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Nah, im zoomer actually. I mean when I first discovered Metallica I was listening to short version of Enter Sandman i found on YouTube, because my brain couldn't comprehend the whole 5 minutes song with one minute intro
...Anyone know a killer to hire for the guy who did it?
Iron Maiden for me too. A friend was into them in High School and I borrowed some albums and never looked back. We went to the Final Frontier concert not long after.
Never thought of them as gateway bands. What was your first MDB album? I started with A Line of Deathless Kings (their most recent at the time) and went backwards from there.
It was Turn Loose The Swans in 1995. The songs Black God and Sear Me immediately hooked me up (we were at a forest by night, I guess that helps lol)
the principle of evil made flesh definitely opened my ear to metal thanks to their keyboards and romantic ambiences, something very new by the time.
After that it was much easier to listen and understand other bands with more dirty or "trve" sound.
After that I also could go backwards and start enjoying Thrash, Heavy... I know the usual way is the opposite, but I started with extreme metal and with time I moved to softer sounds, as well as to, for example, more "real" black metal, like Dark Throne.
Dark Throne became my fav BM band at the time, but i dont think that could have been possible without cradle of Filth (i also had my hater time against cradle of filth to be more trve and all that shit, but when you grow up you stop doing such stupid things and you just enjoy and feel music, no matter the genre or amount of copies they sell).
No one from my generation will admit this, but or me, it was Hair Metal. Warrant. White Snake. Motley Crue. Van Halen. Stuff like that.
Then I hit puberty and discovered my latent masculinity and moved on to he harsher stuff.
I was still pretty young in the late 80's but it is part of my earliest memories as well. GNR gets credit there too, but definitely hair metal. Add Poison, Skid Row, Ratt, even Bon Jovi to that list. I'd hear it out in the world, it'd be on MTV all the time. It may have arguably been "pop" for the time, but it is definitely closer to metal than Paula Abdul.
Right? I stood strong through grunge, and I'll gladly rock a Motley Crue shirt at a death metal show.
Remember your roots, even if they're embarrassing. They made you.
Same here. Late 80s born with young parents who loved 80s music. I can’t stand listening to 75% of it now, but it was a huge influence on me. Especially VH, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, GNR, Ozzy, Firehouse, Montrose, Y&T and Ratt.
I think us who started with Hair Metal had the wildest journey of Discovery
It's not a big deal to go from Slipknot to Immolation.
But to grow up with "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and find White Zombie when you're 13? Yeah, that was a total metamorphosis from the inside out.
Hair metal is fine, until you discover thrash. Granted, the only hair bands I ever listened to were Motley Crue and Van Halen, and then it was just select songs.
The first time I heard SOAD was Shimmy in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4, and I didn't know what to make of that. Don't know what I would've thought if I heard Sugar first.
Korn..... Then it went out of control I discovered skinless, cephalic carnage , morbid angel , super joint ritual and early keep of kalessin and I never looked back. So I keep korn in a very special place in my black heart
Nu metal in the early 2000s when I was 13ish until a friend said they'd read about some band called Burzum in Kerrang, so I checked them out and it's been extreme metal ever since.
Mostly Blind Guardian and Helloween. At the time, a bit later, I also started to listen to stuff like Kamelot, Iced Earth (vocalist Matt Barlow), Grave Digger, Running Wild and so on.
Korn and Limp Bizkit were the first metal bands I got into, then stuff like Static-X, Slipknot and Metallica. Then heavier stuff like Black Dahlia Murder, Dimmu Borgir, Lamb of God and Shadows Fall. Now I'm all over the place haha
Alpha anteludium by epica was recommended one one of my playlists by spotify. It sounded really nice to me so, without even knowing it was a metal band I decided to look at the bands other stuff and got into symphonic metal, then expanded to other subgenres
Metallica>(old) Behemoth>Belphegor>Endstille>Nargaroth>Black metal stuff for a long time>Melo death
Somewhere inbetween during my teenager years, also Cradle of Filth
I can trace back to the moment when it happened.
I grew up with my father's classic rock like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Then one day, when I was maybe 9 or 10 yo and was noodling around on my dad's guitar while listening through backing tracks on a Total Guitar CD, it happened; the backing track for Enter Sandman started playing. It was so different. It sounded mystical and felt almost forbidden. Needless to say, I was hooked and morbidly curious after that.
I got into metal through my father as it was happening. I was just a tiny thing at the time but he had a hell of a vinyl collection and was always getting something new. So a lot of the early hard rock bands and proto metal bands from the late 60s through the 70s.
Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band I listened to. I came to them through 60s and 70s hard rock.
From there I started listening to more traditional heavy metal, then moved on to classic thrash, and from there started to explore various other subgenres.
