Hi guys Metalstormer ! We all metalhead have having time listening to metal for beginning start and having come so far as now. As everyone has our own metal journey timing enjoying metal music, and your bands and genres having evolution going till now. Its very interesting to see your metal evolution and journey.

Ill do first, ex:

2002,I started with Metallica, Hammer Fall, I listened to Metallica but got into more of power metal. So 2002: Power metal, HammerFall, Helloween,
2003: Some Savatage, Rhapsody, still power metal, Stratovarius
2004: first time I touched Black Metal, so Dimmu Borgir, Mayhem, Dark Throne
2005: black metal, Suspira, power metal like Sonata Artica
2006: Chidren of Bodom, Wintersun,melodic black like Catamenia
2007: I do did touch some famous heavy metal like Iron Maiden, Manowar, but I dont like that much.
2008: I have evolved from power metal to extreme power metal, some black metal.
2009: I finally touch doom, I think doom is greatest beautiful music.. a lot of doom band I like, cant list...
2010: life is hard I no longer listened or having time to dig metal. sence and bands anymore.
2011: some Metaliica.
2022: now I back to metal and I now dig a lot of progressive band. its good. Riverside, Poem, Dream Theater..

How about your interesting metal career : ) ?

1996: Bought best of the beast, spoilt by NOTB, Trooper, Aces High, 2 minutes, etc. all in one album, stupidly thought every single metal album was this awesome, and this was just a regular release by IM.
1997: Bought Ozzmosis, it was ok. Man in the mirror was good. Bought Use your illusion 1 (and not 2!), really liked the 3 hit songs, but hated everything else.
1998: Tried Mechanical Animals. Just no.
1999: Limp Bizkit Sginificant other. I liked it (no shame) I had completely worn out my BOTB CD by this point.
2000: Brave New World. Final metal album of my childhood. I loved it.
2001: Hybrid Theory. Everyone was listening to it. Listened to it so I had something in common to talk to girls about.
2002-2019: Euro-dance, then Pop, then very quickly, no music at all. Even when I hit the gym with my wife, she'd be blasting Rhapsody (of fire), but I'd turn the music off and bench/squat/deadlift in complete silence (very weird, I know)
2019: Spotify subscription. First category up was metal. The first few songs I listened to were GNR and Iron Maiden.
2022: Bought wife a vinyl player. Now I have a whole bunch of Maiden albums. The only other new band I've tried and liked is Def Leppard.

Biggest change was that I used to hate somewhere in time, but now I like it.

Don't think I've progressed at all in terms of taste. The stuff I liked in 1996 is the same stuff I like today.

We have grown through our love of music from this :

To this :

It's been a hell of a ride !

I wasn't into metal my entire life but I had my episodes. Twenty years ago my school friend borrowed me The Tower - Swan Princess. I liked it a lot (and still do). In those years I was listening to the bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Slipknot and Fear Factory (now I think they suck hard, maybe except FF). After school I switched to electronic music (dnb, ambient) and videogame/ movie soundtracks. And it stayed that way for many years. Then I had some experience with Nordic Folk (like Wardruna) and progressive rock. I don't know why, but one year ago (I was 39) I decided I need something more powerful. I tried hard to to get into Meshuggah and it worked. I loved it to the point that I was going to sleep with the heapdhones playing loud. I thought they are the best in the world and that they are the only metal band I enjoy. Then I did some research and now I know it isn't true, for both statements.

When I was a kid back in the 90's there wasn't internet, so there were way less possibilities to learn about different bands and genres. I think local bands such as Children Of Bodom, Nightwish, Moonsorrow and Finntroll were my gateway drug. In the early 2000's to 2010's I got into thrash metal and classic 80's stuff like Savatage. Next phase came all the old school death metal goodness and then in the 2013 and forward all the progressive stuff, I was a student in a university back then. 2018 I started moving back to the old favourites, but now I got more curious and started listening to all kinds of pop and rap music I had missed during my lifetime. Right now I actually enjoy nu metal, the one genre I never bothered to even try out back in the day because of all the hate.

Despite my taste changing (or evolving) over time I have never given up my favourite albums and artists even from the early days, I just got more of them now and from genres I didn't even think were any good to begin with until I decided to challenge my prejudices and check them out.

Pre metal (elementary school before 7th grade):
The first things my parents had on CD that I listened to were Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, and George Michael. I listened to Aerosmith Gems on repeat. Also got a hold of Eminem slim shady LP and listened to that a ton.

