Managed to get enough pictures collected, I couldn't scan my earliest metal pic from the Blind Guardian concert, but found one that's still pretty old.

This one is from 2003, together with a good friend of mine. I'm the left guy. Don't mind the hat, it's not mine haha!


Jump to 2005, heavily into NWOBHM and Savatage was my favorite band. Here's a pic where I met Jon Oliva and he signed my "Avatar" t-shirt. One of the coolest days from my heavy metal "career" The girl with the Saxon shirt was my girlfriend at the time, great lass


In 2006 my hair was growing pretty damn long, this was a picture intended for my band, still heavily into traditional metal and ofc Savatage


2006-2007, I decided to cut my hair shorter and was into thrash and old skool death metal now. Also, for some reason, I wore a headband all the time. looked pretty silly haha


2008, My hair grew a bit longer again, but still looked silly by the time that this pic was taken. This was the first time I was at Wacken Still have that Hellhammer shirt, but it was waaaaaaaay too big when I bought it (XXL, what was I thinking)


2009, I cut my hair short full on this time, The long hair started to annoy me greatly, never looked back on it! I was getting very interested in doom metal at this point, still one of my most favorite genres to date!


Late 2010, Metal didn't get as much attention from me anymore, not unlike it used to. Only NWOBHM and doom really still interested me and progrock was a golden gate opening for me. I dressed more casual than I used to and my hair got more plain.


Wacken in 2011, My hair got another make over and I got glasses to boot (not wearing them in this picture). Electronica and progrock are my new favorite genres, but still hugely into doom metal and nwobhm. Savatage is still my favorite band.

You saying I'm not handsome?


Should post them if you find them. You're exactly the kinda guy this thread is aimed at.

Yeah, I know Olio

Wish I could find them. Have some awesome sepia/black and white corpse paint and fire prop shots somewhere, they are interesting

Should start hunting around....

The thing with my personal early/mid-nineties metal history is that it isn't really pictured.
Those pics in my OP from 1989, 90 and 91 are from a time where my parents every now and
then positioned my somewhere to take a picture.

This stopped somewhat about when I was 15 or so and was outside all the day etc. And
that time (say, from 15 to 25) were my "high metal days" (bulletbelts, vests, later laughable
corpsepaint etc. the whole thing ) with me and my friends raising hell, haha.

i think i somewhere have one from around the age of 17 from 1994 where I wear an
ImpNaz (Suomi Finland Perkele) longsleeve and have shoulder length blue dyed hair.
Damn, where could that picture lay around...

Anyway - in that time there just were no things like digital cameras etc. (cellphones with
built in camera) which were always carried around and so that's the obvious reason
for missing photo documents from that time...

Guess it's the same with other fellow "older" guys here

hah I know what you mean, I wish I had a pic from 2001-2002. my hair was bright red then

No. But I'm confident 95% of the crowd here would not commend the colour of your eyes, either.

I would.

I'd really like to post some pictures here, but I've only been into metal for four years and that's too short a time period to be making a comparison to. Maybe if I find enough photos, but don't expect anything too lively.

A man can dream though. A man can dream.

how do you post pictures here, i tried using copy-paste, by using the img tab when using the full reply editor.... hell i looked through the faq and still nothing

1. upload your image to an image hosting site ex: tinypic.com
2. copy the url of your image (must end with the image extension ex: http://i52.tinypic.com/122j0uf.jpg )
3. past the url in your post and add [img] at its beginning and
[/img] at its end. Ex:


et voila!

If only I had these pictures on my computer, all of the Archives could have seen cute kid phase, my fat kid phase, my newly thinned out/Abercrombie-at-the-beginning-of-high-school phase, my cross-country/track/the-Zac-Efron-of-my-high-school phase, and then my fatass-again phase. Then in a few months, I could have updated it with a in-shape-again-and-owns-metal-tshirts-now-and-girls-like-me-again phase.

like I wrote a bit above - just take a shot from a photograph with your camera/cellphone. Won't be top-quality like a scan but def.
sufficient for the use here...

edited my OP for a new pic. Accidentally just one year after starting this thread...

Hum, I'm fine with the revival of the topic. Because I think it's a good one, but if anything lame is posted, it will be closed.