In a way Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, GnR, Extreme n Motley Crue if they count, but my 1st emotional connection to it was Nu Metal defo, I was more into grunge, alt rock, a bit of hip hop, dance n punk until then but got into Limp Bizket Korn and Slipknot in particular. I went exteme metal asf too later but still love nu metal
My dad was into classic rock and hard rock, so a lot of AC/DC, The Cult, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy. The one band that probably got me into heavier stuff was Guns N Roses with Appetite For Destruction. Then my dad went and bought Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell and from the opening riff of Neon Knights and Dio's vocals I was hooked. Then if course I started going through my dad's music collection of records, CDs, that led to Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and alot of older metal. My older brother was more into Korn and other nu metal bands which didn't do much for me. He had milk crates full of CDs and inside is where I discovered Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Death, Dissection, and Bathory.
I’d say System of a Down. First “heavy” band I liked. When I was 15, I was *convinced* those guys were regarded as metal royalty. Nope! Found out by being called a poser ten thousand times that they’re *not* metal - just metal-adjacent. Still listen to them now and then. Toxicity and Steal This Album! still slap.
I grew up with classic rock with plenty of ACDC, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and a lot of psychedelic from my father. Friends in middle school shared korn and Limp Bizkit CDs. By 7th grade I was already into Meshuggah. 1997 was the year I went really heavy.
Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. When my dad was dropping me off to school or picking me up from school, he would often throw some Iron Maiden CD into the car, so I was first introduced to metal through my dads CDs. Ill be grateful to him for that.
GTA Vice City - V Rock.
That's a great 80s metal primer - Iron Maiden, Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth. Motley Crue, Ozzy, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot etc.
Good track choices too. even from the more glammy acts.
Oh, and Love Fist of course.
Vice City Stories has bangers too - Accept, Queensryche, Dio...
The Chriatian band Bride was my first hook into metal, and then I went crazy and bought every Christian metal album out there. It was the thrash band Tourniquet and the death netal band Vengeance Rising that solidified my love for metal of all stripes.
I think it has to be… Soundgarden and Queen.
More specifically, Kickstand from Soundgarden, and Princess of the Universe by Queen. Road Rash OST, and The Highlander, tv series, OST
Peak 90’s media
Hard rock->hardcore->metal. Bands like SOAD, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Van Halen, and A7X at first. I just started listening to progressively heavier and angrier stuff until I unwittingly and involuntarily became a metalhead.
Dad listening to Led Zepplin/Pink Floyd and buying Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers—> me finding Black Sabbath Deep Purple —> Judas Priest Iron Maiden —> Metallica/Megadeth/Slayer —> Lamb of God/Children of Bodom/Mastodon/Opeth —> now being in my late thirties and still finding metal bands of all types and genres to enjoy every year since then.
grew up with a brother that likes nu metal and a dad that likes heavy metal, discovered other genres as a teenager lol. system of a down, korn, rob zombie, black sabbath, and iron maiden were my gateway bands.
VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs of All-Time was when I started making the distinction between rock and roll and Metal. Guitar Hero was super helpful to expand tastes.
An awakening that got my mind right in time to enjoy Dethklok
I liked Ozzy and Black Sabbath. But I never looked at them under the metal umbrella (or at least not what I was thinking of at the time). I was shown Iron Maiden in high school, and that made me want to explore metal more. Soon after I got into Metallica and Judas Priest.
Guitar hero 3. The game had Metallica, Slayer, and Iron Maiden in the game, along with Through The Fire and flames. Literally the game was trying to create metalheads
Breaking Benjamin and chevelle, yes I know it’s not metal but that was the first kind of rock I ever heard. Fast forward a year my favorite band is megadeth
A friend's older sister lent me her cassette of And Justice For All because I liked the album art. Set me off on a journey. I still feel that same sense of wonderful unease I did as a kid every time I listen to the opening of Blackened.
Led Zeppelin - Anthrax - Suicidal Tendencies - Slayer - that was my gateway.
Father was into Zeppelin, older cousin got me onto Anthrax and Suicidal, then discovered Slayer all on my own.
Whatever Breaking Benjamin, 3 Days Grace, and Green Day is considered.
Then for harder Metal, my ex showed me Motionless in White. That's what really pushed me down the metal-hole.
Korn’s Follow the Leader. I saw the premier of the video on MTV for Got the Life when I was in the 5th grade and it changed me. When I was on my 8th grade class trip to NYC, I bought Slipknot’s self-titled album at Virgin Records and that was the other major event.
None of my parents or family listened to the Big 4 or the founders like Sabbath or Led Zep, so these were my formative, mind blowing encounters with metal.
Well I grew up with a father who was into punk in the 70s and also into metal at the same time. Although I only remember growing up on hard rock I found my own way into metal in the mid 00s with Rammstein's "Reise, Reise" and System of a Down's "Mezmerize" and "Hypnotize".
From that point I got slowly more and more open to the more extreme grounds of the metal genre.
Nu Metal. Specifically Slipknot, fell in love with them after hearing "Duality" a couple times, and I still love them now. Then I just started loving metal as a whole.
Honestly, the bands that got me into the heavier shit in general were bands like Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and Seether.
The band that get me into metalcore was Atreyu.
And the bands to get me into melodic death metal were Soilwork and In Flames
My dad introduced me to Iron Maiden and Megadeth and Amaran (a much less popular version of Amaranthe) when I was in like first grade. I’ve been obsessed with Metal ever since, and jm sixteen. But now I’ve opened my ears to Nordic folk bands like Heilung, indie pop bands like AJR and Paramore.
