day when i was about 12 i heard angel of death... game over.

[MS_39455]

I love these stories, so when in Rome...I've got four really cool uncles who have always been more like big brothers, the youngest being just 10 years older than me. My initial interest in music started with what they were listening to at the time when I was a kid: Van Halen, AC/DC, Dio, Ratt, James Gang, Ozzy, even Pink Floyd, The Smiths, Oingo Boingo, Zappa. By about '92, WMTI in New Orleans (the nearest city to where I was living in MS) became a rock station, The Zepphyr. I could only get a signal at night when the weather was just right but I began taping their "After Dark" program on Friday nights (after staying awake as long as I could with headphones on). Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, White Zombie and particularly Pantera opened a whole new sound to me.

The heaviest the tunes had ever been in my immediate household were Dan Fogleberg, Bread, Mamas and the Papas, etc. so my folks were more than a little worried. In hopes of curtailing this apparent hunger for heavier, my mom was insistent on buying me some music from a Christian bookstore. I begrudgingly agreed, but stumbled across this rad looking album covered with human skulls which I was pretty sure had made its way to this store by some mistake. It turned out to be Mortification's Scrolls of the Megilloth. I had never heard anything so unbelievably crushing, heavy, and ironically, evil sounding. Say what you will about the band, but that's still an album that I give a good spin every now and then. Those guys used to name drop bands like Suffocation and Napalm Death as influences, so I was on a mission when a shopping mall in a nearby town opened a Disc Jockey. The ultimate irony that I still get a good chuckle out of is that my sweet mom is inadvertently responsible for turning me onto extreme metal. I've been hooked and jonesin' for more ever since that day. True story.

[spice]

a shout out for scrolls of the megilloth. cool. it's a great album.

[MS_39455]

Ha, yeah I still dig those first four records big time. I lost interest real fast after Blood World.

[Strange]

Great thread!

My half brother is about 14 years older than I am, and he lived with us on and off while I was growing up. So I've been listening to Sabbath, Priest, the Scorpions, AC/DC and Alice Cooper pretty much since I was born.

When I was in 3rd grade there was a kid who was always wearing Iron Maiden and Motley Crue shirts (handed down or given to him by his older brother), so I checked them out as well as Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Then in 6th grade another kid brought in Metallica - Garage Days. I flipped out. I went to the record store that weekend looking for Metallica (didn't know what album) and got Kill 'Em All. I also wanted something else in the same vein. I found an album with Satan on the cover and the band's name in a pentagram. Helloooooo Slayer! So I bought Kill 'Em All and Show No Mercy, and all my hair metal tapes went into a shoe box.

After that, it seemed like everything I got tuned into just got heavier and heaver. Motorhead, Venom, Overkill, Testament, Suicidal, Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, Kreator, Sepultura, Morbid Angel, Obituary, Carcass... I definitely credit Kreator as the band that perked my ears to extreme Metal, much the same way that first time I heard Metallica turned me on to Thrash. And somewhere in there I got turned on to Wrekage so my mind could be warped on a weekly basis!

Somehow I came to appreciate other forms of music along the way, but Metal just rules! I plan to bang my head until my neck won't bend anymore. haha Cradle to the Grave, baby!

[Knucklehead]

So I bought Kill 'Em All and Show No Mercy, and all my hair metal tapes went into a shoe box.

Fuckin' A right.