Thanks, Metantoine. I kind of revived it to see if other users which weren't aware of this thread might want to contribute to it. For those who want to (and didn't read the OP) :

Do not "just" post one or two pictures of you nowadays! This is not a normal picture thread. You have to include photos from pasy years (!) or even better decades. This is not a wish but a requirement!

I'm doing some digging today. I have three decades to peruse, so it may take some time! I remember this thread in its infancy, be nice to see some of the newer members (who actually have some time in the scene) and how they have progressed through the ages...

Hi, this is my first post and my english is not perfect, so sorry if I misspell something =)

The first time I remember listening to metal, was when I was like 10, I had some money and I decided to spend it on music, I was into the music store and I saw a section called "heavy metal", didn't even know what that was, so I started looking at some CD covers until I saw DIO's Holy Diver, I was like "wow, this cover is totally cool", so I bought it
I started loving DIO, bought Dream Evil and The last in line.
Some time later, we moved to another house and my CDs got lost, I didn't even remember how the band was called, until at 13/14 I met my best friend in school, and got me into metal again


I'm the right one =) I was like 15 in those pictures
My family didn't let me grow my hair much, until my grandfather died (seemed that he was the only one who really cared lol) so that was me at 16/17 or so


I was into power metal and heavy metal, didn't like death metal, etc., until 18, when I knew about Amon Amarth and became my fav. band along with DIO (now that's a good contrast)
Now at 21 I do like extreme metal, but still prefer heavy and old school metal. I got uglier and I've got a DIO tattoo on my arm!


Hope it's okay!

Fun thread, I'll try it!

This is me when I was... 14 years old probably, just starting to get into metal, listened to Slipknot, Korn and stuff like that. I was just started listening to Slayer, Finntroll and other "beginner's bands":



This picture was taken on new year's eve in 2009. Started to let my hair grow again after cutting it of some stupid reason. My hair is dyed for some other stupid reason, it's not something I used to do, have only dyed my hair twice my whole life. Anyway, this is me with what would later turn into my first vest:



Here I am at my first festival, Copenhell '11, taking a piss. Finally had grown my hair long and finished my first vest:



..and this is me at Copenhell '12 wearing my mom's sexy raincoat, having some jägermeister. Now 19 years old, haven't gotten any prettier:



And that's probably about it. Don't have any metal or even music related pics of me at a younger age..

My parents didn't love me enough to take my picture very often.

I will just leave you all with this image and allow you to fill in the blanks yourselves:

My photo journey through metal doesn't show the normal "metal head wears band X shirt" but rather shows the time of my life I was at, and I will describe the music I listened to at the time...

We'll start at a the young age of 10 in 1993. During these days, I began listening to Metallica, Helmet, Nine Inch Nails, etc. I was a little into punk and the grunge movement thanks to an older brother and older cousins...


Next we have me playing guitar for a friend's band in 1998 at the ripe old age of 15. I listened to hardcore (Hatebreed, Overcome, etc) and began getting into extreme metal thanks to Century Media's Firestarter. Iron Maiden, Iced Earth, Hammerfall and Blind Guardian were my favorites.


This shows me dicking around with the drums around 2000 (17). Neurosis was one of my favorites at the time and started delving further into the underground. Started listening to more hardcore though.


Whether or not you could notice in the earlier picture, but I've had a receding hairline for years. Rather than go quietly, I began to grow a pretty large goatee in college. This lovely shot is from around 2005 (22). This is when I first joined up with the archives. I completely shed the hardcore listening habits and was into power and black metal at this time.


The day of my wedding. October of 2009 (26). Finally got rid of the goatee for work. Still into black and power metal.


And a present day shot (28)... I finally gave up on having hair. Working full time, still listening to power and black, although prog is creeping in!

I'd like to see the pics, dude

No shit! Me too!

I'll have to figure out what the hell happened here!

StormIRide, you can right click where it says "image" in your post and it'll take you to the page. Right click on the images and click "view image" so that it isolates it and post those links in your post.

Thanks Ozzy, got it all figured out... It's been a while. I'm trying to get back into things around here!

