What was the first Extreme metal album you ever heard? and your first reactions?
mine was Death "Scream Bloody Gore" a friend from school lent it to me, and it blew me away! was so heavy for me i remember reading the lyrics and being disturbed but wanting more, after that i knew death metal and extreme metal was for me!

Edit:if this has been done before i apoligise Mods. if it has just lock it

I think the first Death Metal I got into was Opeth, because my mate was slightly obsessed with them and it mixed the harsh and clean vocals. I decided it'd be better to ease myself into Death Metal, so I listened to Bleak off Blackwaterwater Park and I was blown away.
So I guess my first Extreme album would be Blackwater Park

Propably Impaled Nazarene "Suomi Finland Perkele" for black metal and for death metal... Maybe some older Cannibal Corpse. First reactions on borderline between amusement and confusion.

In think it may well have been Gorgoroth's Pentagram (still their best album, if you ask me) - I can't remember listening to any extreme metal before that, unless you count thrash, which I don't, which is all I was into before discovering black metal.

I'd have heard samples of songs in documentaries and stuff, but I think Gorgoroth was the first concious decision/album purchase.

I think it was Necrophobic's The Nocturnal Silence, although I probably didn't hear it in its entirety that early on. my reaction was something like: "What the hell....this sounds like music made by extraterrestrial monstrosities!" I didn't exactly think I liked it but I was strangely fascinated by what I thought of as a very dark, twisted sound. The next day I was telling my girlfriend at the time that I heard this crazy death metal, kind of laughing but in awe at the same time. Little did she suspect, I think, that within the year I'd be having to bite my tongue to avoid talking about Morbid Angel, Entombed and a few other bands then discovered.

I first heard Repulsion's Horrified when I was 13 and I thought it was completely terrible. I also thought the same when I heard Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse, both are now my favorite albums from their genres.

For me, that would be Death's Human (I don't count The Sound of Perseverance, as it's barely extreme). At the time, the heaviest stuff that I listened to was most likely Sepultura, and when I listened to the record for the first time, I clearly remember enjoying the music but being turned off by the vocals. With time though, I got used to them, to the point where I started to explore the rest of Death's discography (starting with their more progressive stuff) almost with an obsession. Later came Morbid Angel, Obituary, Dismember, and..... Well, you know how the rest goes

Hey dude, not to be a party pooper here, but I'm not really sure if Opeth could be considered "extreme metal", seeing how, save for a few songs, their only extreme feature are Mikael's growls.

Interesting question since what's "extreme" is relative.

When I was 8 years old, seeing Ozzy's Saturday Night Concert on MTV (circa Speak of the Devil, I think) was "extreme" compared to what I had been listening to.

After having already bled my young 13-year-old ears to Slayer (this is mid 80s), pre-prog Voivod, early Venom and Celtic Frost.....I can remember seeing Sepultura's "Dead Embryonic Cells" video and thinking this was a whole new thing.

So the 'Arise' album and the Napalm Death 'Peel Sessions' were my introduction to that next thing.

this made my day! hearing horrified when your 13 is just brutal! but I agree with you it's one of my favorites aswell:) who showed it to you ?

Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger. My reaction was a mix of "what the fucking hell is this" and "this is actually pretty cool"

Not quite. It's been somewhat established that extreme metal basically comprises death, black, and possibly thrash and/or doom. Can't remember on those last 2.

The first few metal albums I listened to are, in order, Ministry's Psalm 69, Metallica's Master of Puppets and Death's Human. I suppose the latter would be my first extreme metal album.

It was something by Cannibal Corpse. I remember being disturbed and amused at the same time. It put me off from listening to death metal for a while. The first I properly listened to and liked was Death's Human.

It's a hard question taking into consideration what was extreme back in the day, for example I heard Kreator's Pleasure to Kill which was pretty extreme in 86 and I was blown away, considering it the heaviest shit metal had to offer (Slayer and Dark Angel are another examples of bands pushing the boundaries of metal heaviness and brutality), but probably the most 'fitting' answer in this thread should be Death's SBG, given the current definition of extreme metal. It was heavier and darker than the thrash bands for sure and I guess it was the first death metal album I've heard, some months after its release.

Still, the album that at least for me was something totally different and left behind the rest in terms of extremeness was Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness. Just THEN I thought that a new 'genre' was born and separated itself from the more borderline death/thrash bands like Sodom, Sepultura and so on.

About the doubt regarding which thrash/doom bands are extreme or not..... I guess it's a question about which type of thrash/doom they play. Say, Slayer is extreme, while Anthrax isn't. Candlemass isn't extreme either, and then you have Wormphlegm.....

I won't elaborate more on the subject though, as I'm straying far too off topic.

A friend and I were playing games on his older brothers computer and started browsing his Napster downloads (mainly for porn) and came across his music stash. We were reading the titles of the songs and just had to hear it. Took about 2-3 years before I had progressed from radio metal/rock to the heavier stuff. Glad I did too.

You could download porn with Napster? Thought it was audio only.

Can't really remember if you could or not, but we didn't know that at the time.

I always raise an eyebrow when people say doom is a part of extreme metal.

Death/doom and blackened doom, maybe. Maybe.

im not surprised to see a lot of "death"in here, good stuff sbg will always be special to mere because of that

Their self-titled. Music in general wasn't very good, but there aren't many guitarists who have anything on Nuno Bettencourt.