Started with the big 4 back in the mid 90’s, added Pantera, had a brief encounter with some nu-metal (it was pretty unavoidable back then), I then took a huge leap with Nile’s “Black Seeds of Vengeance”. At the time, Nile was a bit too much for me, so I dialed it back a bit and that’s when I discovered Swedish melodic death metal (In Flames, Arch Enemy, Soilwork). From there I just branched out in all directions, and that was pretty much it.
Shared a bedroom with my older brother, who is about 10yrs older than me and he played a lot of Black Sabbath and Ozzy when I was still in the crib. I've listened to nothing but metal since before I knew how to talk. Been 42 years now
NWOBHM around 1979+ thanks to the Friday Night Rock Show with Tommy Vance - Saxon, Iron Maiden, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Tygers Of Pan Tang + Earlier heavy bands doing well at the same time like Judas Priest, Motörhead, Rainbow, Krokus, AC/DC, Riot.
Loved Metallica as a kid, but honestly never really listened to metal until… Ghost. I know, I know. But they really were a great way to ease into the heavier stuff.
Pro wrestling. The Road Warriors came out to Iron Man by Black Sabbath. Somehow 10 year old me figured that out and bought the Paranoid cassette. Electric Funeral scared the shit out of me lol.
Black Sabbath, Paranoid. The bass got me interested in music as a whole when i was about 7. From there, I started taking Metallica and Slayer CDs out of my Dad's car.
System of a Down was my introduction to heavier music. Before that I would listen to a lot of pop punk. But then I first heard Kill ‘em All and immediately fell in love with thrash. So Metallica was my introduction to thrash.
I was an edgy kid trying to look up gore on YouTube via medical videos.... was watching one about someone getting impaled on a fence post and surviving and I was wondering if there were any videos about that happening through someone's brain and what the effects would be if they survived, somehow this lead me to discover the song "Skewered From Ear To Eye" by Cannibal Corpse. This was at a time in my life when hearing John Cooper sing about how he felt like a monster was the coolest, hardest shit I had ever heard. my music taste was never the same since.
Started with punk like pennywise and bad religion, then grungy stuff like nirvana, silverchair, then nine inch nails. Then (and this is kinda funny now) I was in a car with a friend at the time and he was playing disturbed and I thought it was heavy as fuck and I loved it.
Kinda snowballed from there. (this was all in the mid to late 90s btw)
https://preview.redd.it/t8eq3dt8w6bd1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=494c93ee9accae017af60c7a9cadfb164239c024
Was given this to my Brother and I back in 2000 by family friends.
Strangely, it was King Gizzard’s PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation that eventually snowballed and got me into metal.
Ministry was one of the first bands I ever got into when I was like 11, when Psalm 69 was out, also loved Helmet. Then I got onto Nirvana, which in turn led me to Melvins. I saw Melvins play a couple times in the early 90's and, then I saw them with White Zombie. I would consider that my intro, so kinda industrial/alternative metal.
Then I reluctantly went to a few hardcore shows as a teen, ended up playing in/with bands in the post hardcore scene where you would hear stuff like The Locust, Crimson Curse, An Albatross. It wasn't totally my thing, but my friends were into it and there was a lot of energy around it at the time. Not that this stuff is "metal", but it seemed heavy to me at the time, maybe it's "metal adjacent"or whatever, I dunno. It was part of how I started listening to heavier sounding bands
Then later, Napster happened, and I learned about so many bands and scenes from that.
I was into hardcore punk in the early to mid 80’s as a teenager. Moved on to Metallica when I heard Ride the lightning and I discovered pantera and megadeth and it just built from there.
It’s basic but the black album. Before then I’d always listen to glammetal such as Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses (I still do) and I wanted to listen to something a little heavier to see what it would sound like and since then I’ve been listening to new (well, new to me) songs and bands almost everyday finding new favorites
My first introduction to anything remotely heavy was probably Linkin Park. The Black Mages may have had a part too. (The Final Fantasy composer put a band together to do covers of some of the FF music. I guess it'd be on the heavier end of prog rock?)
My first taste of actual metal was One by Metallica, then I got the DVD with all their music videos, so I'd say I basically started with the songs off the black album, then eventually went back to the 80s stuff. I also got into Slayer around the same time, specifically the albums Reign in Blood and Christ Illusion. (Those were my first 2 metal albums.)
I was also getting into Power Metal at the same time. I was looking for something proggy, but wound up discovering Rhapsody, and then later, DragonForce and Nightwish.
I also wanted to understand the appeal of death metal, because I didn't really get it at the time. I heard some of Six Feet Under's covers, but wasn't really a fan. It was actually Bloodbath (the early Mikael Akerfeldt stuff, his vocals were easier to get into for some reason) that got me into the genre, and I did end up liking the riffs on a few CC songs, namely Hammer Smashed Face and Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead.
Then I started getting into more melodic death metal, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth and Children of Bodom.
Lateralus was released in 2001. My dad was a big fan of Tool at the time. He bought it. I listened to that album before I was even conscious of it. (I was born in '99).
