Your Metal Roots

So, I was thinking that it might be kinda fun for us each to discuss our metal roots by listing the first five releases that got us into metal & giving a bit of detail about each experience. I'm not talking about your all-time favourites here. I'm talking about the earliest metal experiences to leave a big enough impression to see you coming over to the dark side for life. Let's stick strictly to five releases each & to one release per band please. I look forward to learning a little more about each of you in the process & will post my response tomorrow after getting some sleep.

As I've mentioned before, I began my entire metal journey 10 years ago with power metal. I started with one band, then discovered two bands, then 3 bands, etc. Just like bacteria, my metal interest has been expanding from one to multiple, when it comes to bands and genres, with my interest in some bands/genres dying out and getting resurrected. Anyway, here are the first releases I've discovered from each of the first 5 bands I've discovered in my very first metal genre power metal, as I recall:

1. DragonForce - Inhuman Rampage (2006)

2. Power Quest - Wings of Forever (2002)

3. Dragonland - Holy War (2002)

4. Kamelot - Epica (2003)

5. Avantasia - The Scarecrow (2008)

I'll give the Power Quest, Dragonland, and Avantasia albums some revisiting and reviews (I didn't include the DragonForce and Kamelot albums because those reviews are already done) to not only get back in touch with those releases but also to fully detail how I discovered those bands. I'll journal my progress in a separate thread (to not interfere with this one), and maybe decide whether or not to continue rediscovering my power metal past. Time to re-plant these roots!

It wasn't quite cut and dried for me, as I got into metal in the mid-seventies when it was still a very fluid thing. I had always been a rock fan, growing up on The Beatles and Stones, but seeing Alice Cooper with his python on Top of the Pops playing School's Out as a ten-year-old in '72 triggered something in me that I was never able to shake. Got into Queen, then Pink Floyd were the first band I saw live and Zeppelin records became regulars.

But it was hearing Sabbath's Paranoid LP at a school friend's house that was the final piece falling into place. The first Sabbath album I bought was Technical Ecstacy, which is why I rate it much higher than most and I still maintain Gypsy and Dirty Woman, along with You Won't Change Me are quality tracks, the solo on Dirty Women being one of Iommi's best and it still sets the hairs on the back of my neck on end to this day.

I was also massively into Hawkwind by this stage and my next big find was Motörhead, featuring the irreppresible singer of Silver Machine - Lemmy. I gobbled up the debut, which I know is controversial as to it's metal credentials and saw them live in a the local venue sometime in early '78 where, as a sixteen-year-old in a hall full of bikers and speed fiends, it felt like something truly dangerous and rebellious. They also played insanely loudly! Overkill came the following year with it's absolutely iconic title track and cemented a lifelong devotion to Lemmy and the boys.

Next up was Judas Priest and again a school mate played Stained Class for me, which resulted in me heading straight down to Woolies and buying Sad Wings of Destiny which I absolutely hammered. Tyrant, Genocide, Victim of Changes, The Ripper - killers all. Another visit to the local hall to catch Rob & co for the '78 Stained Class tour was another memorable night.

I guess the next actual metal "biggie" would have to have been Maiden's debut. I used to get Sounds which was a weekly UK music paper and they were all abuzz with this band of cockneys blowing the bollocks off every other band. Running Free was getting a bit of play on late night radio and sounded pretty cool, so off we went to see what all the fuss was about when they played in Stoke. They were awesome, full of energy and fire, playing five encores no less. We hung about outside the venue after and even got to meet them. They were exceedingly cool, signing an empty Park Drive cigarette packet for me (which I have since lost). Obviously Iron Maiden was pretty soon added to my record collection.

I guess the other big metal album for me after Maiden was the Angel Witch debut. I had seen them supporting Motörhead a couple of times and loved them, so was stoked when they finally got their album out - which is still a firm favourite of mine.

It was a long tiime ago and my memory ain't what it used to be, but I don't think I missed any, so I guess my 5 would be Technical Ecstacy, Sad Wings of Destiny, Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Angel Witch, all five of which I still have those original albums after 40-odd years. Ironically they all belong to an Academy clan of which I am not a member!

