Just curious if there's any bands/albums that people couldn't stand when they first heard them but grew on them after. Mine was kreators pleasure to kill it took me so many listens to get into it but now I love it.

Most of the 80s extreme metal for me...Dunno what it was, but I guess it was that I was so used to the cleaner, more modern production when I was getting into metal.

King Diamond for me. I just couldn't get into his falsettos for the life of me, but after a while I've grown to love not only his vocals but his music as well.

I had a hard time getting into mercyful fate as well it wasn't until I got I got a bit older I appeciated their weirdness, not a big fan of kings solo stuff though.

Cancer Bats, Destroyer 666, Children of Bodom, Iron Maiden, and 1349. Sometimes I instantly 'get' bands and what the music is trying to say, other times it takes a bit of acquirement and reading-up about past albums for that same instant acknowledgement.

Neurosis and the Dillinger Escape Plan. I actually did't like these two bands at all when I first heard them. But I kept going back because I was sure there was something there. Glad I did because now they are two of my favourite bands.

Definitely agree with Neurosis. I instantly liked their more accessible songs, but the rest took a while for me to really comprehend. Some of my favourites like Cobalt and Dystopia took a while for me to like. At first I knew there was something special, but wasn't yet fully acclimatized to a harsher sound, and for that reason it took a while for me to fully understand what they were going for. Sometimes more textured works still take longer for me to fully get into (it took quite a few listens before I grew to love Antediluvian's debut).

Judas priest was one of them. At the time I was a huge maiden fan and also love a bunch of power metal but priest's vocals where always too high pitch for me. But after away I started to really like those to super high range vocal and then the band started to click. And also Black and Death metal took away too. Bathory was my gateway to extreme metal. So they kinda helped. and for awhile I didn't like megadeth or slayer but still like a lot of other thrash bands, but after awhile those early albums started to click to me.

Old school death metal in general was one for me, but in particular the early At the Gates albums took a long time for me to appreciate even after I figured out OSDM. I kept going into The Red in the Sky is Ours with the same expectations I had for Swedeath/Slaughter of the Soul, and I just couldn't figure it out. Then, someone compared it to Nespithe by Demilich, an album that I already loved, and I relistened to it with that in mind. It clicked pretty fast, and With Fear I Kiss... came soon after.

Oh, yeah! I bought Hellfire years ago and hated it. Now it's my favourite album from them.

Pretty much the same thing for me (except for being a fan of power metal). I've finally come to appreciate them and do dig some Priest now, but it took me a hell of a long time.

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Not sure why, but originally it was Suicidal Tendencies for me. I think they were the first crossover thrash band I listened to and I didn't take to it at first. Now, though, they are probably one of my favorite bands.

Mercyful Fate is always the first one to come to mind as it took me months to get a feel for their style but it seems like it took even longer for me to get into the style on Death's The Sound of Perseverance. A few other bands that took a while to like were Alice In Chains, Pain Of Salvation, Nevermore, Mastodon, and Savatage.

I have now realized that I don't have as many problems with acquired tastes these days. Am I just getting used to different styles or just not challenging myself anymore?

Transilvanian Hunger for sure it took me a while to appreciate and understand what it was about

Old School Death Metal, probably because of the production. I had to give many listens to Morbid Angel's Blessed Are The Sick.

1349, definitely. I'm still not too crazy about them. It's weird, because I really like most artists similar to 1349, but for some reason they don't really click for me. I can appreciate a number of their songs and they've sort of grown on be, but only rarely do I really put them on. I think it's because their sound is a bit too treble and mechanic sounding.

The taste I acquired that got me into metal: Metallica's Ride the Lightning. Back when the Black album came out, I was into hard rock, but a friend got me into Enter Sandman and Wherever I May Roam. I asked my parents for a Metallica CD and they got me RtL, which was way faster and heavier than the Black album and anything I was used to. It grew on me though, and I started to really love it, while my friend never got past the Black album and still listens to only hard rock and such to this day. I guess that makes me a metal fan for 22 years.

