Sonny92/Mike

Hi all. Been getting into the site for a couple of weeks now and really loving what you guys are doing. I consider myself lucky to be born in England the early 60's, growing up listening to the likes of The Beatles, The Stones, Small Faces, The Who and David Bowie on the radio. Some time in '72 I caught Alice Cooper on Top of the Pops, complete with python and sword, and my mind was blown. Fast forward to sometime in '76 and a school friend played me an album called Paranoid by some group called Black Sabbath... the rest, as they say, is history. I started going to gigs and regularly got to see the likes of Motorhead, Priest and Maiden, as they all seemed to tour constantly in the late 70's. Metal was really derided in England back in those days as punk was all the rage, so a true metal-head considered him- (or her-) self a real outsider. Consequently when the NWOBHM began it was a bit of a dual-edged sword, as there were loads of great, exciting new bands to listen to, but the rise in popularity of metal meant losing the outlaw status, particularly for us biker types, as everyone suddenly started wearing denim and leather!

Anyway, enough history, I love doom and black metal particularly, I still have a great deal of fondness for thrash and old-school death metal. I don't much go for nu-metal, -core metal or power metal, but I do like some progressive stuff. Outside of metal I dig punk, post-punk, gothic rock, prog rock, blues, hard rock and most forms of psychedelia. Forty-odd years listening to metal and the great thing about this music is, it still has the power to excite and enthuse me after all this time. I spend far too much on CDs, Vinyl and tapes with a collection of about 1500 - although I did sell a lot of really good stuff about fifteen years ago when I was hard up, which I regret to this day!

I salute you Ben and Daniel for the effort you're putting into the site to spread the word of metal even further. Here's to hoping it will become a huge success!

Thanks for sharing your story Sonny92. It's awesome to find out a bit about the background of regulars here.

I'm really enjoying your reviews, and I'm keeping some mental notes of albums to check out based on your recommendations. As you know though, there are endless great metal albums, which is both a blessing and curse. Hopefully this site will continue to grow and one day be an excellent tool for discovering the very best ones that meet your own specific tastes.

Thanks for your activity and your support!