Cool post, man, looks like you're living a good life, Sadly, I don't really have old pictures of me laying around. Maybe later.

Life is good for me, for the most part. Anymore it's just work and spend time at home with the family. Sometimes it sucks growing up... Although it is nice to have a paid off vehicle and my own house. Sadly, I just downsized my CD collection from about 1700 to 600 to help pay some bills...

Sorry to hear it, man. That sucks but at least now you'll be able to experience the joy of obtaining your 666th album again...

Hopefully I will! I told my wife that once all of our debt is paid off, I'd start buying more again... Only problem is the $50,000 in student loan debt we share...

Oh man, this is a great thread. I'm definitely going to post my metal picture timeline in here when I'm better rested.

So here's my story in pictures. I didn't listen to music independently until I was 12 and then didn't get into metal properly until I was 14. Even so, since I've only been into metal for a short amount of time there won't be any dramatic changes, nor any profound life experiences to be found here. Just a story about a short boy becoming a short late adolescent.

This was me in 2008 on my 14th birthday, around the time when I was getting into metal. I was completely oblivious to Iron Maiden's show in my city for the Somewhere Back in Time Tour which happened to fall on my birthday. In hindsight, I'm still a little annoyed about it.

Also, I was an ugly child.



Early 2009, around the time when I joined the Archives. Still 14 but I aged considerably from the last picture. At that point I was coming down from trad metal, thrash metal and some metalcore.



Late 2009 holding autographs from some Australian comedians. I'm 15. My hair grew quite long since the last photo and a Pantera shirt can be spotted. Even with such bad taste, I managed to go through death metal and metal warrior/old school elitist phases.



Early/mid 2010. At that point I was 16 and this is my photo with the ever-so-goofy Devin Townsend the day of his show. I made my way around the death metal circuit and would later make it into black metal, but at the time of the photo not quite yet. The hair curling lasted for a while throughout the year but would later disappear.



Me trying to look metal while eating food in mid/late 2011. Here's I'm 17. This was taken at school when the senior years, as it's called in America, wrap up classes to prepare for university entrance exams. Around this time I took to tying my hair back for events which don't involve metal but still wore band shirts, in this case Portal.



This was taken the same week as the above photo, but I thought I'd add this for a laugh. End of class wrap-up involved a dress-up so I thought I'd have some fun and go as a black metaller, albeit a funny-looking one. Needless to say, I was heavily into black metal in 2011, as well as death metal and doom metal, nearly dropping all thrash I was into.

Warning: kind of large


Finally, we make it to the end of the picture show. This one is mid this year, having turned 18 several months before the photo was taken with my signed Inquisition LP and Mournful Congregation shirt. My face is a little flushed here, but I just met the members of Inquisition. Now I'm listening to black metal, death metal, doom metal and power metal, along with post-rock.



To conclude: I was a fairly ugly child.

EDIT: Straightening out some sentences

You looked manlier when you were 14 than nowadays, Rogerina.

I wonder how many people remember that.

FWIW, I have lots of pictures of me in dresses (not even fucking joking), and almost none (if any) of me in Metal t-shirts or something similar.

By the way, I am the kid in the center of that Polaroid with the three boys in dresses (just so you know, it's a 100% legit, totally gay photo of myself, not some random nonsense I found online).


I am not a "drag queen"... I couldn't tell you why there are so many fucking pictures of me in dresses, really.
The only other pictures I have are of me in the background at local shows and stuff... Not sure if that's worth posting.

Well my metal story (kinda lame) begins at age 18, I didn't took music seriously before that, I have no pics on the net of me before I was 18 (fuck scanners!).

Here I am being a nerd, at that time I was discovering Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath


Fast forward to me at age 20! an this time I was into thrash and some other stuff, had my first flirting with power metal (didn't work though ) I was still a nerd.



Then we jump a year and I'm on my second/third (don't remember lol) semester at uni,at this time I had gotten into death metal and black metal, things still didn't work with power metal </3


Still a nerd, but of the chemist variety

This pic was taken in 2010, still at uni, hardly studying, me and power metal started making up peace


Me at uni again (what a fucking nerd!) with my first kutte on it's early stages :3



Then we go far away to march of this year, I was in my ninth semester of uni, also this was my las day with long hair (no lab wanted to hire me because of the hair >:| )


Me later on that mournful day


And finally, this is me as for now, pondering about what the future will bring (maybe some beer)

If those were your last moments with long hair, I can understand the serious face.