I came into it mostly via Christian metal. My dad had an old Daniel Band cassette we'd listen to occasionally. Later, I was discovering music through Wikipedia and YouTube. The first bands I listened to were Stryper, As I Lay Dying, Extol, and Immortal Souls. At some point around then I also got into thrash-era Metallica.
Linkin Park. I'd grown up listening to the bigger songs on the radio like Numb and In The End, and then I decided to check out their album Hybrid Theory. I loved it, and resonated a lot with the lyrics. I looped the album for months along with Meteora and a few of their other records. To this day it's one of my favorite metal albums of all time.
I started listening to Queen and then got into more hard-rock bands like AC/DC and Guns N Roses. I liked them and I go deeper into Iron Maiden and some Metallica (the more light stuff) but didn’t really liked it that much tbh. What got me hooked is when I listened Painkiller. Never looked back since then
In my childhood I liked a lot of glam metal and my family listened to a lot of nu metal and post-hardcore, but I didn’t really get into metal until I listened to hail the apocalypse by avatar, but I consider the first band I’ve ever actually been a fan of is motionless in white.
Iron Maiden, the entire discography! My first month as a metalhead consisted of SOLELY their music, as if it was the only band that had ever made this genre. It was fun! I was completely obsessed with Maiden.
Nowadays I don't listen to old school Heavy Metal much, I'm more into Death and Black Metal, but they have a special place in my heart!
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Metallica Black Album
*Ride the Lightning* 
Tallica… the major gateway for me and most my Xennial friends
Nah, im zoomer actually. I mean when I first discovered Metallica I was listening to short version of Enter Sandman i found on YouTube, because my brain couldn't comprehend the whole 5 minutes song with one minute intro ...Anyone know a killer to hire for the guy who did it?
Can't be worse than the short versions of Black Number One or Cemetery Gates.
We have a winner
Iron Maiden. Bought Live After Death cassette at a Walmart on a whim.
Iron Maiden for me too. A friend was into them in High School and I borrowed some albums and never looked back. We went to the Final Frontier concert not long after.
Cradle Of Filth and my dying bride
Never thought of them as gateway bands. What was your first MDB album? I started with A Line of Deathless Kings (their most recent at the time) and went backwards from there.
It was Turn Loose The Swans in 1995. The songs Black God and Sear Me immediately hooked me up (we were at a forest by night, I guess that helps lol) the principle of evil made flesh definitely opened my ear to metal thanks to their keyboards and romantic ambiences, something very new by the time. After that it was much easier to listen and understand other bands with more dirty or "trve" sound. After that I also could go backwards and start enjoying Thrash, Heavy... I know the usual way is the opposite, but I started with extreme metal and with time I moved to softer sounds, as well as to, for example, more "real" black metal, like Dark Throne. Dark Throne became my fav BM band at the time, but i dont think that could have been possible without cradle of Filth (i also had my hater time against cradle of filth to be more trve and all that shit, but when you grow up you stop doing such stupid things and you just enjoy and feel music, no matter the genre or amount of copies they sell).
Fuck I'm old. I got into them as a teen, starting with their then most recent album, The Angel and the Dark River.
No one from my generation will admit this, but or me, it was Hair Metal. Warrant. White Snake. Motley Crue. Van Halen. Stuff like that. Then I hit puberty and discovered my latent masculinity and moved on to he harsher stuff.
I was still pretty young in the late 80's but it is part of my earliest memories as well. GNR gets credit there too, but definitely hair metal. Add Poison, Skid Row, Ratt, even Bon Jovi to that list. I'd hear it out in the world, it'd be on MTV all the time. It may have arguably been "pop" for the time, but it is definitely closer to metal than Paula Abdul.
Right? I stood strong through grunge, and I'll gladly rock a Motley Crue shirt at a death metal show. Remember your roots, even if they're embarrassing. They made you.
Hey I sit at the stop light with my windows open playing Dokken with pride.
Just like you, I must inform the nearby Toyota Tacoma that we are indeed half way there and truly, we are living on prayers.
Same here. Late 80s born with young parents who loved 80s music. I can’t stand listening to 75% of it now, but it was a huge influence on me. Especially VH, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, GNR, Ozzy, Firehouse, Montrose, Y&T and Ratt.
I think us who started with Hair Metal had the wildest journey of Discovery It's not a big deal to go from Slipknot to Immolation. But to grow up with "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and find White Zombie when you're 13? Yeah, that was a total metamorphosis from the inside out.
Hair metal is fine, until you discover thrash. Granted, the only hair bands I ever listened to were Motley Crue and Van Halen, and then it was just select songs.
Sum 41 and breaking Benjamin for metal-adjacent, then Pantera
Manowar, Dio, Accept, Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister. In this order.
System of a Down ~ Sugar
The first time I heard SOAD was Shimmy in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4, and I didn't know what to make of that. Don't know what I would've thought if I heard Sugar first.
Korn..... Then it went out of control I discovered skinless, cephalic carnage , morbid angel , super joint ritual and early keep of kalessin and I never looked back. So I keep korn in a very special place in my black heart
**da boom da, da boom**
Nu metal in the early 2000s when I was 13ish until a friend said they'd read about some band called Burzum in Kerrang, so I checked them out and it's been extreme metal ever since.
