Sometimes you'll hear a bands name or see a band photo and you'll say "Fuck that" and never give them a listen. Then years later for whatever reason you hear them and you regret not listening sooner.

I avoided Testament for over 20 years because I just assumed they were a Christian metal band.

Looking back to my high school days listening to metallica almost exclusively, I think I would've been digging Testament at the same time. For some reason I never knew a single person that listened to testament

Can't think of any specific bands but I remember I avoided the entire black metal genre because I couldn't stomach the 'shrieky' vocals compared to the death metal I was used to at the time.

I think it wasn't until Dissection's 'Storm of the Lights Bane' and later Satyricon's 'Nemesis Divina' came out that I finally became interested in black metal. Now it's my favourite genre haha.

I was really, unhealthily gung-ho on the whole "only extreme metal, fuck clean singing (except Iron Maiden)" thing when I was a teenager. As a result, when I first heard of Amorphis, without even listening to a single song of theirs, I dismissed them as sellouts and not worth my time just by learning that they started as death metal and became what MA calls "melodic heavy metal/rock" (I personally categorize their current sound as really chunky folk metal with death and progressive elements, but that's just me). Boy how fucking wrong I was. The moment I heard Thousand Lakes for the first time, I was hooked, and now they're one of my absolute favorite bands of all time and probably the single biggest influence on my own songwriting nowadays.

Moral of the story: 17 year olds believe really stupid things.

Not on the archives, but I avoided Tesla for a long time assuming they were a just a crappy hair band (one of their ballads I heard didn't help their case). Cut to maybe a couple years ago I hear Hang Tough on the radio and I actually liked it. Bought a few of their CDs. They're a weird case in that they're an 80s hard rock band but their best albums are from the 90s, as they actually got heavier.

I avoided Thin Lizzy for a very long time because I didn't like The Boys Are Back. One day I decided to get Jailbreak, and lo and behold, I liked it.

Also not on the archives, I avoided Creedence Clearwater Revival for a very long time because their radio hits are generally just ok to me. Once I finally started getting into them out of curiosity, I found that so many of their songs are so bluesy. If I had known they were this bluesy I would've gotten into them as a teen rather than waiting until my 30s. Thanks a lot, radio.

I avoided Judas Priest for a very long time because VH1 taught me that the reason they were so great is Breaking the Law and You've Got Another Thing Coming. I thought both of those songs sucked. There were two occurrences that got me to check out Sad Wings of Destiny. 1) I was watching VH1's Behind the Music episode on Megadeth, and in it Dave Mustaine said Sad Wings of Destiny was a "GREAT Judas Priest record" and I specifically remember him putting a lot of emphasis on the word 'great.' 2) There was another forum I used to go to where someone who was more into more underground metal than the average user said something like "70s Priest crushes the arena rock they did in the 80s." Because of these two occurrences I got Sad Wings of Destiny and I was absolutely floored with how great it is.

Again, not on the archives, I avoided Country Joe and the Fish because all I heard was the Fixin' to Die Rag and figured that was actually representative of his music, because any thing about Woodstock only showed him playing that one song. Well thankfully my dad introduced me to their debut album Electric Music for the Body and Mind, which is really good late 60s hippie rock. There's a song on it called Porpoise Mouth that I'm not entirely unconvinced is about vaginas, but it is such a beautiful song from a musical standpoint.

EDIT: Oh holy shit, how could I forget Rainbow! I knew of Rainbow's existence, from reading... something... I seem to remember reading about Rainbow in Dio era Sabbath CD liner notes, but that doesn't seem right, as I doubt any of those editions of the CDs I had even had any of a biographical nature... Anyway, I never bothered to check them out, for a couple reasons, the worst being is that in retrospect their name is kinda "gay", and also I figured, "Eh, there's no Iommi, so I probably wouldn't like it." On that same forum I talked about in the paragraph above about Judas Priest, another board member who loved the works of both Ronnie James Dio and Ritchie Blackmore encouraged me to check out Rainbow, when I was asking for solo Dio recs. I'm very glad I listened, as Rainbow became one of my top bands.

Avoided Candlemass just because of the name sounding silly. Then I was told to watch the Bewitched video. The total ham and rocking attitude had me hooked, and then I discovered how cool the rest of the album was, and just kept digging.

I would have to say Running Wild.

I avoided them as I found the whole 'pirate metal' thing a cheesy gimmick (still do if I'm honest), but I have a friend who is massively into them and after his constant badgering, I figured I'd finally give them a chance.

I managed to track down a copy of Death or Glory via eBay before the recent reissues that were released - turns out I got a Japanese press which I find pretty cool actually! Anyway back to the point... As soon as I pressed play and heard the rager of Riding the Storm I was hooked! The whole album is a classic from start to finish - Riding the Storm, Running Blood, Death or Glory, Battle of Waterloo to name just a few!