...Oh wait, you mean extreme metal. While RiB seemed pretty goddamn extreme to me at the time, it definitely doesn't count as extreme metal. As such, it was probably either Demigod or In their Darkened Shrines, as my fifteen-year old self had just discovered that side of death metal and was hungry for more (after all, I wouldn't call Death, Atheist, or Pestilence "extreme", even if they did get me into death metal). Of course, my pursuit of brutality led me to deathcore for a brief period of time, but I got better.

Linkin Park - Meteora

Are you trolling?

Excluding all Pantera/Sepultura, Pungent Stench's Club Mondo Bizarre, I think.
In hindsight, it was a great introduction to extreme metal.

For me it was Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, my Grandad bought me it as a joke when I was 11 to wind up my Mum (my Mum's Catholic) also bought me Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia and Cradle of Filth - Midian. At first I didn't know what to make of it, it was actually quite scary (I was only 11) I didn't listen to Mayhem again until I was about 14. As for the Cradle and Dimmu CD's, I quite enjoyed them and they acted as a gateway to get me into other black metal.

Also don't know if it counts but first heard Cannibal Corpse when I was 8 while watching Ace Ventura but never actually got round to properely listening to them until I was about 13.

If we exclude thrash (Reign in Blood was pretty extreme to my ears), it is Napalm Death's Utopia Banished in 1992. Hard to swallow on first listen - I was mainly listening to heavy metal and thrash - but it soon became one of my all-time favorite.

cannibal corpse's tomb of the mutilated. i was about 13 and the lyrics totaly turned me off of death metal for sometime, but i got over it and now enjoy death metal greatly. around the same time i bought a dark throne cd and also totally didnt get it until i came back to it a little while later and finally "got it", even before the cc and dt i was listening to stuff like sepultura, hatebreed, pantera, integrity... which are not extreme metal but metalic hardcore like all out war, integrity, earth crisis, converge etc were really my gateway into grindcore which subsequently got me into death and black metal.

I was first exposed to cannibal corpse at about 12 years old and was terrified of it, but grew to love them and all others like them. However, at that point I only listened to individual songs from youtube. The first album I listened to in full was Wolfszeit by Varg. I was quite fond of folk metal at the time, and it inspired me to find more (moving on to finntroll, korpiklaani, wolfchant, etc). I don't listen to folk as much as I used to, but I still love it for how damn unique it is amongst all the other extreme genres.

No. Meteora was my first taste of loud, heavy rock music. If not for that album I might never have actively looked for metal music later on.

Although if you insist upon a strictly metal album (I know OP said metal, but I deliberately went back further) then my answer will be Gojira's The Way of All Flesh.

I had dabbled in some "lighter" music in middle school (disturbed, Mastodon, trivium) but the first really heavy album I ever bought was Amon Amarth's With Oden on our side... I still re-listen to that album pretty often.

Your grandpa has a good sense of humor. As for black metal, De Mysteriis was also the first I heard. It remember it being very unsettling, and didn't listen to black metal again until I heard Darkthrone's FOAD and, thinking that was their sound, bought A Blaze in the Northern Sky.

The name of the thread (a meh one, btw) is "First extreme album you ever heard". Linkin Park is not quite extreme, eh.

They were within the context of being twelve-years-old.

I wouldn't say so unless you were extremely sheltered, and I think he meant an extreme metal album not hard alt rock. Anyways mine was either Sepultura's Chaos AD or Napalm Death Fear Emptiness Despair in 1994-95.

I guess this could split into two separate responses with one being what's the first extreme record I heard and actually liked and just the first I heard. The first one I liked was Seasons in the Abyss shortly after it came out. Probably the first extreme record I heard and ultimately wasn't prepared for was Death's Scream Bloody Gore. The first black metalish disc I heard straight-through and liked was Satyricon's Volcano.

Death Metal - "Altars of Madness"

Black Metal - ''Under the Sign of the Black Mark"

I loved them both at first, they both kinda hooky and are good starting points to get into those genres.

Nope, I was 13 when Meteora was released and while I liked it, it wasn't omg, so fucking heavy, man! Slipknot and SOAD were my "extreme" gateway bands. Probably Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir for black metal :/

Well they were for me. It was mostly country and pop and stuff before that (not by choice, I hadn't yet begun to actively seek music). It wasn't until after that that I found System and Slipknot, I think.

Actually, now that you mention it, I'm wrong. It wasn't Gojira. Long before that, I borrowed an Amon Amarth CD from my best friend. It was CoD after that, then Gojira. I had a Meshuggah CD for a little while, then Cattle Decapitation. Somewhere in there is a lengthy obsession with Giant Squid and Baroness. Then today, which is mostly about.. a lot of different genres.

First extreme metal album I ever heard was Obituary's Cause of Death, like so many others here I was 13 at the time. Couldn't have been more perfect, as that's one of the most awesome albums in all of metal.

Gorgoroth - Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt. I got into black metal before any of the other extreme sub-genres and that was the album that got me started. At the time I thought it was the most evil, extreme thing ever, now I consider it one of the band's weakest efforts.

I was always aware of the extreme genres as I was exploring metal, but it's hard to remember the first definitive extreme album that I listened to...

Epica, Theatre of Tragedy, Tristania and Sirenia were my first to have extreme vocals, but they're hardly "extreme" in the context of what I know today. Later I check out Cradle of Filth, which brought me to the Norwegian bands of the 90s, and I think Hvis lyset tar oss (Burzum, duh...) was the first one I listened to from beginning to end while at the first listen. But the first physical album I bought legally was Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness. It's rather ironic in hindsight, because I really don't care much for it today.