Metallica
Rammstein
hell yeah brother
Mostly Blind Guardian and Helloween. At the time, a bit later, I also started to listen to stuff like Kamelot, Iced Earth (vocalist Matt Barlow), Grave Digger, Running Wild and so on.
Metallica’s The Black Album and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.
Korn to Slipknot to Pantera to Macabre/Cannibal Corpse / Morbid Angel / Deicide
Skateboard and BMX parks, 1980’s. Nirvana, GnR, ugly kid Joe, etc etc
Rise Against and Creed, honestly. Started listening to Metallica after that.
Non metal gateway - Palaye Royale’s “Anxiety” and my metal band that helped me get into metal, Powerwolf
Iron Maiden - The Trooper.
Vulgar display of power was my first metal experience
Children of Bodom. Cannibal Corpse’s “Priest of sodom”
That seems wild to me, discovering metal through COB. I only discovered them because they played a couple of songs on a Slayer DVD
CC was the extreme one for me at that time. Only had heard ghost walking by LOG, quite a switch ehh
Korn and Limp Bizkit were the first metal bands I got into, then stuff like Static-X, Slipknot and Metallica. Then heavier stuff like Black Dahlia Murder, Dimmu Borgir, Lamb of God and Shadows Fall. Now I'm all over the place haha
Alpha anteludium by epica was recommended one one of my playlists by spotify. It sounded really nice to me so, without even knowing it was a metal band I decided to look at the bands other stuff and got into symphonic metal, then expanded to other subgenres
Black Sabbath
Metallica>(old) Behemoth>Belphegor>Endstille>Nargaroth>Black metal stuff for a long time>Melo death Somewhere inbetween during my teenager years, also Cradle of Filth
I would say it all started with Song 2 by Blur, then rock bands like Foo Fighters, Muse etc, then nu metal and Metallica
Powerwolf and Sabaton
Avenged Sevenfold / City of Evil.
Skillet, three days grace and avenged sevenfold
Got concert tickets for my birthday. It was Motley Crue. 1989 Changed my life
Listening to my dad's Black Sabbath records when I was a kid in the early 70s
My older brother's metalcore band in the late 90s and going to all those shows. Then it was Pantera.
Mezmerize and kill 'em all
I can trace back to the moment when it happened. I grew up with my father's classic rock like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. Then one day, when I was maybe 9 or 10 yo and was noodling around on my dad's guitar while listening through backing tracks on a Total Guitar CD, it happened; the backing track for Enter Sandman started playing. It was so different. It sounded mystical and felt almost forbidden. Needless to say, I was hooked and morbidly curious after that.
A bunch of random stuff when I was a kid, mainly Ozzy and Satyricon
I got into metal through my father as it was happening. I was just a tiny thing at the time but he had a hell of a vinyl collection and was always getting something new. So a lot of the early hard rock bands and proto metal bands from the late 60s through the 70s.
Motörhead, Megadeth, Rob Zombie and White Zombie were my first real bands that I fell in love with.
Funnily enough, Linkin park, first time I saw the crawling video on mtv the screamy vocals piqued my interest instantly and made me explore further.
An old Jackyl cassette my step dad had.
Scorpions - World Wide Live, when I was 10 years old. Still being a metalhead.
Black Sabbath were the first heavy metal band I listened to. I came to them through 60s and 70s hard rock. From there I started listening to more traditional heavy metal, then moved on to classic thrash, and from there started to explore various other subgenres.
Linkin park
In a way Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, GnR, Extreme n Motley Crue if they count, but my 1st emotional connection to it was Nu Metal defo, I was more into grunge, alt rock, a bit of hip hop, dance n punk until then but got into Limp Bizket Korn and Slipknot in particular. I went exteme metal asf too later but still love nu metal
Brutal Legend. Jack Black + Lemmy + Rob Halford + Ozzy + isakai = me going into metal
Iron maiden
My dad was into classic rock and hard rock, so a lot of AC/DC, The Cult, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy. The one band that probably got me into heavier stuff was Guns N Roses with Appetite For Destruction. Then my dad went and bought Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell and from the opening riff of Neon Knights and Dio's vocals I was hooked. Then if course I started going through my dad's music collection of records, CDs, that led to Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and alot of older metal. My older brother was more into Korn and other nu metal bands which didn't do much for me. He had milk crates full of CDs and inside is where I discovered Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Death, Dissection, and Bathory.
Early Metallica, Ozzy and AC/DC when I was coming up.
I’d say System of a Down. First “heavy” band I liked. When I was 15, I was *convinced* those guys were regarded as metal royalty. Nope! Found out by being called a poser ten thousand times that they’re *not* metal - just metal-adjacent. Still listen to them now and then. Toxicity and Steal This Album! still slap.
Poison and Metallica
Megadeth Rust in Peace
I grew up with classic rock with plenty of ACDC, Black Sabbath, Metallica, and a lot of psychedelic from my father. Friends in middle school shared korn and Limp Bizkit CDs. By 7th grade I was already into Meshuggah. 1997 was the year I went really heavy.
Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden. When my dad was dropping me off to school or picking me up from school, he would often throw some Iron Maiden CD into the car, so I was first introduced to metal through my dads CDs. Ill be grateful to him for that.
Def Leppard and Ozzy when I was younger and Warlock most recently
XM liquid metal channel on DirecTV
KiSS - Judas Priest
Same here 🤘
The Doom (1993) soundtrack and (as much as I hate to admit it) nu metal
GTA Vice City - V Rock. That's a great 80s metal primer - Iron Maiden, Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth. Motley Crue, Ozzy, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot etc. Good track choices too. even from the more glammy acts. Oh, and Love Fist of course. Vice City Stories has bangers too - Accept, Queensryche, Dio...
Doom 2016! Mick Gordon is a fucking genius, tragic what happened with Eternal
A friend let me listen to his Christian death metal. Didn’t sound very Christian to me, and I was hooked.
The Chriatian band Bride was my first hook into metal, and then I went crazy and bought every Christian metal album out there. It was the thrash band Tourniquet and the death netal band Vengeance Rising that solidified my love for metal of all stripes.
Yup, Tourniquet, Vengeance Rising, and Mortification.
Alice In Chains and slipknot now I’m not a huge slipknot fan but i still love some Alice In Chains
My earliest memories are of my older cousins listening to sabbath, priest, maiden... I don't remember life before metal.
I think it has to be… Soundgarden and Queen. More specifically, Kickstand from Soundgarden, and Princess of the Universe by Queen. Road Rash OST, and The Highlander, tv series, OST Peak 90’s media
Hard rock->hardcore->metal. Bands like SOAD, Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Van Halen, and A7X at first. I just started listening to progressively heavier and angrier stuff until I unwittingly and involuntarily became a metalhead.
Ozzy
Dad listening to Led Zepplin/Pink Floyd and buying Californication by the Red Hot Chili Peppers—> me finding Black Sabbath Deep Purple —> Judas Priest Iron Maiden —> Metallica/Megadeth/Slayer —> Lamb of God/Children of Bodom/Mastodon/Opeth —> now being in my late thirties and still finding metal bands of all types and genres to enjoy every year since then.
Opeth
Is fun that the most obscure black and death metal was my gateway to enjoy nu metal
Tool lol
grew up with a brother that likes nu metal and a dad that likes heavy metal, discovered other genres as a teenager lol. system of a down, korn, rob zombie, black sabbath, and iron maiden were my gateway bands.
VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs of All-Time was when I started making the distinction between rock and roll and Metal. Guitar Hero was super helpful to expand tastes. An awakening that got my mind right in time to enjoy Dethklok
Folk Metal
80s hard rock, because I got into metal in the late 80s Also Black Sabbath.
I liked Ozzy and Black Sabbath. But I never looked at them under the metal umbrella (or at least not what I was thinking of at the time). I was shown Iron Maiden in high school, and that made me want to explore metal more. Soon after I got into Metallica and Judas Priest.
My Dad started us out on Slayer and Pantera.
Black Sabbath
Guitar hero 3. The game had Metallica, Slayer, and Iron Maiden in the game, along with Through The Fire and flames. Literally the game was trying to create metalheads
Rammstein
Breaking Benjamin and chevelle, yes I know it’s not metal but that was the first kind of rock I ever heard. Fast forward a year my favorite band is megadeth
Crystal Mountain - Death and Tornado of Souls - Megadeth
A friend's older sister lent me her cassette of And Justice For All because I liked the album art. Set me off on a journey. I still feel that same sense of wonderful unease I did as a kid every time I listen to the opening of Blackened.
lol Korn of all bands. Before that I was mostly into alternative rock like Nirvana, Bush, etc.
Rob Zombie for sure, my mom had a fucking awful boyfriend who was a total pos, but at least he had half decent taste in music.
Led Zeppelin - Anthrax - Suicidal Tendencies - Slayer - that was my gateway. Father was into Zeppelin, older cousin got me onto Anthrax and Suicidal, then discovered Slayer all on my own.
Within Temptation
Whatever Breaking Benjamin, 3 Days Grace, and Green Day is considered. Then for harder Metal, my ex showed me Motionless in White. That's what really pushed me down the metal-hole.
Korn’s Follow the Leader. I saw the premier of the video on MTV for Got the Life when I was in the 5th grade and it changed me. When I was on my 8th grade class trip to NYC, I bought Slipknot’s self-titled album at Virgin Records and that was the other major event. None of my parents or family listened to the Big 4 or the founders like Sabbath or Led Zep, so these were my formative, mind blowing encounters with metal.
Well I grew up with a father who was into punk in the 70s and also into metal at the same time. Although I only remember growing up on hard rock I found my own way into metal in the mid 00s with Rammstein's "Reise, Reise" and System of a Down's "Mezmerize" and "Hypnotize". From that point I got slowly more and more open to the more extreme grounds of the metal genre.
Black Album, and Back in Black.
Iron Maiden - Best of the Beast did it for me
I remember finding my dads cd collection and the album with a bulb syringe caught my eye and I played it in my room and loved it.