I have collected a fair amount of their back catalogue now thanks to the afore mentioned reissues and every album is stellar (especially Blackhand Inn).

Whilst the concept/gimmick may be cheesy, it's backed up by clever lyrics, great vocals and just simply brilliant song writing.

So in short, I now love Running Wild and only wish I'd checked them out a lot sooner than I did.

Not really the same as your story, but I was the same. When getting into metal, it was harsh vocals or nothing. Now that I'm in my late 30's, that has changed.

Paradise Lost. I remember I heard some stuff from "Believe In Nothing" (of all albums) came out and immediately assumed all of their discography was like that. Took me many years before I actually thought of checking out some of their classic albums. It was fun listening to Gothic for the first time, let me tell you that much. Now they're one of the bands I listen to most.

I also used to hate Twisted Sister because of their ridiculous image, which I guess is not a "really dumb reason", but it still has nothing to do with the music. I only knew "We're Not Gonna Take It", but eventually, I realized how good of an album "Stay Hungry" was.

I almost wrote off all death metal when I was 16 because I thought it was the same as deathcore stuff like Whitechapel and Job for a Cowboy circa 2007-09. That's part of a big reason I was such a huge thrash nerd, I thought it was the only true way.

I didn't necessarily avoid Rainbow, but I had precisely zero interest in checking them out for eons because I just don't give the tiniest shit about 70s rock, and despite the lineup they boasted during the Dio era I had always assumed they were just any old 70s rock band with Dio presumably wasting his talent. I actually didn't even bother listening until a few years after Dio died, when I named my fantasy football team "Dwayne Bowe Rising" and got called out for not actually knowing any songs from the album

For many years I thought that Rock 'n' Rolf is a cringeworthy artist name and his hair style was... yuck. So I didn't listen to Running Wild.
Anyway RW is one of my favorite bands nowadays, I listen to at least one album every week.

Two of the biggest names I outright avoided over silly reasons were Iced Earth and Blind Guardian. When I was in high school, I was in a band with a friend that went absolutely nowhere, and I hated it after the first like month because of how inefficient and unpracticed we were. My friend, who essentially owned the band, was HUGE into Iced Earth and Blind Guardian and wanted to sound objectively like them at every turn, especially IE. The longer I stayed in the band - my own fault of course - the more I really began to dislike a lot of things he was doing, and therefore I could not listen to either of those bands without thinking of him and his stupid antics, so I just completely avoided them and also ragged on their music, despite having not heard it. Eventually, after the band was said and done and I had moved on, I gave both bands a chance and quite liked what I heard after all. Sometimes I still think about that band situation, but it doesn't actively deter enjoyment like it used to.

Cradle of Filth due to their "joke reputation". Im not really big into their old stuff or the vocals, but I really like the recent albums.....

Avoiding Testament for 20 years just because of their name? I guess some of the album titles weren't a clue lol.

I'm going to crucify myself here, but from 1999-2016, Bolt Thrower.

I don't even know why. I think it had to do with the album art work and the bands of the albums "In Battle There Is No Law!" and "Honour - Valour - Pride". I thought they were going to be a Manowar w/ cookie monster vocals. (which now, even if that WERE what they sounded like, I think I'd be fine with that.)

I never saw any album titles.

Thin Lizzy because Metallica's cover of Whiskey In The Jar gave me the impression that they were an awful AOR band. They aren't AOR, James is just a vocalist who is terrible at emoting.

There's also plenty of other bands I avoided because I wrote them off as clones (Testament as a Metallica clone, Queensryche as a Maiden clone, etc.)

Opeth. Not sure what I heard and when but for some reason I never checked them out again when really most of their albums are pretty neat.

There was a period when I wouldn't listen to Obituary, because I thought it was stupid that John Tardy doesn't use real lyrics . Granted, that wasn't very long, maybe less than two years - if I recall correctly, I was swayed as soon as I heard the "Frozen in Time" CD (which says a lot about how blown away I was when I heard their classic material) . It was similar for Overkill, I thought Bobby Blitz just sounded weird and goofy and had no idea how anybody could listen to that. Eventually, I guess I understood that the appeal is the sheer energy and passion of his voice, like a metal version of Bon Scott, rather than how menacing or "evil" he is (at least, after the first two albums). Today, he's without any doubt my #1 thrash vocalist, both in the studio and live.