Tastes that I've noticed other people don't get: Symphony X - you really gotta love both classical and power metal to enjoy this stuff.

A taste I'm trying to acquire: Black Metal. There are a couple songs I enjoy now, but it's a slow process. I'm finding it very difficult to acquire.

Hm, I'm sure a few people could help you in the black metal thread. See, I got into metal from my love of classical and jazz, so I actually started with bands like gorguts and crypstopsy, and got into power metal through dragonforce, but was drawn much more to the more classically influenced bands.

I have two bands. First is Tyr. I always liked the vocals, but the riffs took me a really long time to get used to. Their style involves a lot of riffs that are melodic and progress for a really long time, and don't resolve quickly, and when they do they often don't do so in the clean, overtly melodic way that you would expect them too. It took me about as long as I've been into metal to 'get' them and it finally clicked just a year or so ago. Deeds of flesh is the other. I took an early liking to most brutal death metal, since most of it has some tech riffs, or slams, or just a really strong sense of groove. Deeds doesn't really have any of these. They use dissonant riffs, but not to the extent of say a gorguts or dso where it becomes the focus of the band and enough to hold your attention, deeds uses it more to convey an atmosphere of being lost in a maze and to cook riff salad. Just made sense to me in the past month.

Portal and Electric Wizard were the first bands that sprung to mind, I kept hearing great things and tried them out a few times and really didnt see the appeal, but then eventually they just clicked, now I'm a big fan of both (and still view Wizard at Damnation fest last year as the best live performance I've seen). Same goes for many bands and styles, particularly the heavier genres of metal all took some tries to get into, though I found a love for all of them in the end.

Show me someone who actually liked portal at first listen and I'll show you a liar!

Me. Though by the time I heard them I was already a fan of experimental metal.

All I know is that when I first started listening it was a total headfuck it took me so long to get my head around it, if I was looking to leave something on in the background portal would be the last thing I think of!

I guess I'm a liar then. But I agree, they are an acquired taste. For me though "Angel Rat" by Voivod. I was in a second hand store and picked it up cheap. At the time the only other Voivod album I was familiar with was "War and Pain". It was so different that I thought it was a different band with the same name. Upon the first listen I was disappointed, but now it's amongst my favourite progressive metal albums.

Suffocation's "Effigy of the Forgotten" and "Breeding the Spawn". Those were two very "dull" sounding records when I heard them for the first time ten or twelve years ago and I had to work my way into appreciating them for what they are. They're still not nearly my favorite death metal today and I especially don't like the vocals on EOTF, but now I "get" what the band accomplished there and how important those records were for their genre.

Still, even after ten years and dozens of playthroughs, I struggle to keep any of those songs in mind (except for "Liege of Inveracity", that one's catchy as hell), so those albums will never be my absolute favorites...

Danzig - I was never into punk, so I didn't know who the Misfits were. But a buddy of mine wanted me to listen to Danzig I while we were on our way ice fishing. Thought it was the stupidest shit ever, and that Danzig was a lousy singer. It wasn't until Danzig IV that I changed my tune.

Mortician - When I bumped into Hacked Up For Barbeque, I was a full-blown metal snob. Lack of talent, drum machine, Will's vocals, etc. The horror clips were more interesting than the songs themselves. It was easy to turn my nose up at these guys. But after a while I developed a taste for their full bore simplistic brutality.

Same for me actually!

Mercyful Fate, King Diamond... I wasn't really a big fan because of the vocals.

I'm appreciating this stuff more and more.

Mr. Bungle's "Disco Volante" and Mercyful Fate also.

most doom metal sounded empty to me, then I found Ahab and funeral doom kicked me in the nuts
now im fairly loving the genre and i apreciate many bands, even the early classic heavy incarnations.
Same with black metal, at the very begining i couldnt stand burzum or maynem, then mutiilation,
carach angren, emperor and taake came into the scene and changed my view.