First Metal Album (7th grade, 2006 ish):
Edguy - Hellfire Club. My dad took me to Best Buy and I picked this CD. Don't remember why it was kind of random. I still remember listening to The Piper Never Dies in my living room. Still a great album.

Early Discoveries in metal (8th grade and 1st yr high school, 2007/2008):
So I was playing World of Warcraft and some guy in our guild recommended me "Alive Or Just Breathing" by Killswitch Engage. I remember listening to it and not being ready for screaming vocals yet. But that was a key moment for me because then I started looking for other metal that I liked. I used FrostWire to download a bunch of music and got exposed to a bunch of stuff. I remember hearing Children of Bodom, System of a Down, Wintersun, and Nightwish. There was this band and they had this album called "Martial Arts". It sounded like power metal with very fast keyboard playing. I googled it just now and couldn't find it. But yeah I probably enjoyed power metal the most at this point.

High School Lamb of God era, up to 2009:
When I discovered Lamb of God I was instantly hooked. I learned to play many songs from Ashes of the Wake and Sacrament on drums. Lamb of God was the first metal band I saw in concert along with As I Lay Dying, God Forbid and Municipal Waste.
When Lamb of Gods Wrath album came out it disappointed me so I fell into a deep depression and took a break from them.

Also around this time I heard Bleed by Meshuggah for the first time. That led me to the Nothing album by Meshuggah.

2011/12

I joined a band and started playing drums. Our sound was kind of metal core, I don't know. I guess we sounded like As Blood Runs Black and All Shall Perish. Our guitarist and I had different tastes. He listened to As Blood Runs Black, All Shall Perish, The Contortionist, Veil of Maya, and the Faceless on repeat. I was listening to Meshuggah, Tesseract, the Human Abstract, and Lamb of God still. But my taste in metal was starting to skew towards prog and djent. The one thing my guitarist and I could agree on was The Common Mans Collapse by Veil of Maya. I still listen to this album and it's one of my personal favorites.

2013 - 2020 - Black out era:
Around 2012/2013 I had left my band, stopped playing drums, and started working as an audio engineer. My musical taste had shifted to EDM and I don't remember listening to metal at all. Also queue the heavy alcoholism.

Modern Era:
So lately (like within the last 2 years) I started listening to metal again. I might have been listening to metal before but it's kind of hazy in my memory. I really like the Erra album from 2021 and have been listening to that a lot. Also Within the Ruins is big for me, everything after Elite. Still listening to Veil of Maya as they are essential. Also I think the Fearmonger album by Beneath the Massacre is really good.

And idk I have listened to a bunch of other stuff but only included the bands I remember the most here.

I was born in 1984, so I grew up on hair metal. The earliest "metal" music I remember are bands like Quiet Riot and Def Leppard, but Metallica's Black Album was an early staple that moved me toward their earlier stuff... and "hard" music. I listened to mostly grunge growing up, however: Nirvana, Collective Soul, STP, Bush, etc. I then went into bands like KoRn, LB, and nu-metal.

I eventually was harassed and brought into the Christian youth group in the late 90s and started listening to bands like Extol, Norma Jean (Luti-Kriss), Hopesfall, Living Sacrifice, and Zao. I still love some of those bands to this day, but a lot of the latter "Christian" metalcore is not for me.

I've had emo phases, indie rock phases, noise, etc. However, I've always come back to hard music, especially death and black metal. In the 2020s, I realized I never aligned with Christianity. I don't really believe in any gods, heaven, or a hell. With this release from a stronghold on my life, I've been heading back into older bands that at a time was deemed too evil for a Christian to listen to. It's been great to explore this whole new world of metal.

These days, I do love mainstream metal, but I've been spending a lot of my time finding bands on Bandcamp.

I collect vinyl, cassette, and CD.

I am a pretty young fellow. My metal journey started in 2019 with my mother introducing Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" to me.

I really liked the soft stuff but for some reason i couldnt enjoy the real metal and went on a hiatus and mainly listened to pop or country songs and forgot metal even existed.

Then comes 2020 and the great pandemic. Thats when i started to get bored of majority of the songs i listened to, but listening to metal wasnt in my mind. Time went on and on some day when i was browsing the world wide web i heard Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" and oh man i fell in love.

I went on to listen to some softer pieces of Metallica and sometimes Nirvana but it was not at a point where you could call it being a fan. While i was listening to my usual stuff i had autoplay on and discovered Dead Kennedys and that was the real beginning for me. I discovered more and more bands and found myself listening to heavy stuff (it was a really huge change for me).

