Bands that blew your mind...

in flames - colony...never heard anything so brutal and melodic at the same time. the best part about colony is the songs are all so well made, there are no fillers at all.

fear factory - demanufacture...what an album. i had never heard anything like the keyboards and awesome riffing/drumming in combination before them. the album was the first metal album i bought that actually had a real atmosphere to it.

emperor - anthems... where do I start? im lucky that the first black metal album i ever bought just happens to be the finest one ever made. a remarkable album.

arcturus - the sham mirrors. never heard anything like this album at all. just beyond words...one of my top 5 of all time.

nevermore - dead heart in a dead world... what an emotional album. this is clearly a milestone for the band, i dont care what anyone says. their other albums are amazing as well, but this one (with politics second behind it) is just so superior. amazing mix of techincality, brutality, emotion, aggressive music, only with the inclusion of ballads which are some of the finest ive ever heard. excellent guitar playing by loomis who clearly makes a statement on this album

devin townsend - every single album he has ever made has been a milestone for music. the man can do no wrong. whether he's soothing your soul with ocean machine or spinning you head into chaos with infinity or physicist...just a remarkable musician the likes of which ive never heard before.

metallica - master of puppets...clearly the band's best album, and my first "real" metal band i got into (at least they were back then) a damn shame they turned into crap.

arch enemy - burning bridges...by incorporating my personal favorite elements of death and thrash, this album made them become my favorite band ever. amazing leads ala silverwing, unbelievable solos in the vain of the immortal, and awesome riffing in songs like angel claw just took me to another world.
 
In The Woods... - Omnio.

The first and until now only album to radically reshape my vision upon music in general.

Then, some of the bands who constantly made my day across the years:
Primordial, Emperor (pre-"IX Equilibrium" era), Dornenreich, Elend, Dissection, Empyrium, Ulver, Blut aus Nord...
... and my latest huge shock: Agalloch - The Mantle
 
My parents brought me up on Iron Maiden and AC/DC, so I never had a "eureka band" for the music as a whole, it's just always been there.

Atari Teenage Riot were the band that turned me on to the potential of electronics. I vividly remember having my arse kicked by "Get Up While You Can" the first time. Unfortunately, I also have them to blame for being tempted by industrial crap like Godflesh.

Cradle of Filth were my first black metal experience. Up till that time, I didn't even know black metal existed, but I heard "The Twisted Nails Of Faith" on a magazine coverdisc and it blew me away.

Anaal Nathrakh are another one. I found them on Napster when I was bored and looking for strange words. I typed in "Hyperblast" and lo and behold, there it was. So I was overjoyed when "The Codex Necro" came out a little while later.
 
Children of Bodom
Testament ( also Dragonlord )
Nevermore
Dimmu Borgir ( only PME )
Skyfire
Old Iced Earth ( except for Horror show and dark saga, the new Iced Earth bores me )
Anorexia Nervosa ( their new album )
Quo Vadis
Necrophagist
 
Naglfar - Heard I am Vengence and it really blew my head off. I love it.
Megadeth - Hangar 18 is still one of my favorite songs ever.
 
Opeth
Dawn
Arsis
Insision
Finntroll
Moonsorrow
Agalloch
Empyrium
Dissection
Naglfar
Summoning
Emperor
Bathory (Viking Era)
In Flames (back in the day when they actually played their guitars)
Immortal
Dimmu Borgir

Some more than others, but all of those bands are pretty important to me.
 
That is an excellent topic, I have to say.

Queensryche: This is the band that actually got me into heavy metal. Years back I heard them on a televised concert one night flicking through the channels. They were so fucking awesome...heavy, but they were insanely melodic. Never before had I heard a band that I thought could pull it off. I became hooked instantly.

Iron Maiden: Right after Queensryche I checked out Iron Maiden due to hearing so much about them. Heavier, but still with such amazing melody and catchiness. I was now all metal at this point...these few bands had converted me.

Judas Priest: Obvious reasons, showed me more of the pinnacle of heavy metal.

Helloween: So insanely heavy, so amazing and super melodic. I fell in love with the Andi Deris era instantenously.

Death: I had been weary of death metal before this band, but the complexity, genius, out of this world heaviness and speed and ultra-melody got me hooked. Chuck Schuldiner made me a new man! RIP, Chuck...I love you!

Carcass: To a different level...such a unique band...again very heavy, but the last few albums had a great degree of melody...I even love Swansong.

There are others, but these ones are the main...so many more though! :headbang:
 
Gontyna Kry - The music RULES and the atmosphere of Krew Naszych Ojcow gives me chills

Rossomahaar - Their album, Imperium Tenebrarum floored me

Blut Aus Nord - I loved all their previous releases, but The Work Which Transforms God is so evil sounding

Lord Gore - It was so slow and brutal. The gurgling vocals fit the music extremely well

Psycroptic - Super technical and easy to listen to at the same time. The Isle of Disenchantment had me hooked

Malignancy - Probably my favourite band

I'm going to stop before I end up listing 500 different bands...
 
