Any bands you have found and got really into later on, without actually having anything particular in mind?

Diabolique - Found them via MA's "Random Band" feature.

Rotting Sky - Found him via MA's "Random Band" feature.
Satan's Almighty Penis - I was bored one day and typed in "penis" into MA's search to see how many bands had it in their name, found it in the results among many. Decided to give them a try and I was very pleased.
Incantation - Was searching for "four arms" or something on Google images, saw Incantation's logo (how the fuck is Incantation related to four arms?) in the search and I don't know what possessed me to look into them.
Akercocke - YouTube's "Related Videos".
The Faceless - Music Choice: Metal channel on TV.
Cannibal Corpse - YouTube's "Related Videos". (First exposure to death metal)
Cradle of Filth - Music Choice: Metal channel on TV.
Wedard - Used Last.FM's radio thing. Really liked the song I heard by Wedard and looked into more.
Ved Buens Ende - Snooping through my friend's Last.FM library.
Aarni - Snooping through the same friend's Last.FM library.
Xasthur - Someone embedded "Screaming at Forgotten Fears" in a metal thread on Fur Affinity Forums; I gave it a listen and I was amazed. Probably my first dsbm experience and also my former #1 favorite artist.
Lifelover - Some guy commented on my Last.FM page about also liking Xasthur, I went to his page and saw Lifelover on his recent artists; looked interesting, tried them, became one of my favorite bands.
Mesuggah - Someone mentioned them in the YouTube comments of one song I was listening to.
A Day To Remember, Pierce The Veil, We Came As Romans and Bring Me The Horizon - My step-brother and his former neighbors wanted to go to a concert of these four bands. I never have been to a concert before so I decided to go just to go and see what it's like.

I will list more when I can think of more.

I just finished Atavist of Mann by Huata and liked it. Used the random band function after reading this until I found something interesting (just to post and for fun). I have done it once before, but I can't remember which band I discovered, or even if I listened to it more than once or twice.

You stumbled upon Cannibal Corpse? Wow. I wish I could hear Cannibal Corpse for the first time again... Nothing quite beats that.

Anywho, I once more or less stumbled upon a swedish death metal band called Bombs of Hades. I had downloaded their EP "Carnivores" from a torrentsite (and I believe the band had put it on there themselves), and let it sit in my harddrive for god knows how long. When I found it again in my death metal folder it was more or less love at first sight. Bought everything they made ever since.

Arcana. I'd never heard the darkwave genre before them and they helped to open me up to a vast amount of music.

I used to make a lot of random purchases, especially back in the 90's. The most spectacular finding IMO was Empyrium. T'was 96, maybe early 97 when I saw this pretty cassette of 'A Wintersunset', which I liked how it looked and the song names. Now they are one of my top 3 bands ever.

A notable 'accidental' listen was Hypocrisy - Osculum Obscenum back in mid 90's. Some guy was listening it from a tape recorder and I just asked what was that, so he made a copy of the cassette and voilá!

Yeah it was what got me into discovering more death metal and ultimately shaping me into the metalhead I am today.

Also, I updated the list with some more bands.



Hey that band looks really interesting and I'm going to check it out myself. thanks

Probably the major completely random one was Swallow the Sun. I saw The Morning Never Came on the shelf and was completely in awe of the artwork so I picked it up. I had never heard of them before and had no idea what to expect. I just loved the album cover.

I can't even count them all, but one of the most recent and better finds was ANCIENT BARDS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgG5cmTpxF4

Man, did I need power metal this good. Seemed to be a bit of a drought.


Some more good recent finds:

Dark Forest - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdZ3dwG_S34
Christian Mistress - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDz_kDzDgF8
Witchcraft - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfU7ZVnTIU
Vexillum - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMDFJr2CFxU
Last Empire - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBBkUioy3xI
Theocracy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3TsVaFR870
Vorpal Nomad - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJqojKMt4qg
Vortex - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8th5LnfgxY (band isn't even in the archive!)

Whenever I think about forming a band(I never do), I always think of a name first. I thought 'Drawn and Quartered' would be a pretty good name, so I made sure it wasn't taken already. Well, that's how I discovered 'Drawn and Quartered', and while I'm not a huge fan, I liked them enough to keep listening.

well, rather than just list a bunch of them ('cause some people get kinda pissy when all you do is make lists of bands..) I'll relate a couple experiences. A couple years ago, Boise used to have a metal show that aired on sunday nights called "Too Much Distortion." It was hosted on Boise State radio station by a guy named Justin Cantrell, but the show eventually ended up getting cancelled along with most student-run programs on that station. Cantrell was also heavily involved with setting up shows here in town and currently runs a venue here in town called "The Shredder." So anyway, that night he played a song by the Swedish band Enforcer on his show, and announced that they would be playing in town the following weekend, that he had set up. Well, the song he played kicked ass, I went to the show, and the band kicked ass- and bought not one but TWO CD's right then and there. The other CD I bought- was from the opening band Cauldron, who I also fell in "love at first listen."

