What inspired your taste in metal?

I think there can be a few external things you enjoy that can determine what genre of metal,or what elements appeal to you. Just a though but I find that Myself,being the huge nerd I am (played video games since the NES days,played everquest with my wife for a while) enjoy atmospheric metal with plenty of synth and keyboard or somphonic elements,along with lyrics based around fantasy,conquest,battle and the likes.

Might as well link a few examples

Fall of 1981, my cable TV system added this newfangled "radio with pictures" channel called MTV. Came home one afternoon, sat down to watch some of it for the first time, and saw Judas Priest's video for "Headin' Out to the Highway." Nuff said.

I don't even know how to explain why, it just seemed like something I should be listening to..haha. First bands to get me into metal were probaby back in late middle school early highschool listening to the more metal sounding 90s hardcore punk...stuff like Earth crisis, vegan reich, Raid, and Strife besides this weird european power metal obsession I had a for awhile that I try to forget about..ha.

Fat Freddy wrote:

Fall of 1981, my cable TV system added this newfangled "radio with pictures" channel called MTV. Came home one afternoon, sat down to watch some of it for the first time, and saw Judas Priest's video for "Headin' Out to the Highway." Nuff said.

Oh....You mean that station that caters to those who watch"Reality T.V"? Damn, I almost forgot, they used to actually cater to a totally different crowd!

I was hanging out with my friend who had just gotten the tape of Vio-lence - Eternal nightmare. He went on to play some metallica, ozzy and Priest. I was hooked.

Anger & anti-social behavior. Now I had a soundtrack.

I heard the song "Tears Are Falling" by KISS at a cousin's house around 1988. I've been into rock and metal ever since.

KISS in the 70's started it all for me

I saw some guys at school looking cool with cool MAIDEN shirts and i wanted to look like them. I went to a record shop and bought the cool double LIVE AFTER DEATH album and i loved it so much. At the same time i bought a metal magazine and started to read reviews and order more records and i bought my first tshirts and start hanging with other metalheads.

Fat Freddy wrote:

Fall of 1981, my cable TV system added this newfangled "radio with pictures" channel called MTV. Came home one afternoon, sat down to watch some of it for the first time, and saw Judas Priest's video for "Headin' Out to the Highway." Nuff said.

That one.

metalinmyveins wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

Fall of 1981, my cable TV system added this newfangled "radio with pictures" channel called MTV. Came home one afternoon, sat down to watch some of it for the first time, and saw Judas Priest's video for "Headin' Out to the Highway." Nuff said.

Oh....You mean that station that caters to those who watch"Reality T.V"? Damn, I almost forgot, they used to actually cater to a totally different crowd!

Yup, it's hard to believe for anyone under the age of, say, 35, but MTV was actually pretty cool ... once.

I have "taste"



Playing in bar bands and following the chicks around like a dog in heat...catered to a certain flavor of music that was emerging in El Lay in the early 80's. By 82', you could hear everything from Crue/Dokken, Slayer/Metallica, Shell Shock/Armored Saint...ect ect...

There was my casual exposure to the punk scene from being a downhill skateboarder, thus a vested interest in thrash when it reared it's ugly head so-to-speak.

Believe it or not, El Lay was an interesting and exciting place for music untill the saturation ruined the scene(s) by too many folks chasing that dream. Be it the hordes of refuge musicians flooding in from everywhere to the money grubbing club owners/promoters/A and R record execs/The List Goes On and On.

I guess it comes down to balance ? Sure watching scantily clad females dancing around to the glamsters was a contrast to headbanging 101 elsewhere... The cement to the whole trip was playing with other musicians. Just had a thought...Seems participation in both hands on and spectatorship molds ones musical endeavors and interests.

Believe it or not....I came up for air and am now finished.

pretty much everything about metal appeals to me....insane drumming, heavily distorted guitar (especially fast and technical stuff), extreme vocals, the atmosphere created by an 80s thrash masterpiece or great black metal record (etc), lyrics about the need for social change/death/etc, community, wild shows, the passion musicians and fans have for the movement, and even more things than that.

Well actually my days of music and actually back in the early 70's it was classified as hard rock and it wasn't until the mid 70's that term heavy metal was used.