Oh Javi, I remember well when I saw that pic for the first time. I was shocked and didn't know what to say but "Nooooo"

Here we have me from around 2009. It's not the beginning of my metal odyssey, far from it, but it's the earliest picture of metal me that I can find. Note the Hellhammer poster indicating that I was at least moderately true at this stage:


Later that year I would meet Alex Webster and make one of my many retarded faces:


Also from around then we have this picture. The two gents with me are friends of mine. Behind them you can see my brother (in the Maiden shirt) and my father (baldy):


Then came the wonderful Screamfest in Sydney. Here I am pictured with immortalshadow666, MikeyC and OlioTheSmall:


Later at the same fest, we met Destroyer 666:


At the Destroyer 666 side gig in Brisbane some months later:


Me and Mikey some time thereafter at the house of InsolentHeretic near Melbourne:


The 2010/11 New Years period saw another gathering of the folks. Not pictured: Mikey.


Around the middle of 2011, a meeting with the lovely CrushedRevelation:


Just after the Blood Duster new years gig 2011/2012 in Melbourne:


And here's me on fire:


One from a few months ago with AtrociousMutilation in Sydney. Please forgive the memery here, it was added by Facebook 'tards.


Here I would upload some even more recent pictures of me hanging out with the guys from Macabre, but the photographer is a lazy cunt and hasn't given them to me yet. You'll just have to imagine them.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

Here are some fucking huge photos of myself. I don't know how to make the photos smaller, so I've put the photos in these nice little "spoiler" things so they don't take up too much room, or make me look like even more of a jackass.

Anyway, here is what I looked like when I was a little kid, probably around 2005-2006, when I was in 6th grade. I was raised on rock n' roll, but my favorite kind of music at this point was grunge. I didn't really care much about heavy metal, yet, but I went through a huge obsession with Nirvana and Stone Temple Piolets, in addition to newer bands like Chevelle, Staind, Days of the New, Creed, etc.


Eventually, I got bored with short hair, and decided to grow it out in 7th grade. I didn't end up with the look I planned, as my hair was much too curly, and I ended up with something of an "afro". During this period, I had discovered "metal", and was obsessed with bands like Tool, Coheed and Cambria, Eighteen Visions, and System of a Down. Forgive the idiotic pose and meaningless hand gesture. We were all 12 once.


My interest in that kind of music faded quickly, however. I soon found a copy of In Flames' "Colony" in my possession, and my path to metal was clear, but the downward spiral didn't really begin until the day I walked out of the mall with a copy of Napalm Death's "Scum". That album changed my life, and the rest of Junior High was spent listening to burnt CD's of bands like Darkthrone, Emperor, Burzum, Demilich, Forgotten Tomb, Lord Gore, Bethlehem, and Nokturnal Mortem, which a High School friend smuggled into the school via a girl we were both friends with. I still looked like a dumbass, though.



Then, I was a Freshman. I got more and more into death metal (Death became my favorite band, and I also got into Suffocation, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Decapitated, Deicide, etc.), but I started to have hair trouble around this time. I literally never combed my hair, ever, and I soon developed a Max Cavalera-esque monstrosity. You can't see the dreads in this picture (they were in the back), but I walked around like this for the better part of a year, like nothing was wrong, 'till I finally got self-conscious, and allowed my Mom to tear through it. I lost alot of hair in the process, but it all ended up fine.



At the end of Freshman year (2008-2009), I discovered another love: traditional heavy metal. I started with Dio's "Holy Diver", then found my way through King Diamond, and now, four years later, it is my second favorite genre of music (after death metal). Over the next four years, I joined a death metal band, recorded a full length, filmed a music video, and did lots of other cool stuff. There's not much else to document, because I have looked exactly the same, and listened to the same kind of music, ever since. And yes, Death is still my favorite band. Here are some relatively recent pictures of myself:



So yeah, that is my story.