Metallica - First metal band I heard, and they remain one of my favorites.

Opeth - I couldn't get over how interesting their mixture of harsh and soft song portions was when I first heard them.

Neurosis - Another interesting and innovative band that blew me away upon my first exposure to them.

Amorphis - Their psychadelic songs impressed me a lot. Particularly the Elegy album.

Kyuss - Stoner metal that hasn't been matched to this day, they impressed me a lot upon initial listen.

Cynic - Focus is a masterful death metal album, that has yet to be surpassed in its particular style.
 
Ayreon - A kind of metal that I had never heard before. So unique. Arjen Lucassen is still the epicenter of my musical taste. I discovered so many bands from Ayreon.

Within Temptation - Hearing a band like this with a female vocalist was new to me. I had thought all bands with female vocalists were all like Kittie, who I couldn't stand. Definitely refreshing.

Dan Swanö - Hearing the first minute of 'Uncreation' put it almost instantly as one of my favorite songs ever. Then I heard Nightingale and his clean voice blew me away with its sheer uniqueness, even after hearing him on Star One.

Dream Theater- I turned off my radio for good after hearing 'The Glass Prison'.
 
Very few of my favorite musicans blew me away at first listen. Typically truly great music takes a lot longer to reveal itself to me. It usally starts out as something thats just "good" and slowly bulids its way up to greatness.

Acceptions do exist though. The first would be King Crismon. I remeber when I was in sixth grade my dad played "21st Century Schizoid Man" for me. I remeber sitting there reading the lyrics while listening to the music, and thinking it was very interesting, but by the three minute mark they had already sang 2/3 of the lyrics, how in the hell could they fill up the next five minutes (its one of those albums that has the song lengths on it)? Well they went on to break down my barriers of what I thought music could be. I became obsessed with the song for a while, though I forgot about it until sophmore year of highschool, when I bought the album "In the Court of the Crimson King" and my journey in the world of more experimental music began.

The second was Opeth. The first time I heard a full song of theirs was the Moor. At the time I had a "no growling policy" however I kept hearing so much good stuff about Opeth. Well after listening to The Moor, I was extreemly confused, but very much amazed and excited. Soon enough I became obesessed and my trip into the world of extreem metal began...
 
Children of Bodom - First metal band that I ever heard. Was in a store one day and went to look at the metal section (I was like 12 or 13 at the time, and I thought that the stuff that I listened to was metal [I actually listened to old school rock at the time ... Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc]). And they had one of those things where they have like 5 CDs that you can listen to the songs from in the store. And I saw this CD with a cute li'l grim reaper on the front (CoB's Follow the Reaper), and decided to see what it sounded like ... the guitar solos just totally blew me away, it was amazing! Of course I bought the CD and listened to it the rest of the day.

In Flames - So about a week after I bought the CoB CD, I was talking about music with some people in an online game, and this person says "If you like Children of Bodom, you might like In Flames. Get their CD Whoracle." So I downloaded a couple songs from it, liked it as much as I liked CoB, and went out and bought that.

Dimmu Borgir - Made me start listening to black metal. Though it wasn't the first time I listened to them, hearing Death Cult Armageddon was just so amazing. It has such an 'epic' element to it ... just amazing.

Emperor - Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk is probably my favorite metal album. Ihsahn's voice is so amazing ... there are so many dimensions to it.
 
hrmmm

Slayer - Got me into metal with the song "Black Magic" ... i then went for more of the gold ... seasons in the abyss, reign in blood and what i believe to be the best album of all time - show no mercy.

Megadeth - slayer came before megadeth simply because i had heard of them ... megadeth had not been revealed to me. I got the album "Rust In Peace" and thats where my love for this band began.

In Flames - Started with The Jester Race - then Whoracle and Colony ... *creams pants*

Death - All the metal i had listened to, nothing blew me away as much as this band. Chuck is the most amazing musician to have produced non classical music (you have got to hand it to the likes of beethoven and mozart etc, they are just unbelievable)
Technical, yet pleasing
Brutal yet melodic
Fast yet soothing
What I would do to see chuck live ....

At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul. Truthfully, dont know why i downloaded this album, i didnt like the red in the sky is ours. But I'm glad i got it. AMAZING album. I've read some harsh reviews, but they just boil down to elitist snobbery shit. this album is awesome - brutal and melodic all rolled into one.

But there are a million bands that i could list eg: black sabbath, afi, dark tranquillity, opeth .... the list could go on and on ....

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