Bands that CHANGED YOUR LIFE

[Satanstoenail]

AC/DC were the first 'heavy' band I heard and liked as a child, definitely the gateway band for me getting into metal.

Iron Maiden were the next step and I'd started playing bass at this point, Steve Harris was a huge early influence on my playing.

Metallica were the first thrash I heard, a friend gave me a TDK C90 with RtL on one side and MoP on the other, that was it, I was gone.

Kreator were the first "extreme" metal with harsh vocals I got into.

Death's Spiritual Healing was the first Death Metal I heard, I couldn't believe that music could be so heavy, I was utterly blown away.

Alice in Chains were the band that got me back into melodic music again after listening to pretty much nothing but extreme metal through the early 90s. I must've listened to Dirt about 10000 times through 93-94.

Jamiroquai's early funk stuff got me into heaps of funk and jazz fusion which was the biggest musical shift for me playing wise, I used to play along to Emergency On Planet Earth for hours.

Regurgitator were hugely influential around the late nineties and fused heaps of styles together.

The Prodigy were the first electronic/dance music I heard and liked, huge gateway band for me, after that I got into Acid Techno and Psytrance.

 

[Thoth-Amon]

not a band per se but:
Bach- Toccata and Fugue in D minor is what really got me into music.

 

[Satanstoenail]

I forgot The Beatles, they were the band that got me into music.

 

[NocturnalPoetry]

Quiet Riot - First band i really loved, turned me into a rocker at the wee age of 3
Dokken - Solidified my love for all things glam... a lot of their songs have a lot of personal meaning to me.
Blind Guardian - Was dragged to their concert by an ex (first non glam concert i had been to)... opened my eyes a whole other world
Sonata Arctica - Dragged to concert by same ex.... fell in love with them. Really led me to start exploring the Finnish metal scene, which led to my love for many other metal genres.
Eluveitie - Saw them live, they blew me away... really led to my love for anything folk metal related.

 

[Eligos]

He's not a band, but probably Steve Reich.

 

[damnromulans]

I didn't have much access to extreme metal when I was a kid, but I had lots of half-finished/intros-only mp3s incompletely ganked from Napster.

The ones I remember off the top of my head that blew my mind away were

Cradle of Filth "A Gothic Romance"
Vordven "Eternal Storm"
Korova "After The Fruits of Ephemeral Pulchritude"
Goatwhore "Nocturnal Holocaust"

I already liked radio rock at that point, but I was really drawn to the gothic keyboardy type stuff. It seemed like some whole new kind of evil. I read blackmetal.com religiously and the whole aesthetic was so scarily new and exciting.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

Merciless - The Awakening
Darkthrone - A Blaze In The Northern Sky
Mayhem - Deathcrush
Incantation - Onwards to Golgotha
Beherit - really anything by them
Absu - see what I said about Beherit

 

[ArneZ]

Every band Ive ever listened too has changed my life in one way or another, for better or for worse. But the ones who made me want to listen to metal on an everyday basis has been bands like Children of Bodom and Fear Factory. Earlier before that Id been listening to Metallica, Iron Maiden and that kind of stuff, but they were not the reason why I wanted to check out more metal at all. I was blown away first time I was listening to "Demanufacture"\"Obsolete" back in the day, same thing with "Something Wild" and "Hatebreeder". And it went on from there, spawned into every sub-genre.

 

[SkeletonWitch]

Westlife.

 

[Manic Ferocity]

Typical but Slayer. I had no idea music could be so mean and intense before I listened to them.

+

Mayhem. I remember hearing about their background and checking out some samples off Deathcrush. I was horrified and intrigued at the time (since I was only around 10 years old).

 

[masondh]

AC/DC- They inspired me to play guitar. They were my gate way band, without them I wouldent be listening to metal.

 

[astrofaes]

Greenday (Dookie album) and Cradle of Filth (Cruelty and the Beast album)

Without Greenday, I wouldn't have started to explore alternative music, and ultimately metal. Cradle were my also my gateway into 'extreme' metal.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

-Slayer, they got me into music.

-Children of Bodom, being an Alexi fanboi from ages 13-15 got my chops up.

-Hex Machine, they drove me into researching rare amplifiers and effects thanks to their phenomenal live sound.

-Breadwinner, they opened the door to the style of music that I'm playing nowadays.

 

[LostinReverie]

Green Day - Dookie

Slipknot - Self-titled

Rammstein - Mutter

Katatonia - TGCD

Opeth - Ghost Reveries

In that order.

 

[w0es]

The first time when I was 10 or 11 I got a video tape from my friend which had metal videos, but I liked Metallica- Harvester of Sorrow in that tape a lot, I still remember the days when I was counting the hours to get to the home from school and start playing the video and enjoying the music without knowing what James is saying (My English was very poor). After I knew that their music is called metal I went to many video/music stores and asked If they have any metal music but I got only one CD from a store including "Megadeth" "Death" "Metallica" and "Slayer".These monsters were enough to take me seriously in this genre. But one thing I remember is that I never liked "Death" till I was 16 and slowly I realised that I'm getting into "Death".

Beside those bands some other bands like Empyrium totally changed my taste in music.

Burzum is the other one which made me to go hear some BM and discover many BM bands.

 

[mutantllama]

Oh, forgot to add in my past Neil Young and Bob Dylan. I don't know what they did, but I grew up with them.

 

[AdamN]

Helloween got me in to Metal, when i was about 12
Onslaught got me into thrash
Mayhem got me into Black Metal
Cannibal Cospse got me into Death Metal
Amon Amarth got me into Pagan Metal

 

[WCannibal]

Amon Amarth pagan metal?
Try this instead:

 

[Ryuuzaki]

Yeah Amon Amarth is just Melodic Death Metal. Not even close to being Pagan.

 

[sm0kenmirrhurz92]

Megadeth - Originally I just listened to metal for speed/heavyness and all that, but Rust In Peace changed my perspective and helped me to focus more on melodicism and technicality.

Dream Theater - Helped open me up to progressive music.

Children of Bodom - First band I listened to that used harsh vox - opened me to that.

In Flames - Really got me interested in the Swedish metal scene and melodeath - still definitely my favorite subgenre along with prog.

Nevermore - The band that originally got me interested in 7 string guitars and helped peak my interest in shred even more (the new album = mad gheyy btw)

Scar Symmetry - When I heard Holographic Universe for the first time I just realized that is what imo constitutes perfect metal.