King Diamond and Iron Maiden immediately come to mind. Back in the day i never could get used to King Diamond´s high pitched vocals and just found them to be utter hilarious and almost slapstick. Thus i avoided his albums for years untitel about 2015. The same goes more or less for Iron Maiden. I just thought that Bruce his overblown operatic vocals were too ridiculous for words. You´re in a metal band for christ sakes. Why would you want to sound like you are at the opera house doing Otello? That´s why i probably still prefer Di´anno over Dickinson.

Mind you i still prefer the more screeching, rougher, imperfect vocals nowadays. But in the last 2 years i also learned to appreciate the 2 above mentioned artists. With King Diamond it just somehow clicked it afer a while and with Iron Maiden i slowly grew accustomed to Bruce´s vocal style to the point where i found it to be tolerable.

Generally speaking if you first heard Opeth after they blew up you'd hear the combined sound of their cloying pretentious FANS and the hateful whining of those who aren't fans long before you actually heard their music. People seem to either love or loathe them and neither side ever shuts up about it.

Manowar is the best example that I could think of. Their image and lyrics are just so off-putting in almost every sense of the word, and I thought that every song would sound like the track Kings of Metal (which I found incredibly boring and "cringey"). I finally gave them a chance late last year, and I've been hooked on their first seven albums since. No masterpieces by any means, but there are some genuinely awesome music tucked away between unecessary bass solos and their awkward self-indulgence.

Maybe not a "dumb reason" per say, but I missed out.

I avoided Sigh's albums after the first for a long time because multiple people whose taste and judgement I respect said they were bad. Did eventually check them out and liked quite a few of them, found the descriptions I had been given that sounded bad were based in legitimate observations but quite exaggerated from my perspective. Guess the lesson is have faith in people but always verify.

That's gotta be Axel Rudi Pell for me. I always thought it cringy to give a band your own name, especially if you don't have a beautiful name. I thought that was so stupid that I never even checked the band out. I checked out Into the Storm by coincidence and was hooked. Since then, I have listened to and liked several of his albums.

Another example is Anvil. I read a few articles about them and thought they were playing closed-minded old school metal for hopeless nostalgics. Plus, the band photos made Lips look quite ugly. A few years back, I decided to give them a chance and attended one of their concerts when they came to town and was convinced how energetic and energizing they really were.

I might also mention Annihilator. I listened to one or two songs in the past, didn't like them at all and always called them overrated when someone mentioned them on a different forum. Turns out that the songs I listened to were from some of their very worst records about a decade ago or so. When I stumbled over the promotional single for Feast, I liked what I heard, bought the special edition of the album that also introduced me to the band's back catalogue and am a huge fan since then.

I used to avoid any band with “666” in its name but after I discovered how good destroyer 666 and raped god 666 were I stopped giving a shit about bad band names (I still think it’s silly to name a band “666 whatever” tho). Also, I used to

The poster above couldn't escape Satan's Hammer. R.I.P.

Not really the same thing, but I used to avoid Sentenced and Katatonia for a while due to the gothic metal/depressive rock tags. I assumed it were just the bands demo's that would have been much more extreme or something. Silly me.

I definitely avoided Dimmu Borgir due to the stigma associated with them back in the day and only just recently got around to checking them out. I've only listened to a couple albums in full but Enthrone Darkness Triumphant really blew me away on my first play through.

I also avoided listening to Lamb of God for a good decade due to my blind hatred of core derivatives along with negative fan associations. I listened to Sacrament and As The Palaces Burn recently and to my surprise, they're not total dog shit. They're just boring.

This is super lame, dumb and kind of embarrassing but I basically avoided the classic 80's metal bands like Maiden and Priest and Scorpions when I was first getting into metal, because the production didn't smack me as hard as the "cutting edge" power metal and melodeath I dove into. Stuff by Dio and Kreator were the first 80's bands I got into and it sorta fell into place as the years went on. Fates Warning and Queensryche and Thin Lizzy ended up being paramount in shaping my music taste through my late teens/early 20s. And of course, I ended up becoming a proper Maiden/Priest fan in the end.

I always just dismissed Mr. Bungle as just some silly joke band wasting Mike Patton's talents. But I finally gave them a proper chance with an open mind and it clicked with me. California in particular is an absolute masterpiece. I think it has the perfect mix of experimental and straightforward songwriting. It's probably good they broke up after it because I doubt they'd ever be able to top it.

Note: I'm still not 100% into Disco Volante as that one is sooooo crazy, but I think I'll get there at some point. Just the fact that album came out on a major label is incredible to me.

Fantômas also falls in this category as I never gave them a real chance and like Mr. Bungle, just dismissed them as experimental crap wasting Mike Patton's talents. But I can't believe how good some of their stuff is, in particular the self titled album and The Director's Cut.

Europe. Eventually checked out Wings of Tomorrow and that changed.