Metal.

Most great music is something that doesn't grab me right away.

Does anybody else find it much easier to get into a band if you step back and try to get into their earliest material? I first heard Rotting Christ when I was really in the mood for Norsse black metal and I was not impressed with Thy Mighty Contract. "It sounds like Metallica', I seem to remember thinking to myself in my naivete. It wasn't until I heard the Satanas Tedeum demo that I finally started getting into the band.. SImilarly, the first manilla Road album I listened to was Out of the Abyss....I thought it was pretty cool but nothing too spectacular. It wasn't until listening to [i}Invasion[/i] and Metal that I became interested in following their progression and really got where they had gone/what they were doing later.

I've had some cases of albums going from "okay" to "AMAZING" in my books, the biggest ever being probably Pain of Salvation - Scarsick, but I don't think there has ever been anything I enjoy now that I couldn't stand at first. Everything that I like to any extent made me at least a bit curious at the first listen.

Outre by Portal was one that I saw people raving about but couldn't get into until after multiple listens.

Mercyful Fate/King Diamond also took me a while until the vocals grew on me, I especially love MF's album, Melissa now.

Deathspell Omega took me a while to click with, but now I can't get enough, they're one of my all-time favorites now. Same thing with Anaal Nathrakh, the vocals were off-putting initially, but I looked into them again months later and am completely obsessed.

You hated something Mikey?

For me it was Psycroptic in their Chalky era, couldn't stand those burp-like vocals. Now I love them. n.n

Aside from relatively obvious stuff like Portal and brutal death metal, Motörhead were a band who surprisingly took me a really long time to finally appreciate. Something about the straightforward rocking approach to their metal didn't appeal to me until recently.

Black metal and drone in general were acquired taste for me. I started out liking very black metal bands, the only real black metal band I really liked from the get go was satanic warmaster because their riffs were just really catchy to me, the rest of the bands I liked were either viking/pagen metal or ambient/ shogaze-black/ progressive bm. I was very bored when I listened to bands like mayhem, emperor, early enslaved, ect. for some reason. It wasnt until this past year that I really started liking them a lot more. Drone is the other genre that took me a while to fully appreciated. I always like boris, but their drone songs at first bored me to death, as did sunn O))) and earth, but then I started liking it more and more. I think droneil -final- and absolutigo are the gateway albums for me in terms of drone.

Yes, but I like to talk about things I like rather than dislike.

Although, Chaly-era Psycroptic I still can't get into. Those vocals, man.

For me the biggest bands were ones that took me as long as I've been listening to this style of music to finally get into. Burzum and Helloween are the two biggest ones, I laughed really hard when I heard the first Burzum LP on how anyone could take such awful musicianship seriously. I can see the charm in it though, even though its shit compared to what would come afterwards. Det som engang var really got me into everything else, keeping in mind that I was already quite fond of his ambient work and I see Umskiptar as a good album. Overall, Burzum have aged the most gracefully of the Norwegian bands, without turning into complete shit like Suckthrone or making cock rock songs like Satyricon.

Helloween in particular Keeper of the seven keys pt II and some songs off of Walls of Jericho, made me re-examine their work after throwing my copy of the Dark ride away. Great vocals and memorable hooks is all that really matters when it comes to their stuff, sure they're garbage when compared to Blind Guardian but I can appreciate their stuff a little more.

King Diamond- originally hated the vocals, but got a couple albums as 'filler' from bmg a LONG time ago(I think it was house of god and voodoo). Much better now.
Mortician- originally heard Chainsaw Dismemberment and thought it was just way too distorted. I eventually got Hacked Up for Barbeque and loved it.
Dark Funeral- originally heard Secrets of the Black Arts on that metal blade compilation and it hurt my ears. I ended up getting Diabolus Interium, mainly cause I was a sucker for the evil stuff and it really grew on me.

Mine is Meshuggah, thought it was bullshit stuff but it eventually grew on me and I've seen them since live which was pretty killer.