Ah, yes, Mago de Oz was among my first metal bands, being a spanish-speaking metalhead and all, they are very popular among us, filthy south americans haha. And with Mago, Rhapsody and Manowar, Hermetica, but being from Argentina and liking metal makes that obvious. Over here, Hermetica is as popular as Metallica, maybe even more.

When i bought my first mp3 player i didn't know what to put on it. So my father introduced me to Meat Loaf. Soon followed Guns 'n Roses and after that Iron Maiden. My first metal songs I downloaded were The Trooper en Run to the Hills. Then the metal grew further to me. Now i'm really into Thrash metal. But Meat Loaf still has a special place in my heart

The first metal band I enjoyed? Megadeth. Dave Mustaine can make an ass of himself all he wants, but he'll never spoil his band for me. Too many good memories.

The first band that really got me into metal, though, was Dissection.

My gateway bands were as conventional as can be; Metallica and Iron Maiden. I had developed some lukewarm interest in hard rock previously and had bought some cd´s from Rammstein, Offspring, Creed, Nirvana and later Metallica. I was 12 years old (in my defense) and didn´t have a clue what heavy metal was. That all changed drastically when I discovered my uncle´s collection of Iron Maiden vinyls. There I found for the first time music I felt really passionate about, music I not only mildly enjoyed but found genuinely gratifying to listen to. I around this same time got into early Metallica as well and it all took off from there...

There always has to be that one guy who has to be a 'true metal crusader' to prove his worth or feel better about himself or some stupid shit. Your username is immensely childish by the way, bud.

Anyway, for me I'd say hard rock bands like Van Halen and Guns N' Roses really got interesting in heavier rock music and Megadeth and Metallica really sealed my love for metal. At the time I also got into some of the NWOAHM bands like Unearth, Shadows Fall, etc.

First metal bands I heard were Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne. From there I got heavily into Slayer and Megadeth, which have stuck with me to a degree. To be honest though, despite liking a fair amount of heavy bands it wasn't really until I discovered Symphony X that I became a true metalhead. For some reason I tend to think of them as the band that solidified me as a metal fan. Very quickly after I got into them I got into Dream Theater and Blind Guardian, so they were my trio of favorite bands for a while.

Ok dont laugh I come from Zambia where until recently rock was not a common thing then in 2002 I met a friend and he was into rock but mostly the alternative stuff that was floating around but I asked him for limp bizkit because of the song My way which I heard from wrestler Tripple H. So HE brought me chocolate starfish and some hotdog flavored water and I loved the album and also picked up some avril, aerosmith and lots of other alternative stuff. Then in college a friend came up to me and he was like since you like rock i got some stuff you can sift through and I did first thing to get my attention was metallica because i had heard of them and he had 3 albums ST Anger, load and reload. Load adn reload where in one folder so I thought it was just a compilation so I started listening to St Anger religiously and I loved it. Then I sought Metallica's early works and was blown away I realized that the albums I had were the weaker ones and from there my search for heavier sounds ensued. I found the likes of black sabbath, iron maiden, deep purple and anything heavy I can find. Right now I am a huge metal fun and its pretty much all I listen to other than classical music. My two favorite artists are Metallica and Iron Maiden


Metal Forever \m/

Iron Maiden and Metallica for me. My friend showed me "Master of puppets" and "Piece of Mind". I loved this.

Threads like this are good once in awhile. People's stories are usually surprising. Anyway here's mine:

As a little kid my parents played lots of Zeppelin and Sabbath, which I suppose gave me a taste for heavier/darker sounds.
When I was 7 or 8 I was completely obsessed with Def Leppard and Europe. I heard some Metallica, Slayer, etc from friends and loved it all. Around 91/92 or so I started trading dubbed tapes with people on Prodigy bulletin boards. I got tons of great stuff that way like Bolt Thrower, Morbid Angel, Carcass, Sinister, Malevolent Creation, etc. By the time I got to middle school I added in shit like Minor Threat/Black Flag/other beginner HC stuff. It's been downhill into the abyss ever since.

It started out with stuff like Black Sabbath Iron Maiden Metallica Megadeth etc.... then I listened to Scream Bloody Gore by Death and I changed. Then after listening to Death Metal a while I went into Black Metal after Burzum amazed me. Now I listen to mainly weird stoner experimental ambient doom drone and First Wave Black Metal along with most Black Metal. I just love First wave a lot.

Metallica for me, back in elementary school. Back then I discovered the Black Album through my father, and before you knew it I had that album spinning all day long. I still listen to it to this day.

