Xephyr
Yo, Xephyr here.
As with most people who find themselves on a site like this music has been a big part of my life for a long time. Even though I started with my parent's classic rock stations, rhythm games ended up playing a huge part in my music exploration with DDR/Stepmania and eventually Guitar Hero slowly exposing me to different genres of rock music. I'm still big into Osu! and other rhythm games as there's something cool about interacting with the music you're listening to. With Guitar Hero and Stepmania exposing me to all sorts of bands, Rush and Dream Theater stood out the most and I grew out from there.
I never really had an epiphany when it came to delving into metal, it was very much a linear process. From Rush and Dream Theater I eventually found Tool after claiming that I didn't like their songs on Guitar Hero World Tour. From Tool it was Nightwish, showing me that metal can be much more than just guitars, drums, and bass. From Nightwish it was Opeth, which was my first exposure to growls and harsh vocals. I remember listening to Blackwater Park and not even liking it at first, but look where I am now.
From this musical baseline I went into college and during sophomore year my old buddy coerced me into joining the radio station as a club, meaning I would have my own show playing whatever I liked. Turns out I was pretty good at it and my music library exploded from there as I was always looking for new stuff to put on my show. I've been attempting to do volunteer college radio even after graduating but currently I'm looking for a new place after the last one didn't pan out.
Thanks to the radio gig making me take listening to music a bit more seriously I've started to delve into as much stuff as I can and thanks to my job I can listen to a ton of music through the week, which is lucky to say the least. I've focused myself on new releases for the most part, but I've slowly been working my way through the classics that I've missed out on. I've written reviews here and there but I've been looking to try and be a bit more active in the metal community now that my radio show is on hold.
Thanks to Rush, Dream Theater, Tool, Opeth, and Nightwish, I've found that I prefer my metal epic, complex, melody driven, and overall more shiny than most. I have a strong bias against stuff like brutal death metal, anything with the word grind in the name, as well as metalcore and some of the heavier variations of black metal. I still check out most genres regardless, since I think it's as important to know why you don't like something as it is to know why you enjoy something.
I'm excited to see where this site goes. We all know that metalheads can't agree on anything so having a system like this makes a ton of sense and I'm glad to help as much as I can.
- Xeph
Welcome to Metal Academy Xephyr. It's really great to have you here. Particularly given your background & the fact that you're adding some much needed diversity given our extreme metal dominant membership thus far. Please feel free to spread the word. We need as many ratings & reviews as possible to make the site as relevant as possible so the more the merrier.
I'll throw in my welcome as well Xephyr. Daniel and I are thrilled that you're getting some value out of Metal Academy. Makes all the effort worth it!
I love reading these "origin stories" for metal fans. If anyone reading this hasn't done one yet, we'd love to hear from you.
Howdy! Nice to no longer be the newest welcome thread :D
We have quite a bit in common with our tastes. I love the proggy and cheesy epic melodic stuff too. I've noticed many of your power/symphonic/folk metal reviews already and found myself largely agreeing with them.