Before I somewhat randomly decided to pick up a Black Sabbath compilation from the local library, I didn't really listen to much music outside of the stuff in video games and Joe Satriani. I liked it, so then I picked up more compilations by Dream Theater, Iron Maiden and Megadeth. The first actual album I picked up to my memory is Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage, which I enjoyed somewhat at the time, but even then I found it a bit one note. From there I found I got into power metal and started listening to Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 and Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth. I also somehow decided to listen to Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth, I can't actually remember if I listened to any thrash albums before it, but it made more of an impression at the time than Master of Puppets. The first album I actually bought as opposed to just borrowing from the local library was Grim Reaper - See You in Hell/Fear no Evil, which I purchased because it was on a list of top 50 metal releases and I couldn't get it from the local library. In retrospect, I probably should have tried to get Satan - Court in the Act off the same list, but that's retrospect, neither album was anything but good.

I guess then I would say...

1. Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage (2006)

2. Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 (1988)

3. Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998)

4. Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth (2012)

5. Grim Reaper - See You in Hell (1984?)

Damn, I don't even remember the first five.  They were probably Scorpions albums as they were the first metal band I really got into.  One of them might've been, as is my opinion, Appetite for Destruction, and another might've been Dirt.  At first I was into heavy metal, and thrash took some time, but after checking out Helloween and Blind Guardian, I wanted more power metal pretty quickly.  Basically, my journey into metal started with hard rock, and I forced myself into more extreme genres overtime.  Black was the last one if I recall correctly.  I remember the first three death metal albums I've ever heard: Symbolic, Unquestionable Presence and Focus.  I don't even remember how grind started, but my first two black metal albums were At the Heart of Winter and Bergtatt.

Boy, this really tests my memory. I don't think there's any doubt that Metallica was my gateway. ...And Justice for All was definitely the first metal album I heard, and after initially finding it to be amusingly intense, quickly realised it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard.

I reckon the next two bands that really grabbed me were Iron Maiden and Testament, although I can't remember in which order I discovered them (i.e. Daniel presented them to me). I do know that it was Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and Practice What You Preach that I first obsessed over, so let's call those my 2nd and 3rd releases of note.

From here things get a bit blurry. I know that I only really explored thrash metal until finally coming to grips with death metal around 1991. So the question is, which bands made a mark first. As boring as it is, I think the answer is Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? and Slayer's Reign in Blood.

If I look at things another way though, my early metal growth can be understood through the below. I should state that I reckon it was 1989 that I first heard Metallica and Iron Maiden. I would have been 12 years old at that point.

Thrash Metal    -    1988    -    Metallica - ...and Justice for All

Heavy Metal    -    1988    -    Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

Death Metal    -    1991    -    Morbid Angel - Blessed are the Sick

Industrial Metal    -    1992    -    Ministry - Psalm 69

Doom Metal    -    1993    -    My Dying Bride - Turn Loose the Swans

Black Metal    -    1994    -    Burzum - Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (although I certainly enjoyed Daniel's Bathory compilations prior to that)

Before I somewhat randomly decided to pick up a Black Sabbath compilation from the local library, I didn't really listen to much music outside of the stuff in video games and Joe Satriani. I liked it, so then I picked up more compilations by Dream Theater, Iron Maiden and Megadeth. The first actual album I picked up to my memory is Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage, which I enjoyed somewhat at the time, but even then I found it a bit one note. From there I found I got into power metal and started listening to Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 and Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth. I also somehow decided to listen to Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth, I can't actually remember if I listened to any thrash albums before it, but it made more of an impression at the time than Master of Puppets. The first album I actually bought as opposed to just borrowing from the local library was Grim Reaper - See You in Hell/Fear no Evil, which I purchased because it was on a list of top 50 metal releases and I couldn't get it from the local library. In retrospect, I probably should have tried to get Satan - Court in the Act off the same list, but that's retrospect, neither album was anything but good.

I guess then I would say...

1. Dragonforce - Inhuman Rampage (2006)

2. Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2 (1988)

3. Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998)

4. Testament - Dark Roots of the Earth (2012)

5. Grim Reaper - See You in Hell (1984?)

Same first ever album discovery as me! Nice one, Morpheus! Though I didn't discover Blind Guardian until two or three years after that DragonForce album, and I still haven't gotten into Helloween's discography beyond their 80s era.

This is very testing for me as well, since I'm not the best at remembering stuff like that. Especially since I grew up with the start of ITunes and IPods, meaning I heard a lot of individual songs rather than full albums for the longest time. The ones that stick out to me as full albums are: 

1. Dream Theater - Octavarium
2. Avantasia - The Scarecrow
3. Nightwish - Dark Passion Play
4. Tool - Lateralus
5. Opeth - Blackwater Park

I'm not entirely sure in what chronological order these were, but I'd say these are the ones that I distinctly remember sitting through the full album experience. Dream Theater was really my first foray into Metal and I want to say it was Octavarium before Scenes From a Memory Part II. I remember downloading a single song by Dream Theater, "Forsaken" from Systematic Chaos. And I fuckin' hated it. Somehow, someway, I kept on the Dream Theater train and dived deeper into their discography and Octavarium with its 24-minute closer along with "The Root of All Evil", "These Walls", and "Panic Attack" really hooked me. Nowadays the rose-tinted glasses have been thrown off my face as I have it rated a 3.5, but Dream Theater is truthfully what got me into the long, theatrical, and crazy side of Metal. 