I hated metal until I heard now you've got something to die for by lamb of god.
My older brother watching headbangers ball
Nu Metal. Specifically Slipknot, fell in love with them after hearing "Duality" a couple times, and I still love them now. Then I just started loving metal as a whole.
Metallica, Pantera, numetal whatever was on radio/MTV... But it all changed when I finally heard In Flames - Jester Race...
Kiss and ACDC as a kid in the 70s
Iron Maiden - Can I Play with Madness on Top of the Pops in 1988.
Downfall of us all, I will not bow, and Down with the sickness.
Honestly, the bands that got me into the heavier shit in general were bands like Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and Seether. The band that get me into metalcore was Atreyu. And the bands to get me into melodic death metal were Soilwork and In Flames
My dad introduced me to Iron Maiden and Megadeth and Amaran (a much less popular version of Amaranthe) when I was in like first grade. I’ve been obsessed with Metal ever since, and jm sixteen. But now I’ve opened my ears to Nordic folk bands like Heilung, indie pop bands like AJR and Paramore.
Started with the big 4 back in the mid 90’s, added Pantera, had a brief encounter with some nu-metal (it was pretty unavoidable back then), I then took a huge leap with Nile’s “Black Seeds of Vengeance”. At the time, Nile was a bit too much for me, so I dialed it back a bit and that’s when I discovered Swedish melodic death metal (In Flames, Arch Enemy, Soilwork). From there I just branched out in all directions, and that was pretty much it.
My father is a Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rammstein fan. I just ventured off from there
Shared a bedroom with my older brother, who is about 10yrs older than me and he played a lot of Black Sabbath and Ozzy when I was still in the crib. I've listened to nothing but metal since before I knew how to talk. Been 42 years now
Mega Man 2 & 3 soundtracks, the Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey soundtrack, and ECW using a lot of metal songs for entrance themes in the 90s
NWOBHM around 1979+ thanks to the Friday Night Rock Show with Tommy Vance - Saxon, Iron Maiden, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Tygers Of Pan Tang + Earlier heavy bands doing well at the same time like Judas Priest, Motörhead, Rainbow, Krokus, AC/DC, Riot.
Loved Metallica as a kid, but honestly never really listened to metal until… Ghost. I know, I know. But they really were a great way to ease into the heavier stuff.
System of a down, Korn and Slipknot
I give props to Tool - not exactly a metal band but introduced me to different genres 🤘
Iron Maiden/Anaal Nathrakh
Slipknot, masks on thumbnail
Pro wrestling. The Road Warriors came out to Iron Man by Black Sabbath. Somehow 10 year old me figured that out and bought the Paranoid cassette. Electric Funeral scared the shit out of me lol.
Black Sabbath, Paranoid. The bass got me interested in music as a whole when i was about 7. From there, I started taking Metallica and Slayer CDs out of my Dad's car.
System of a Down was my introduction to heavier music. Before that I would listen to a lot of pop punk. But then I first heard Kill ‘em All and immediately fell in love with thrash. So Metallica was my introduction to thrash.
Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and the Mission Impossible II soundtrack 🤣
I was an edgy kid trying to look up gore on YouTube via medical videos.... was watching one about someone getting impaled on a fence post and surviving and I was wondering if there were any videos about that happening through someone's brain and what the effects would be if they survived, somehow this lead me to discover the song "Skewered From Ear To Eye" by Cannibal Corpse. This was at a time in my life when hearing John Cooper sing about how he felt like a monster was the coolest, hardest shit I had ever heard. my music taste was never the same since.
was into metalcore for a while, but when I listened to Blackwater Park (Opeth) and Design Your Universe (Epica) I was hooked
Went from hip hop into RATM, and then all my friends started to hate the stuff I was listening to.
prophet of the blasphemies by internal bleeding
Started with punk like pennywise and bad religion, then grungy stuff like nirvana, silverchair, then nine inch nails. Then (and this is kinda funny now) I was in a car with a friend at the time and he was playing disturbed and I thought it was heavy as fuck and I loved it. Kinda snowballed from there. (this was all in the mid to late 90s btw)
https://preview.redd.it/t8eq3dt8w6bd1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=494c93ee9accae017af60c7a9cadfb164239c024 Was given this to my Brother and I back in 2000 by family friends.
Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills
Strangely, it was King Gizzard’s PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation that eventually snowballed and got me into metal.
Cannibal Corpse's appearance in Ace Ventura Pet Detective.
Uranium on spike TV back in the day.....saw devildriver and cradle of filth and I was instantly hooked
Ministry was one of the first bands I ever got into when I was like 11, when Psalm 69 was out, also loved Helmet. Then I got onto Nirvana, which in turn led me to Melvins. I saw Melvins play a couple times in the early 90's and, then I saw them with White Zombie. I would consider that my intro, so kinda industrial/alternative metal. Then I reluctantly went to a few hardcore shows as a teen, ended up playing in/with bands in the post hardcore scene where you would hear stuff like The Locust, Crimson Curse, An Albatross. It wasn't totally my thing, but my friends were into it and there was a lot of energy around it at the time. Not that this stuff is "metal", but it seemed heavy to me at the time, maybe it's "metal adjacent"or whatever, I dunno. It was part of how I started listening to heavier sounding bands Then later, Napster happened, and I learned about so many bands and scenes from that.