Another incident- going to see High on Fire at a local club called Neurolux here in town, and opening for them was a band called Priestess- Never heard of them before, but they played some of the best classic heavy metal I had heard in years. Again, after their set, I walked out of the show, CD in hand, and a new band to really dig. I even told the guitarist at the merch table, "Thanks, you guys were awesome."

Same club, 10 or so years earlier, I had gone to see a local band called Adversives (melodic punk) who happened to be opening for a band called "Sweaty Nipples," who were the ex-Wehrmacht guys from Portland. Well, I thought the band had a stupid name, and would totally suck, but they didnt- they were in fact one of the best live bands I had ever seen or heard in fact. Loud driving pounding rock n'roll like Motorhead mixed with AC/DC but with better riffs. MORAL OF THE STORY guys: it's always worth going to live shows- never know what you'll discover.

Probably the only band which last.fm's radio service introduced me to, I randomly stumbled across Dormant Carnivore one day and was surprised by how good they are. They haven't released much (in their current style of music, at least, there's only four songs), but they're really quite nice - imagine a Russian version of Kraanium with every single thing about Kraanium turned up to 11. The vocals are absurd, the guitars are massive, the drum tone is absurdly trashy...they're just all-around very fun and heavy.

Not sure if this counts, but I blind-bought Mareritt's sole release from a seller here on MA (mostly because it was cheap as fuck and I'm poor), and over the year or so I've owned it, it's become one of my favorite black metal albums of all time. Mid-paced, dark, and starkly minimalistic, I think it's pretty fitting that their name translates to "nightmare" in English, since they're easily one of the most atmospheric BM bands I've ever heard.

Randomly stumbling across bands was how I got into metal for quite a few years, and ever after discovering metal forums it still took me years to refine my exposure to music beyond more or less randomly stumbling across bands or seeing their names mentioned.

After going to my first metal show when I was 14 or so, I was eager to go to the next metal show at the local venue. I had heard of, though I don't think I have actually heard Deicide at that point (they didn't show up), I knew Krisiun from a CM comp or download, and the opener wasn't even listed on the flyer that I saw - a local band named Mortician. That was a hell of a first impression.

I downloaded someone's "metal" folder on Napster when I was 12 or 13 and it included Gorgoroth's "A Sorcery Written in Blood" demo. The bouncy sound with the poor production of the demo was pretty groovy and I liked that a lot.

Aarni - I was searching for a weird psychedelic comedy doom metal band, and felt compelled to click on these dudes. I was amazed.

Hah! I actually stumbled across Aarni myself, via searching my friend's Last.FM library XD Aarni is probably one of the weirdest bands I ever heard, next to Ved Buens Ende.

Also, I thought Aarni is a one-man band?

Christian Mistress - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDz_kDzDgF8

THIS RIGHT HERE! Oh man, this rules. I guess I could say I just stumbled into this. Maybe not stumbled, but hey, good music!

Going to and playing shows seems to be the easiest way to stumble upon new bands for me. Tis how I got to like Stone Magnum, Dead Princess Black Unicorn, SoSayeth, DeathCult, and The Midnight Ghost Train among others.

Witchcraft did a split with The Sword and I otherwise would never have heard of them.
Not my newfound favorite band of all time, but still pretty killer find.

I had a good laugh when I saw them make a little cameo in Down's Diary of a Mad Band DVD, seem like typical jokester Swedes.

Well, I mean to to quote christian mistress. :/ Awkward

Too many to list, as diving blindly into a group I've never heard of before is basically my modus operandi for finding new music.

Another one I just thought about was Aborted. I saw Slaughter and Apparatus in my local recordstore and thought it looked pretty cool. However, they also had a CD by Abortion. Now here's the tricky part: I remembered one of my friends said that one of these bands was totally killer, but I couldn't remember whether it was Aborted or Abortion. Took a wild guess, and I ended up liking Aborted a lot.

off the top of my head... i found spearhead through youtube's related videos (can't remember from where i got there) and venenum i got in to after someone posted their fantastic album cover in one of the "cool album covers" -threads here... and i actually had to give venenum a couple of chances until i finally really got in to them (hearing the whole album as opposed to youtube clips helped)

A long time ago, before I was exposed to a lot of underground metal, I was on another forum, and a member posted This site, that had a bunch of obscure 80s metal releases to listen to. I just started browsing, clicking on names that caught my eye. Then I would check out the album artwork and song titles to see if I wanted to listen. I discovered 2 albums that blew my mind, those being Black Hole's Land of Mystery and Legend's self titled. (Black Hole being an Italian doom metal band, and Legend being a NWOBHM band). I found a couple more I liked, those being Black Knight's Master of Disaster and Mercy's Witchburner (Black Knight being USPM from Canada, and Mercy being Swedish doom metal-- and the band Messiah Marcolin was in before he joined Candlemass!)

Much more recent years, I found this similar site by way of the archives, and I discovered Emerald's Armed For Battle, which I really liked (Emerald being Christian themed USPM). Another one on that site I kind of liked was Blind Fury's Out of Reach (NWOBHM). Some listens I liked more than others. I should give it another listen some time.