Avantasia and Nightwish go hand in hand since, to be honest, I can't remember how I got into either band. It was most likely off of ITunes' recommended, but these are the two albums that I remember hearing from these bands first. Both bands had insane 10+ minute epics in "The Scarecrow" and "Dark Passion Play", which reinforced that original Dream Theater shtick of heavier and more intense music being this massive, complicated, and drawn out affair. I loved the strings and variety that both bands gave, but I was much more into Nightwish as a full-album band than Avantasia, even though I quickly got the entire Wicked Trilogy shortly after. 

I'm not entirely sure when I got into Tool in all this but I remember heading into FYE (a mall music store in the states) to find as many Tool albums as I could for my car, starting with Lateralus then moving onto 10,000 Days, Undertow, and eventually Aenima. I remember really enjoying Lateralus but it remains a singles album to me, much to most other Tool fan's despair. I found myself way more enthralled by 10,000 Day's interludes and overall album pacing, which is a hot take in some circles. Nevertheless, Lateralus seems like a pretty standard choice given my history, so the big elephant in the room is next. 

I hated Blackwater Park when I first heard it. I don't know how the entire album got on my Ipod, but I remember enjoying the instrumentals and songs like "Harvest" but couldn't understand the appeal in the vocals. Why does this dude sound like the Cookie Monster? What does this add? It's just grating and annoying, his clean vocals sound way better. Obviously, I eventually came around to it, but if you read my massive Blackwater Park review, the cleans were incredibly important in slowly wading me into the harsher stuff, which is kind of missed by a lot of bands nowadays. I think I'm sort of unique where I wasn't instantly hooked on this stuff; I constantly experimented and eventually came around to certain things. Pretty much every Metal subgenre was like that for me, except for maybe Progressive Metal. Death, Black, Industrial, etc. all needed their own sort of warmup before I could really handle what the deep cuts had in store for me. It's been a cool ride.

Cool backstory behind your metal roots, Xephyr! Avantasia and Nightwish were two of my entryway bands into symphonic power metal and symphonic metal. Same Avantasia album even! Around that time, a teacher in this homeschooling center I was in (remember, I was a teen back then) told me about Dream Theater, a band she really likes, but I wasn't interested in progressive metal yet. That was, until I discovered Ayreon and that project's sci-fi prog-metal opera albums got me hooked, so shortly after, I listened to more of Dream Theater, and progressive metal (albeit the melodic kind that I was into back then but not now) became my third dominant genre in my past metal interest (after power metal and symphonic metal). And it was great that I finally got interested in Opeth 3 years before today, though I probably should have 5 years prior, but hey, I felt too young for the harsher stuff back then. Also my brother found this Plankton AI cover of Tool's "The Pot" recently, which is both awesome and hilarious:

Before my transition to metal I was predominantly listening to hard rock & glam metal records with my dad. Stuff like Guns 'n' Roses, The Cult, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Poison, etc. Everything changed very quickly once I began high school in 1988 though as I became exposed to new people & a whole world of new music that I simply couldn't wait to explore. I basically went from being a young rocker to an obsessive death/black/grind nut in a year. I've done a lot of thinking about what the initial records that lured me over to metal were & I think I've come up with a pretty accurate timeline below.

In early 1988 I came across Motorhead's 1984 "No Remorse" double compilation album by accident more than anything else. I believe an older kid had given me a blank cassette so that I could rip him a copy of something in my collection & I accidently played it prior to copying over the top of it. I didn't know what I was listening to at the time but it didn't take me long to figure it out & I found myself really digging the unbridled intensity, particularly some of the less rocky, speed metal-oriented tracks like "Snaggletooth" & "Locomotive". I ripped the cassette before copying over it & gave it a fair flogging over the next few weeks. I came up with the idea for this thread while revisiting "No Remorse" yesterday actually.