Here is the band progression:

(Early 2019) Metallica
(2020-2022)Metallica/Nirvana
(2023)Megadeth/Dead Kennedys/System Of A Down/Iron Maiden/Descendents/Slayer/KoRn/Guns N' Roses

Written by icantsleep on 24.06.2023 at 00:15

I am a pretty young fellow. My metal journey started in 2019

Welcome to Metal Storm! My metal journey also kicked off in 2019. Metal Storm has helped me discover hundreds of bands that have changed my life, so you've come to the right place, I'd say. Have fun diving deep into the Metal Storm!
Hell Spectacular Music Awaits

Basically I had been living in a box until turning 16. I grew up in a deeply Christian village so heavy music was a nogo for me until that point. But the sounds and songs I did pick up through popular radio and singles owned by my brother in law (my much older sisters were already maried) really triggered me. January 1987 (did I mention I'm in my fifties allready?) a Dutch radio program started playing only metal. I missed out on the first show but a friend notified me about it. The next year I think I didn't miss one show. It introduced me to a musical world I didn't even knew it existed. And, man, I was hooked.
So 1987 I discovered the music of Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Death, Megadeth, Anthrax, Teutonic thrash etc. I listened to mostly Thrash metal those days but also stumbled upon a more sinister sound: Death metal. After that I dove in deep and did a lot of tape trading the next two years. Thus I was pulled more and more to the underground of extreme metal which at that point was a lot of early death metal and grindcore. The likes of Obituary (then still named Xecutioner), Entombed (Nihilist) and Morbid Angel ( Mike Browning still on vocals) were yet to unleash their debut albums to the world but I knew their music and loved it.

In the early nineties Deathmetal exploded. Thrash was almost main stream and the first signs of the second wave of Black metal were showing.
But my attention towards metal started to diminish by then. I got tangled up in a relation, school duties, serving in the army and getting my first job. Also my musical interests shifted towards more progressive and alternative music styles. Still rock but not much metal which remained this way throughout the nineties (THE decade for alternative rock imo) and early naughts.

Around 2003 I discovered Opeth since their albums (Deliverance and Damnation) were being produced by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree (told you: prog). And I was blown. This was fawking awesome shit and I wanted more. Also internet was becoming a more accessible source of information so my second dive into metal began although I remained more at the surface this time; no underground scavaging this time. I really liked the Enslaved albums Isa and Ruun. But also Mabool by Orphaned land or Ayreon. Pretty proggy indeed. Since then I had my revisits of old favourites, a taste of 90's melodeath, even carefull tastes of gothic and power metal (a nogo for me in my early stage as a metalheads). And besides metal I liked a lot of other music. Paul Simon, the Beatles, britpop in general.

This decade it all changed. The pandemic but even more the treatment and recovery from cancer really got me thinking about what I really love doing. Discovering new great music has always been a joy to me but nothing had ever 'clicked' with me the way Metal once did. That's when I realised I had almost thirty years of catching up to do listening to more underground metal.
I ended up on this site and what a marvelous source of great finds this has proven to be.
So the last 2,5 years I have listened to many substyles and genres of the last 3 decades.

This year I took another approach; To get a more historical context of the development of metal-substyles I mainly listen to the top 100 releases from one year during a few weeks, starting in January with the year 1991. It's June now and I've just reached 1998 but what a journey it has been allready. I finally get the exhiliration many people get from the second wave of BM bands. Some of those albums are amongst my favorites now while I couldn't care less when they were actually released. Slaughtersun by Dawn, Emperor, Nemesis Divina by Satiricon to name a few. But also some amazing Deathmetal finally reached my ears. And "new" substyles start to surface like metalcore and nu-metal (never a favourite of mine I have to admit).

So, I still have a lot of ground to cover since it is my intention to end this journey by the end of 2024. Downside is I don't get to hear many new releases untill the end of next year. ;-) but it's been worth the wile so far.

Lol my metal journey is basically in 2 batches:

1st batch: Metallica, disturbed, a few maiden and katatonia, a few slayer, rob zombie, exactly 1 Rammstein song, linkin park, alcest, a few Slipknot. But I mostly just listen to Metallica.

2nd batch: random extreme metal bands but mostly melodic ones.
I don't listen to metal in a linear way. I just jump from one thing to another.
2nd batch bands/songs I put on my playlist: nachtmystium, mors subita, begotten, decalius, burzum, barathrum, tavaron, nocturnal depression, catamenia, bolt thrower, necrophobic.

I haven't listen to those band's entire discography yet but I listen to one album at least. Doesn't mean I remember how it sounds though lol.