Avatar i dismissed because of how silly they look and from a few people they mentioned they sounded nu metal but then I gave Feathers and Flesh a listen and I really enjoyed it. I actually just saw them a few nights ago and I have to say they put on one helluva live show. Very talented band and while I enjoyed their new album Avatar Country I felt it was a bit too short. But still a very creative band and I actually prefer their last 3-4 albums compared to their early work.

Not metal but I really like HIM. My main problem was when I first heard of them back in 2004 or 2005, they were promoted all the time on the Viva La Bam and I decided to give them a chance, but I heard Wings of a Butterfly and I dismissed them because I thought they sounded wimpy and lame (plus their fanbase is really annoying). About 10 years later, I was more into Gothic/Doom metal bands and many people told me to go back and listen to their first album Greatest Love songs Vol. 666 and I instantly loved it, then I decided to go back and listen to their entire catalog and I actually consider them one of my favorite alternative goth rock bands. While I still think their fanbase is a bit lame, I take them with a grain of salt and just enjoy their albums.

Non-metal = Coldplay. Cause "you know how I know you're gay..." from when I was in high school. Even if I secretly liked a couple songs. Now I dig them, dgaf.

Metal = King Diamond. Not Mercyful Fate, but KD. I believe it was because for some reason I thought the less evil KD stuff paled to the dark MF stuff. In actuality, the shit is interchangeable, but my teenage self never understood that. When I heard the first two MF albums in 2007 I could have also been listening to even more of the same with KD's 80s stuff. I had to wait until 2013 when I was in my late uni years to be like, "what was I thinking".


For a long time, any female-fronted band that wasn't Arch Enemy or Draconian I didn't listen to cause "female vocals are pop shit". I thought that dunderhead bs for so long that it deprived me of great music from a wide range of genres. Even in electronic music I'd be going "this chick is ruining this song". It was a really dumb mentality. In general, it was in 2013 that I opened up completely. I think it was seeing Delain's April Rain one day and eventually listening to it that started opening me up.

Another was practically anything 'core. Metalcore, deathcore, even hardcore. I was against it on purely elitist grounds. Same deal, 2012 came around when I tapped into Underoath's (who ironically were one of the major players making me hate the genre) later works then going really deep in 2013 with bands like Erra that made me rethink the entire genre's spectrums.

To/Die/For - you can probably guess why. They have a terrible name, look like an emo goth band, and I probably heard their covers of pop songs as a teenager. Well, they are a really cheesy goth band, but I found a bit of teenage goth girl in me and I can now enjoy their emo goth disco metal albums and pop song covers.

Even this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wp2qpl1sYc

For me it was Aerosmith. KISS, and some of the early grunge albums.

In the case of Aerosmith and the early grunge albums, I was a young teen when Get a Grip and the Seattle scene took off in the early 90's, and I hated it and blamed it for ruining my Saturday nights watching MTV's Headbangers Ball. This was before the internet and if you wanted exposure to new metal music and videos you had to watch that show and hope that they played the heavy stuff. You got treated to the odd Morbid Angel, Napalm Death, or Slayer video every so often, but by the early 90's thrash was dying off and increasingly crap like "Living on the Edge" and "Smell's like Teen Spirit" were taking over the Countdown to the Ball. I wanted to barf when those videos came up.

Fast-forward to the mid 2000's and I hit my 30's and I mellowed out enough to give those 70's Aerosmith albums a chance. While I still hate their annoying post 80's output, their 70's stuff such as Get Your Wings, Rocks, and Draw the Line is really great. I also am still not a fan of Nevermind, but Bleach is absolutely amazing and I really missed out not being into Soundgarden and AiC when they were in their prime.

For KISS, I always thought they were silly and not a real band. But around 10 years ago I bought a Hotter than Hell record because I thought it had an evil looking cover and the music inside is really good. Their first three albums are very charming and from those it became apparent to me why they were able to become so popular. I still don't care for much past Alive though.

It also took me awhile to get around to Def Leppard too. Garbage band after Pyromania, but their first two are great as well.

Oh yeah. KISS was a late sell for me. Awesome fuckin band.

I was going to say that The New Order was one of those horrid MoP clones, although, some one had provided an explanation in a review as to why Testament had all of that melodic nonsense on it; just checked the review–it's your own review. LOL

Dani Filth just did a recent interview on Isreali radio, which is a pretty good listen.

Funny how he looks like a goofball on the blabbermouth link, but I found his opinions to be spot on.

Deströyer 666 - thought the band name was silly, I was wrong, they make the best music ever made below the equator.

All black metal bands with corpse paint. Avoided black metal for a few years, but then I discovered bands like Immortal.

Had the same feelings about Mr. Bungle but it was Disco Volante when it clicked with me. By the time Fantômas came around I already had an open mind towards them.