Also in early 1988, one of my best mates in high school had an older brother that played guitar & would play us all sorts of cool stuff that we wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. He introduced us to Judas Priest's highly divisive & seriously underrated 1986 tenth album "Turbo". As with the Motorhead compilation, this record served the purpose of a gateway between rock & metal really well given its synth-driven stadium vibe. There are a few real belters on that album & I still regard "Turbo Lover" & "Out In The Cold" as some of the finest examples of heavy metal I've ever heard still to this day. I actually think the album as a whole is pretty solid too & can't understand the flack it seems to cop.

That same mate's favourite band was Iron Maiden so I was exposed to all of their back catalogue in quick succession that year which saw me becoming somewhat of a Maiden nut myself. I'd start with purchasing 1986's "Somewhere In Time" & 1988's brand new "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" albums on cassette on the same day & they're still my favourite heavy metal records now. "Somewhere In Time" is the one that did (& does) it for me the most though so it's the one I want to include here. I believe I bought "Live After Death" on cassette only a couple of days later too just quietly.

The back end of 1988 would contain arguably the biggest event in my metal life. I'd notice Metallica's fourth album "...And Justice For All" sitting around number 50 on the Australian music charts a week or two after it was released & thought it sounded interesting so I sought out a dubbed cassette copy from an older school mate. I think it's fair to say that it absolutely blew me away & changed my life overnight. I simply couldn't believe what I was hearing & can distinctly remember playing the intro to the title track to Ben (who was actually only eleven at the time, not twelve) over & over as we laughed uncontrollably at the massive contrast between the sweet acoustic guitar parts & the crunching thrash metal they'd alternate between. "...And Justice For All" is still a top ten metal release for me overall & is also my favourite Metallica release.

After quickly purchasing everything Metallica had released on CD over the next couple of months, I was ready to find out what else thrash metal had to offer. I'd start by buying Megadeth's 1986 sophomore album "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?" & 1988 third album "So Far, So Good... So What!" on cassette on the same day without having heard a second of them. I loved both of them & still do but "Peace Sells" would tear my fucking face off in a way that the follow-up couldn't quite manage so I'll go with it.

So that was the first five that converted me if I'm remembering correctly. Anthrax & Slayer were around the same time & once I discovered Slayer it was all over for me. I was all in, hook, line & sinker after that. By the end of 1989 I was obsessed with death/black/grind & starting to build up a collection that would see me beginning to tape trade more seriously shortly afterwards. 

I have hugely nostalgic memories from this time. Playing video games, listening to exciting new metal bands and watching endless horror movies with Daniel was the best way for any pre-teen to spend their childhood. I obviously feel a bit different about that now that I'm a father, but I wouldn't swap that childhood for any other. I still basically just play video games, listen to metal and watch endless horror movies today!

Interesting that the youngers ones of us, even if we didn't all hear them straight off, seem to all have roughly the same bands in our beginning years. Even though I don't think Kamelot, Nightwish, Avantasia or Opeth were among the very first albums I listened to, they were certainly up there. Dark Passion Play was absolutely massive despite the hubdrub over Tarja getting kicked out of the band and I think despite the Wicked Trilogy being weaker than the first two, people were happy to hear Avantasia again at the time. Opeth was also big enough at the time for people to license their music into games and movies.

Feel like it's pertinent to put this here rather than anywhere else, just found out that my old college radio station has moved away from music for the most part and is just another NPR station that spouts pre-recorded talking shows and such. Dunno how I feel really, other than sad. As someone who enjoys music and sharing it, I'm just glad that I was able to take advantage of that opportunity when I could. It really shaped how I look at music, and especially Metal music, when I was able to share it with so many people that would legitimately call in and cared about what they were listening to on some random college station in their hometown. As things move forward I can only see it getting worse for these kinds of stations, so I can only be thankful what what I was able to do in my 3 years there. 

Feel like it's pertinent to put this here rather than anywhere else, just found out that my old college radio station has moved away from music for the most part and is just another NPR station that spouts pre-recorded talking shows and such. Dunno how I feel really, other than sad. As someone who enjoys music and sharing it, I'm just glad that I was able to take advantage of that opportunity when I could. It really shaped how I look at music, and especially Metal music, when I was able to share it with so many people that would legitimately call in and cared about what they were listening to on some random college station in their hometown. As things move forward I can only see it getting worse for these kinds of stations, so I can only be thankful what what I was able to do in my 3 years there. 

The pain of cancellation of something you love.  It's kinda like a part of your soul was disrespected. 

Sorry to hear, Xephyr. It is sad and painful to lose an essential part of your music life. It's times like this when it's good to enjoy and appreciate what we have while we still have it.