When did Metal become your life?

I was just thinking about this today. I've been into metal since I was 12 or 13, but the age at which it became more than just music was 17 (late 1989 and into 1990). That was when I stopped listening to pop and almost exclusively went metal and punk. It's when I started wearing black jeans and black t-shirts. It's when I first tried to grow my hair long. It's when I obsessively started buying metal magazines. It's when I went to my first metal gig (The Asylum and Suffocation- not the famous one!).

Well I was so fortunate to be indoctrinated by my older Brother, so I don´t think I was more than 11 or 12 years old when Iron Maiden, Metallica, Kreator, Slayer, Danzig, Misfits, The Exploited, and whatever else my Brother was playing, became a big part of my life. It started out a bit softer with Bon Jovi, Europe, Twisted Sister, and Kiss, but that was a pretty short phase. Both my Brother and I soon craved much more raw and aggressive music .

Edited by UMUR - 05 Sep 2015 at 3:27am

I'd say 14 was when I started listening to mostly metal and I knew I couldn't live without it. I started getting many band t-shirts, started using my money for mostly metal albums, and probably started annoying some of my friends with how much I talk about it. 

I had a young start too, thanks to my Dad. He's always been into his hard rock and heavy metal, so it was always around in my childhood. I guess I was around 11 or 12 when I first starting taking an interest in the music he was listening to. He started me with Iron Maiden. It all took off from there. He also introduced me to progressive rock bands like Yes, though I found more appreciation for those a bit later.

Most of my little group of friends weren't really interest in it but my best friend was. We spent a lot of time going through Dad's vinyl collection, taking pot luck. Getting the internet allowed us to find a lot more music through, stuff my Dad never heard of. Eventually we were the ones introducing him to bands. We still lend him stuff we've bought once we've played it a few times. My step-mother hates it whenever I pass something onto my Dad to try. I'm sure she'd erase metal from existence if she could.

My wife is not a fan of what I listen too, unfortunately for her my eldest is well on the way to following in his old man's footsteps.  At least she has our youngest boy who loves that dance shit.

What a cool Nanna!!

I wished I knew the secret to brainwashing kids . My two eldest are mainly into indie pop shite. My youngest is the one showing interest in hard rock and metal. I'm trying to gently encourage further exploration rather than throw it down his neck and put him off. I've already lost two kids to the dark side and don't want to lose my third too 

I was 10 or 11 when I first heard Iron Maiden's Somewhere In Time, which got me hooked on metal. Before that, when I was like 5 or 6,  I had listened to Twisted Sister, which I liked, but it was Maiden that got me hooked. From there, I explored all sorts of metal and hard rock, and later prog, music. I never went through that process of seeking for increasingly extreme music, as my taste in music expanded in all sorts of directions. Also, unlike many other people, there are very few albums and bands that I stopped liking as I got older (I still like Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, for instance). Fortunately, my parents always supported me, and my dad would often come with me to Iron Maiden, Megadeth, AC/DC, Metallica, and Judas Priest concerts just for the fun of it (he's a blues rock guitarist himself, so I think he was just happy that I became interested in music).

I fondly remember the 90s because of the extreme metal underground scene in my hometown Odense and because that's when I started playing in bands and stuff. I was so metal in the 90s that, when I got hit by a car, while listening to Entombed no less, on my way to the English exam in 10th grade, I went to the exam anyway and aced it although I was bleeding from my hands and shaking from the adrenaline.

UMUR wrote: Both me and my Brother went to a catholic school, and boy did they look on in terror when we started going to school with our Slayer and Metallica patches and T-shirts. I especially remember my horrid German teacher, who was a TRUE catholic (she had around a hundred children or something like that) talking about the devil´s influence and similar speeches

I had a teacher in school too, who was worried about me because I wore all those T-shirts with monsters and strange logos on them. She was not religious, though. She was just stupid. Once I wore my trusty old Iron Maiden Purgatory t-shirt, she asked me why I wore all those horrifying t-shirts. I told her to calm down and that it was only rock music.

I couldn't say metal is my life as I equally love prog and hard rock but I first discovered the likes of Sabbath, Zep, The Who and Deep Purple when I was about 14 along with prog bands like Yes, Genesis and Camel to name a few. This was the mid-seventies, a time when I discovered so many great bands and even now still have a big hunger for discovering new talent. 

Metal's most definietly my biggest musical passion (which is why I started this topic!), but I love punk in a big way. I got a bit bored with metal in about 1995, because thrash had died, grunge and nu-metal were dominating everything, and black metal just seemed too silly, so I got right into punk. I love old oi stuff (draw the line at the stupid nazi racist shit though), SoCal stuff like Bad Religion, NOFX and The Vandals, and hardcore.