When I started getting serious into music, I was into punk bands like The Misfits. That eventually got me into Danzig. Other than that, probably Iron Maiden. I also get into Slayer through the Beastie Boys. I can't remember in the slightest how I got into them though. My mother took me into a Metallica concert as a baby in order to pick up someone, apparently. I don't think that counts. Despite the fact they aren't metal, Linkin Park was pretty important in getting me into metal, despite the fact I liked by them was "In the End".

Iron Maiden. I was about 11 when I got No Prayer for the Dying (on tape, hah). Still got warm feelings for that album although it's not their best obviously. Wore the tape out completely. From then on I got into the more heavy stuff quite gradually: From Metallica (black album) to Sepultura, Slayer and other thrash bands, then Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and Death metal. I started to appreciate Black Metal and Doom only much later.

A lot of people don't consider them metal, but Waking the Fallen era Avenged Sevenfold was what got me into metal. As for a band that isn't debated, the first metal band I listened to was Iron Maiden.

I really dug that album too around the time it came out. Too bad A7X released nothing but shit afterward.

Metallica's black album, sometime in '92. I was at a friend's house and his metalhead relative was there, and I said something lame like "could you record some songs I'd like onto tape for me?" By "I'd like" I meant soft crap. He did so, but even the soft stuff off the Black album was enough to get me interested, and after a few more purchase (Rust in Peace and Kill Em All were early buys) I was hooked.

If you can categorise Faith No More as metal, then again they really have no category

Black Sabbath or Judas Priest.

My mum used to have some "heavy metal masters" or some shit compilation, but it was a good starting stone for my progression into metal.

I don't quite remember what came first, but I grew up playing Tony Hawk video games. That being said, they were mostly filled with any rock, punk and metal.
I know for one though that I listened to Blind Guardian, Iron Maiden and Kamelot. There were probably more bands though, but I can't recall them. That and of course, a bunch of nu-metal, seeing that was pretty "in" at that point.

Iron Maiden... 1990 - No Prayer For The Dying... was 8 years old at the time and listening to Guns N' Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi ect... Found the NPFTD cassette and fell for the cover art then was blown away with the music... been obsessed with Heavy Metal since... and although Maiden may not get regular plays these days NPFTD is still my fave Maiden album and does remind me of listening to that cassette on my shitty little walkman way back... fuck, 22 years ago, fuck me doesn't seem that long ago haha...

Black Sabbath.

My mom used to listen to them from time to time.

The very first Metal band I was exposed to was Metallica. From Metallica came Motörhead and the rest is history.

Hard to say what the first thing was... I grew up in rural MS though, so it's not like there's a whole lot of things it could've realistically been... My sister was (is?) obsessed with Dax Riggs though...

So I would guess Acid Bath was the first "legitimately Metal"/Metal scene-approved band I got into in the late 90's.
And then probably Dio/Dio-era Sabbath/Rainbow through my stepdad a few years after that.


PS: I think, more importantly, I dug up my sister's Grindcrusher comp tape (the longer version of it that Earache and Combat co-released, I believe).

That was where shit really hit the fan so to speak. That was unlike anything my middle school-aged brain had ever heard before (esp. stuff like Naked City)... Though, truth be told, I had been REALLY into REALLY froofy PM music only a while before that through my stepdad... Hella Freedom Call and Rhapsody and BG and shit like that, which I later became very disillusioned with, though I have learned to "re-appreciate" some of the music (and still enjoy certain old school/USPM stuff even now, including BG albums like Battalions of Fear).

First was Black Sabbath
then Metallica
Now Bolt Thrower

Mine is Iron Maiden.

I started listening to Iron Maiden when I was seven. A year later came Metallica to my life.

From what I could remember, AC/DC and Hatebreed were the bands that got me into Metal and Rock music when I was 12-years old. At the same age, I started to listen to the Music Choice: metal channel when we used to have comcast. The rest is history (excluding the fact that I once had a Metalcore/Screamo/Deathcore phase, but I quickly got over that).

In a manner of speaking, mine was Led Zeppelin, which apparently aren't metal enough to have a page here.
The way I got into metal was a show called Couchman. He had an episode on the so-called negativity of metal, satanic lyrics, suicide (James Vance was mentioned I think.)
The audience was full of long haired freaks. It was too cool. On the subject of suicide, Metallica's song Fade to Black was played. I was hooked. I have a funny feeling Necrotomy played live on that episode too.
My foster brother, who had the same name as my younger half-brother (they're really just both my bro's, each called Alex) had a copy of Ride the Lightning. He didn't really like much metal, and only thought Metallica were cool because they didn't dress like Poison or Motley Crue, ha!

Holy shit, I thought I was the only one!

I had tried a few songs from a large amount of metal bands (especially ones that were on the Tony Hawk games), but the first band I ever truly got into was In Flames's older stuff. I don't quite remember what band or bands came next, but pre-sellout era In Flames were my first heavy metal band.

