How I Got into Metal

It all started in 1995.  At this point in time my only real experience with music was when I listened to Toronto’s once great station AM 640, which was a source of the sugariest pop available.  Certainly not a place to discover metal.  In grade 7 I met a kid named Jon who was super into Metallica, so to be cool I bought the Black album and Justice.  So I listened to them, but I didn’t like them.  It really didn’t do anything for me. 

My love for music began with The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album, now this was something.  There we’re fast songs, slow songs, straight up rock and more kind of out there things.  To me, this album stands not only as the best album of the 1990’s, yeah Nirvana can eat a dick, but also one of my all time favourites.  Billy Corgan was into Priest and Maiden and those metal influences definitely came out.  Later on I got into Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, so my tolerance was going up.  Then in 96′/97′ the Nu-Metal craze came at full force and for once I got to be part of a fad that not many people knew about, yet.  It didn’t take long before Follow the Leader came out and Nu-Metal was everywhere, those of us that were there for the early Deftones and Korn albums felt betrayed and disenfranchised with commercialization of the whole thing, it happened so fast that I didn’t even realize that Disturbed and Linkin Park had killed it like Bush killed grunge.

So what was I to do?  Nu-Metal sucked, maybe it always did and I was tempted to keep going with the Deftones and leave the rest for dead.  Then I heard about Chimaira and I bought they’re first album, Pass out of Existence.  There something different here, it was fast, it was heavy, though the riffs were Nu-Metal in style they made no attempts at sounding funky or poppy or clean or like hip-hop, it was like Nu-Metal was less like foil, you know, not that heavy and meant to be thrown away.  I needed more, what was this?!  After more digging I discovered what was being called “The New Wave of American Metal”  and it was then over.  I got into everything, I was like a junky, the heavier the better.  I moved into Metalcore, Hardcore, screamo, Deathcore, Death Metal, Thrash, Grindcore, Swedish Death metal, Prog and I was even inspired to check out the metal roots, like Sabbath, Maiden, Metallica and Pantera.  The only problem was Metallica was no longer heavy enough for me.

So that’s the story, I rediscovered metal in my 20’s and I haven’t looked back.

~ by theroan on May 13, 2008.