It was Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten. I was looking through Columbia House's catelogue on what to order and I just really really liked the artwork. Had no clue what it was or what it sounded like. Prior to that album I mainly had only listened to classical and probably a few months earlier had started listening to bands with really thick sounding guitars cause I started finding the instrument fascinating how different it could sound in all types of contexts, mainly those bands were grunge, Dinosaur Jr, Failure, Smashing Pumpkins, Bush, STP.... Suffocation just totally blew my mind and was instantly hooked on trying to always find more and more. This is also why I had always had a wide range of what I liked and listened to cause it wasn't any sort of gradual step into metal, just sorta enjoyed everything as I found it as an overall experience.

Was on a diet of mostly Iron Maiden and Megadeth when I first heard Necrotism(Carcass), and I loved the shit out of it. Prior to that I didn't like Slayer at all despite being exposed to them because it all sounded like noise to me(Disciple was the first song I'd ever heard). Carcass helped develop my taste for more grindy/brutal riffing styles.

I clicked just to make that joke. (Although mine was III Sides to Every Story)

I bought Niles "In Their Darkened Shrines" back in like 2002-2003, i'd only just found out what extreme metal was through the internet and i thought i'd buy it just because i wanted something brutal, i ended up hardly listening to it till i really got into death metal back in 2007 or so.

Funnily enough back when i bought that i was still listening to nu metal and stuff like Metallica.

I think the first time i remember hearing some extreme was probably with Slayers Reign In Blood, but one thing that always sticks in my mind is when i first bought Cradle Of Filth, Live Bait For The Dead album and i was genuinely laughing at how crazy the music was, now I fucking love anything extreme and find it almost funny how I was stunned by COF

When I first heard Master of Puppets as a kid that was totally extreme, escpecially since Motley Crue was like the heaviest thing I'd heard up to that point.

Heard Nuclear Assault's Survive not too long after that, and I heard nothing as fast as the song "Equal Rights" for a few years to come.

I remember Sodom's "Agent Orange" to be the nastiest thing I'd heard for a while.

First real "extreme" album would probably be Beneath The Remains for me, or maybe Realm Of Chaos. Probably was introduced to them in the very same week.

Probably the very first extreme metal band I truly loved would be Salt the Wound on their album Carnal Repercussions. I still remember hearing them and getting used to how heavy this was and how uncomfortable it was to hear extreme vocals.

Although before that I loved Cradle of Filth, but that's going back into when I was 14 years old. Their song "Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids" was the first CoF song I ever heard and it used to scare the hell out of me.

I started with Korpiklaani's Tales Along this Road, and then somehow that lead into Shape of Despair's Angels of Distress. what a jump lol

Summer of 2008 was when I finally forayed into extreme metal (after listening to tons of Nu Metal and Metallica forever), I believe the first extreme metal album I listened to was Doomsday Machine by Arch Enemy. I thought they were the heaviest thing in existence at the time, which lead to a good chunk of MeloDeath bands I listened to. I also bought one of my favorite albums of all time that summer, which was In The Nightside Eclipse at Best Buy of all places. From there it went into Deathcore, then back to Death Metal and now for the past two years Black Metal has dominated my iPod.

Venom's Welcome To Hell when I was in 7th grade. I'd been listening to Slayer/Metallica/Megadeth and a friend of mine from school showed me "Live Like an Angel/Die Like A Devil". I was hooked. Shortly after that the dudes at my local record store encouraged me to buy Cryptic Slaughter's Money Talks which became a real favorite.

"Black Seeds of Vengeance" by Nile. Unusually, I was well into my 20s when I first came across extreme metal. I think I heard "Defiling the Gates of Ishtar" on John Peel's radio programme and just being blown away by the chaos and fury. After the track played he said that they wrote lyrics in Babylonian, Assyrian or Sumerian (can't remember, but just thought that was a really cool thing to do)
So I went out and bought the album and loved it! I remember being really impressed with the artwork (I bought quite a few albums based on the artwork in those days when I didn't have a computer)

Slayer's Reign in Blood.

This shit kicks so much ass. And it taught me what a guitar solo was. =D

Hmm...?

Anyway, I heard Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult by Goatwhore from one of my music teachers in 8th grade. I had no interest in it, though, I was only laughing at the band name. The following year, for some reason I randomly looked up Goatwhore again, and after hearing more songs off A Haunting Curse, I was compelled to buy it (though I haven't had the money to buy it , and have found many other bands to this day, so my enthusiasm for the album dwindled down somewhat).

I had a mix cd with Amorphis and Thorns on it...that was my official introduction to "extreme" metal.

Well the first Metal album i heard was fear of the dark by iron maiden. At the time I thought that was extreme. But the first really extreme metal album i would be black metal by venom. The morbid tales by celtic frost is where i was like wow thats different. Though i generally just stick with my heavy/speed/power/thrash bands.

I believe the first extreme metal album I heard entirely was Twilight of the Thunder God in late December 2010

''Human'' - Death
It was the heaviest thing i have listened in that time, i was 14 or 15. Kinda scared about the sound, but it was awesome, and i became enamoured of the guitars at the first second.

I'd heard a lot of songs, but first full-length would have been Venom's "Metal Black" which I picked up on a bit of a whim, having only passing knowledge of the band. Haven't really looked back since.

Probably Sepultura's Arise. I found it back in South Africa in a pawn shop, and back then I had very limited internet and only knew the name was legendary, but that they had gone to shit, so I threw the dice (which was lucky cos if it had been anything after Arise I would have hated the band forever). Although by then my extreme metal cherry had been popped by the songs Black metal, Extreme Aggression and Walk with me in Hell (LOG), but Arise was the first whole album I digested.

My cousins album As The Corpses Rest, The Ghosts Collect by Plague Bringer. I didn't appreciate it at 14 but It was still the first I knew.

Wtf?

I know I had heard extreme stuff like Cannibal Corpse but never really stuck. I think my first two extreme albums I bought would have been:

Edge of Sanity - Purgatory Afterglow
Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse

My first extreme album was actually Dark Space I by Darkspace.

I'm not 100% certain but I remember Deicide's debut definitely being one that I listened to regularly upon moving on to the more extreme genres years ago. I was deep into Slayer and Sepultura and wanted something that had the themes of the former with the production of the latter (Schizophrenia through Arise) and riffing that was inspired by both. Floridian death metal obviously being a good place to start, it was a natural choice to make.

The first extreme metal album I heard was Cannibal Corpse's Tomb Of The Mutilated. I was already into thrash metal and was pretty big into that, so I just looked for something to increase the brutality a little bit. And it did it's job, lol.

Seeing the video for Metallica's "One" when I was a kid. Still gives me chills hearing the crescendo riff.