It was Accept in 1986, Russian Roulette album, on cassette

Queen.
Now lets not get into the whole they are metal/they aren't metal debate.
I remember Rob Halford on Metal Shop was asked what his favorite metal tracks are.His number 1?
Liar from the first Queen album.
The thing is,I didn't hear that album until at least 5 years after I became a fan.
It was my older brother playing cassettes of The Game,Flash Gordon and Live Killers that made me fall in love with the band.

Being a kids brought up in the nineties, I was first exposed to both nu-metal and hard rock. The main five being Metallica, Kiss, ACDC, Sytem of A Down and Deftones (more so White Pony and onwards.) Although I wouldn't classify some of these proper metal they certainly tought me to appreciate aspects of it. Without Deftones I think it would take me a while to understand the atmospheric aspects of Black Metal and Post-Metal. Metallica's later works would eventually push me to explore their oldder stuff and firthermore making me dwell into thrash. And mum recounts me doing some sort of head-banging from left to right in rhythm of Rock and Roll All Night by Kiss made me head-bang as a baby But whatever I guess that was a bit of a tangent, and not really related but they were might gateways into metal.

It was when my mate showed me live footage of Iron Maiden playing The Trooper that I reslly got into metal. Particularly Motorhead, Mercyful Fate, Tyger of Pan Tang, Queen, Pink Floyd (more prog. rock, but I listened to them alot around my intoduction to metal) & of course Black Sabbath.

My first metal band was Black Sabbath when I was less than 10, but around 11-12 I really got into Slipknot and Metallica and finally upgraded to Autopsy at 13. I'd say Autopsy was my 1st dive into extreme metal.

The album that holds the distinction for being the first metal album I ever bought is Megadeth's "So Far...So Good...So What?!?" I bought that one back in 1988 when it was brand new. I was a dork in 7th grade. Megadeth was my favorite band at the time, and throughout most of high school, so I would have to consider Megadeth my very first metal band.

Around 2003, when I was 13 years old, I got introduced to Rammstein by a friend. I wasn't interested in music at all before that, and I listened to the almost exclusively for about 3 years, with a little Linkin Park period in between. Then in 2006 I met my first (and current) girlfriend, who hated Rammstein and suggested I should further explore music. I started listening to Slipknot and Killswitch Engage for a while, and around 2007-2008 a friend linked Metallica's Enter Sandman. I didn't like it at first, but for some reason I kept listening to their songs and really got into them. At that point I also explored the metal genre more, listening to bands such as Megadeth, Children of Bodom, Dimmu Borgir,...

Up until then, I downloaded nearly every album, except for Rammstein's Reise, Reise, Rosenrot and Volkerball. Early 2010 I went to the IRC channel of a Belgian website, where I met some other people who loved metal as much as I did. I remember it being sometime in March, and I saw Megadeth was performing in Brussels in June, playing Rust In Peace in it's entirety. Not having a decent way to get there, me and some of the guys I had met on that IRC channel decided to go together. A couple of days later I was in a store to buy some games, but they also sold music. I saw they had Rust in Peace and Peace Sells... for around €6 each, and as I would see Megadeth live (my first big metal show), I decided to pick them up.

We're 2 years later now, I have over 200 metal records, both on CD, vinyl and tape, and I'm still encountering new bands on an almost daily basis.

Probably Iron Maiden. But about a year ago I listened to "Chimera" constantly, so I get huge nostalgia listening to that album.

My parents played me Metallica songs when I was just 1 year old.

Like 2 and a half year ago my aunt showed Nightwish to me and I fell in love, don't listen to them anymore though. First stuff which followed was Epica, Xandria and HammerFall so mainly symphonic that time. Some months later I started to listen to a lot of Power and Heavy Metal, Melodic Death followed. Am not really into extreme metal sadly, trying to get into right now.

Bon Jovi actually. But really, when I was about 3-feet-tall, my sister got on a Bon Jovi - Have a Nice Day trip for weeks, and at the time I thought that was the heaviest music ever. Until I was maybe 15 I had never been into any music but I've always remembered that the hypeness I felt when I thought "Have a Nice Day" was heavy. So one day when one of my friends gave me his old IPod (which was mostly rap but there were some metal "samples" on it) I immediately dove into the metal. I thought that whatever was metal on it was godly regardless of quality, so for a while I was into Lamb of God, Machinehead and a few nu-metal bands, but after branching out I refined my musical tastes and heightened my standards.

You were 3 feet all in 2004?

Oops, turns out I was thinking of "It's my Life." (2000) And 3-feet was a rough estimate which in retrospect was really bad. I was 5 at the time, and as my dad used to tell me I was a "tall bitch," so I definitely wasn't 3-feet.