I actually meet these 2 guys who were going to college in my town where I live and they were more or less from a small town in northern North Dakota. Anyway not quite sure how we met I believe it was in a bar and we loved to smoke pot.

Anyway those 2 were buds growing up together and they did almost everything together. Well they had there own apt in a basement and a couple of my friends would stop by quite a bit to get high. I loved music quite abit and was into mostly the popular hard rock with some exceptions. Well these 2 new friends were into stuff I was clueless about back then.

They were into White Witch, Budgie, Trapeze, The Godz, The Groundhogs, Captain Beyond.....not your typical mainstream rock back in those days. I guess from those days on the to the present I would alway take chances on music and most of the time it would involve undeground stations like Beeker Street out of Little Rock, Ark. or the album covers alway drew me in and I had such good luck in those days.

I also had my circle of friends as well. But I'd say today that those friends back then would not be into what I listen to now. They either moved on, got, married or simply went a different route or style of music.

I'd have to say I'm more metal at 52 than I was at 15.

Wargod52

Wargod48 wrote:

undeground stations like Beeker Street out of Little Rock, Ark.

Wargod52

That was one of the main ones for me as well. That was the first place I heard Rush, for example.

Sometime around 1973, I heard the 45 single of Hey Jude/Revolution by The Beatles. As soon as I heard that distorted guitar on Revolution it was like an epiphany, I've never looked back.

Listening to the radio in the mid-70's was great, hearing stuff like the guitar riff from Barracuda, Nugent playing Cat Scratch Fever, Paranoid powered by the mighty Iommi, Money by Pink Floyd, Parasite by Kiss...etc.

The sound of a heavy guitar...haunting me for 37 years now.

An anti rock rally at the First Baptist Church of Largo in 1982, this guy Rev Billy Mayo preached against the evils of rock, played record backwards, and then played 'Highway to Hell' I was floored never heard music like this in my life, went out to the lobby stoled his pamphlet which became a handy buying guide.

I grew up listening to pretty everything Christian Rock. During my sophomore year or so, I borrowed my friend's Iron Maiden "Somewhere in Time" and "Piece of Mind". I loved it. With that in mind, I went to the Creation Music Festival and in the makeshift music store they were playing the HOT METAL IV video. It piqued my interest big time: Ken Tamplin, Angelica, Deliverance, Ransom, Tourniquet, Vengeance Rising, Shout. From there I was a full out lover of metal

My dad got me started from as early as I can remember listening to his Mortification cassettes. Especially Scrolls of the Megilloth. My favorite album in elementary school was Blood World. Then when I started to really get into music I happened to get into Yngwie's music (my dad happened to have a compilation) and from there I discovered Megadeth, Kreator, Judas Priest, etc. and from there I just kept discovering new bands that I loved.

I have to thank my older sister, who was a huge rock fan at the time.

Scorpions, Ozzy, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Billy Idol and Bon Jovi were always played loud in her room.

I got interested and started exploring heavier grounds, thanks to my school buddies.

This is how i found about Sepultura, Maiden, Priest, Metallica, Obituary...

I was never into the metal attitude though. Never had long hair, barely wore a metal shirt all my life...

It was only about the music.

I found Paranoid at a cd shop. Bought it.

manny wrote:

An anti rock rally at the First Baptist Church of Largo in 1982, this guy Rev Billy Mayo preached against the evils of rock, played record backwards, and then played 'Highway to Hell' I was floored never heard music like this in my life, went out to the lobby stoled his pamphlet which became a handy buying guide.

thejokeriv wrote:

KISS in the 70's started it all for me

Same here. It was just a natural progression from there.

I have a sister and brother that are both significantly older, so while other kids I knew had no frame of reference for music beyond the most mainstream stuff they were hearing on the radio, most of which was the usual "catchy" pop music, I was getting exposed early on to stuff like Queen, Aerosmith, KISS, AC/DC, Rush, Def Leppard, etc. Then not too long after that, Quiet Riot broke out and they were certainly fun, and around 84 or 85 I got to be friends with a kid whose sister's boyfriend was really into Iron Maiden and that opened up a whole new world for me. Shortly afterward we discovered Metallica and then Megadeth and there was no more looking back.