Daniel

Weeeeelllllll….. as you've probably already figured out by now I'm one of the two metal tragics responsible for the "Metal Academy" brand along with my younger brother Ben. I'm 43 years old & have been listening to metal since the mid-80's. I was originally led down that path by my father who shared his love of hard rock & glam metal with me from a very young age. I was always obsessed with music from as far back as I can remember so it was only logical that I discovered bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest & Motorhead from there & also learnt to play the guitar. But it was late 1988 when I discovered extreme metal through Metallica's "...And Justice For All" that things went to the next level for me & I quickly became completely infatuated with the more underground end of the metal spectrum. 

By the start of the 90's my life revolved around death, black, thrash & doom metal & I was attending every available all-age gig. I soon started experimenting with starting bands of my own; a venture which culminated with the creation of arguably Australia's first brutal death metal band when I formed Neuropath with some school mates in 1993. Neuropath would produce two well regarded demo tapes in "Nefarious Vivisection" (1995) & "Desert Of Excruciation" (1996); the second of which was released through Warhead Records. When Neuropath imploded in 1996 I would spend some time with a doom/death metal outfit by the name of Elysium (later Stone Wings) who would go on to release a couple of albums in the early 2000's.

The late 90's saw me becoming somewhat disillusioned with the metal scene & my musical palate expanding dramatically. This led to me releasing an instrumental guitar shred solo CD in 1999 & becoming a techno DJ shortly afterwards. I subsequently spent most of the 2000's playing dark, tough, druggy electronic music to munted early morning audiences before rediscovering my love of metal in 2009. Since that time I've caught up with what I missed & have become as involved with the music as I ever have been.

I'm a huge fan of the darker & more brutal ends of the extreme metal spectrum with death metal & the more brutal black & thrash metal styles being my real sweet spot. But I appreciate most styles of metal in some capacity as long as they don't contain anything too cheesy (see folk metal, European power metal, melodic metalcore, etc.). The "Metal Academy" podcast has been amongst the most rewarding experiences of my life & the creation of this website is based on a mutually agreed blueprint that Ben & I created for our ideal heavy music resource so we hope to discover a whole world of great music through all of your ratings, reviews & opinions. We are very much users of this site in the same capacity as all of you. If you have any suggestions for improvements then please don't be shy.