Slipknot self titled
Slayer
Dio’s Last in Line
Down with the sickness was a wake up call
I was into hardcore punk in the early to mid 80’s as a teenager. Moved on to Metallica when I heard Ride the lightning and I discovered pantera and megadeth and it just built from there.
It’s basic but the black album. Before then I’d always listen to glammetal such as Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses (I still do) and I wanted to listen to something a little heavier to see what it would sound like and since then I’ve been listening to new (well, new to me) songs and bands almost everyday finding new favorites
Early Rush, AC/DC and Sabbath. Yeah I'm probably older than most of you all on this sub.
Probably my older sister listening to stuff like Ministry in the late 80s. Especially "The mind is a terrible thing to taste" album. Thanks, Al!
Metallica radio songs aside, a kid freshman year lending me Slayer divine intervention around 1995
My first introduction to anything remotely heavy was probably Linkin Park. The Black Mages may have had a part too. (The Final Fantasy composer put a band together to do covers of some of the FF music. I guess it'd be on the heavier end of prog rock?) My first taste of actual metal was One by Metallica, then I got the DVD with all their music videos, so I'd say I basically started with the songs off the black album, then eventually went back to the 80s stuff. I also got into Slayer around the same time, specifically the albums Reign in Blood and Christ Illusion. (Those were my first 2 metal albums.) I was also getting into Power Metal at the same time. I was looking for something proggy, but wound up discovering Rhapsody, and then later, DragonForce and Nightwish. I also wanted to understand the appeal of death metal, because I didn't really get it at the time. I heard some of Six Feet Under's covers, but wasn't really a fan. It was actually Bloodbath (the early Mikael Akerfeldt stuff, his vocals were easier to get into for some reason) that got me into the genre, and I did end up liking the riffs on a few CC songs, namely Hammer Smashed Face and Staring Through the Eyes of the Dead. Then I started getting into more melodic death metal, Arch Enemy, Amon Amarth and Children of Bodom.
Avenged Sevenfold, and I still love those guys
The Black Dahlia Murder. They were marketed early and played with a lot of Metalcore bands
Symphonic metal (hello Nightwish) -> Power Metal -> Death Metal, Black Metal, everything else
Lateralus was released in 2001. My dad was a big fan of Tool at the time. He bought it. I listened to that album before I was even conscious of it. (I was born in '99).
Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne
nirvana, grazhdanskaya oborona(soviet/russian punk/psychodelic band), black sabbath
"Blasphemian" - Infant Annihilator
I came into it mostly via Christian metal. My dad had an old Daniel Band cassette we'd listen to occasionally. Later, I was discovering music through Wikipedia and YouTube. The first bands I listened to were Stryper, As I Lay Dying, Extol, and Immortal Souls. At some point around then I also got into thrash-era Metallica.
Classic hard rock. KISS. Styx. Foghat. Hendrix. Steppenwolf. Etc
I started with death metal tbh, I skipped all the gateway stuff
I got into metal from rap so ig its that?
Went from Eminem to Slipknot, and Cradle of Filth, then got more into Death Metal, Grindcore, and Black Metal from there.
Linkin Park
Sabaton - The Last Stand
The opening few bars of Black Sabbath's eponymous debut. From those first three notes, I knew I'd found my thing.
Linkin Park first 2 albums 🤘🏻🤘🏻 and NFS Most Wanted
Linkin Park. I'd grown up listening to the bigger songs on the radio like Numb and In The End, and then I decided to check out their album Hybrid Theory. I loved it, and resonated a lot with the lyrics. I looped the album for months along with Meteora and a few of their other records. To this day it's one of my favorite metal albums of all time.
I started listening to Queen and then got into more hard-rock bands like AC/DC and Guns N Roses. I liked them and I go deeper into Iron Maiden and some Metallica (the more light stuff) but didn’t really liked it that much tbh. What got me hooked is when I listened Painkiller. Never looked back since then
Uncle who i grew up with had an old Cradle of Filth CD that i loved when i was really young
Black Sabbath and led Zeppelin... Through free bird...
In my childhood I liked a lot of glam metal and my family listened to a lot of nu metal and post-hardcore, but I didn’t really get into metal until I listened to hail the apocalypse by avatar, but I consider the first band I’ve ever actually been a fan of is motionless in white.
Iron Maiden, the entire discography! My first month as a metalhead consisted of SOLELY their music, as if it was the only band that had ever made this genre. It was fun! I was completely obsessed with Maiden. Nowadays I don't listen to old school Heavy Metal much, I'm more into Death and Black Metal, but they have a special place in my heart!
Heard "Sad but True" when I was in the car at 8 years old. Afterwards I went through my Dad's CD collection the rest is history.
Glam "metal" then immediately into thrash. Basically Twisted Sister "Stay Hungry" and then Metallica "Master of Puppets" on cassette.
Twisted Sister