Agalloch. A few years ago i was looking up Odal stuff, found their song with the same name and became a huge fan ever since.

The main guy (Markus Marjomaa) sometimes gets his brother (Sampo Marjomaa) to do clean vocals.

Then there is another dude that occasionally plays keyboards and drums.

Sacred Steel. I was youtube hopping from suggested video to video and came a cross one of their speed metal songs. Found their 2006 album, and EP and both are speed metal masterpieces. But with the dozens of bands that begin with 'sacred' I probably would never have found them any other way.

Bathory. I listened to Born For Burning and felt like I should check some more of their songs out and I did.

I was visiting Hong Kong in early 2010, and found Blutvial's "I Speak of the Devil" album in a music store in a mall. I looked at it, thought it could be interesting, and decided to pick it up. I love that album. Totally random. I picked up "Engram" by Beherit there, too. That wasn't so random.

To be honest almost all of the bands I've gotten into have been somewhat random - Only a minority of the bands I've gotten into have been through a process of going "Right. I need to listen to XYZ for the first time today, see what the fuss is." Much more often it's seeing the name somewhere random, and going "oooh, lets see what's going on there."

On the other hand, bands which I decide to listen to in a premeditated way do tend to have a better chance of being absorbed into my regular listening; a lot of the bands which I discover randomly, I listen to once, then am disinclined to do so again. There are exceptions, of course.

Graveyard - bought one of their CDs after getting them mixed up with Witchcraft. Fortunately they turned out to be awesome!

Earth and Om - found their albums at the library. Yes, the same kind of library you get books from (they also had some Aborted, Motorhead, and Type O Negative too)

Riiiiiiiiiiighhhht.

There is probably many bands I've stumbled across randomly, but I cant remember almost any of them. But one that I remember is Enslaved when I was 15 years old and heard 'Havenless' in Metal: A Headbangers Journey's Norway part. I had never heard anything like that before and that song pretty much got me into Enslaved, and eventually through Enslaved I started checking other black metal bands.

And another one is Mastodon. I knew the band, but always thought it was some generic nu-metal or metalcore so didn't want to hear any of their songs. But when I was visiting a friend of mine, he played 'March of the Fire Ants' from foobar and I really liked the song and realised how wrong I had been about the band. Though at the time I was starting to get more open-minded about music, so might be that I had not liked it had I heard it a year before.

The weirdest band ever and inspired me and my friends to write a death metal Christmas song.

Coffin Fuck
http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Coffin_Fuck/84286

I found that band via Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, with the song "Iron Tusk" that I really loved. Years later I downloaded the album it was on, but I don't care for anything other than that song XD

That's exactly how I discovered Enslaved. Havenless is still one of my favourite Enslaved songs.

I know that feeling! I remember coming across CC way back in 2000 in a friend's car. I still remember which song it was - 'Mummified in barbed wire'.

Some of the bands that I stumbled across them randomly (predominantly from the pre-internet/youtube days):

Iced Earth - I had gotten a mixed cd with no track listing. I used to listen to one track over and over again. It was only later that I got to know that it was 'My Own Savior' by Iced Earth.
Obituary - I remember there was a poster with a huge Obituary logo in the movie 'Airheads'. I looked them up and immediately purchased 'Back from the dead' (the only available album at the record store)

not sure if its a good thing but i recently discovered Van Canto and must admit really liked them i know that they have a sort of gimmick feel to their music but there is no denying that they are unique and i'm all for uniqueness in metal

Powers Court!
I didn't know much about them. I remember seeing the name on some metal site that wasn't MA. Comparisons were made to Iced Earth and Helstar but with a much more occultic style. I promptly checked them out and liked what I heard.

Im really digging Blood Feast. Check them out here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvSX45Hq ... el&list=UL

Allegaeon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObjzfqBvpf8
Someone mentioned these guys in a YouTube comment so I checked them out. I was not disappointed.

I found out about Cannibal Corpse in the early 90s when I went to the theater and saw Ace Ventura Pet Detective. I thought the singer of the band was supposed to sound like a dog because it was a movie about a pet detective. Now, I think Cannibal Corpse are the band that ruined death metal, but Eaten Back To Life steered me in the right direction.

As far as stumbling, eh I got into USA Pentagram before years before they became popular again with the Relapse compilation First Daze Here, one of my old snail mail buddies mailed me a package of CDs and zines he didn't want and there was Pentagram's Review Your Choices. I thought it was the worst shit I ever heard in my life so I threw it under my bed. Then a full year later with nothing to listen to I put it in my car and became obsessed with tracking down all their releases.

As far as literal stumbling I went to a show with Evil Army playing and thought they were going to be nu-metal, and ended up seeing the best young new school thrash band in existence, seriously you can keep your Municipal Wastes, these guys fucking mean it for real.

I don't consider youtoobin stumbling, just clicking on shit on the side, I find out about bands all the time that way, Order From Chaos is a new one for me.