From Nu-Metallica to ...uh...real metal: [yeah, I have a huge paragraph. suck my dick]
Metallica was also the band that took me by storm and got me into metal. The first band and my favorite band for nearly 2 years. It was 1998 sometime in March and I was 12 years old. It was Kill 'em all that caught my attention first! I loved that whole record to be honest, and I knew little about metal...all I knew is that some other metal bands that were around were Pantera, Death, Ozzy, Megadeth, Tool etc. Yes, this was 1998 the near peak of the "nu metal" thing. My only sources for metal were the CDs I saw at the store, the radio and the magazines on the shelves which were MetalEdge and Hit Parader. I never visited Borders much, otherwise I would have read a book. I knew Megadeth was an established act and had been around for quite some time and that Dave Mustaine was way cooler than Metallica, and their new stuff indeed had a newer sound to it compared to their old, so a month later, I got Rust In Peace and was completely floored with that album. I knew that this was a more pure sound of metal and there was much more of it. Every song was good and their sound was menacing. It fit just about every aspect of my life and wasn't just pummeling metal but had dynamics and melody that I could catch onto. I got Peace Sells a month after that then Countdown To Extinction a week later...and so, by the years end I had all of them. The next band I got into was Fozzy. I wasn't a purist in the slightest and just became obsessed with whatever heavy band I heard that I liked. By 8th grade...all of my bands were Megadeth, Slayer, Fozzy, Pantera, Death, Nevermore, SOAD, Iron Maiden, Testament (yes, I had the "low" record), Sepultura, Alice Cooper, Poison The Well, Deep Purple, Anthrax (had the sound of white noise), Tool. Yeah...that list right there is like a perfect example of a cool ass teenager in the late 90s coming into the year 200, hating that nu-metal shit. A more common one I guess since I wasn't exposed to "the real shit"...nu metal was the peak. You could label me a metal kid cause I certainly liked that sound, but I also liked the "glam metal" as well.(motley crue had a good few albums) I just liked Heavy music didn't matter what genre. I remember in the "Indie Reviews" in back of metal edge and hit parader were reviews for Nevermore Dreaming Neon Black, Death - The Sound of Perseverance and Iced Earth. Sebastian Bach as well, and Helloween. I still have those adds actually, I have like 3 Dreaming Neon Black Ads. Iced earth - Alive in Athens ad. A death TSOP add. Quite frankly I had a Cannibal Corpse CD and Napalm Death and dug the shit out of them. It's funny cause' there was this late Sunday night radio show that played death metal and all the songs I heard on there were SOOOOO much better than the death metal I was exposed to and thought to be death metal, like slipknot. I just didn't know any bands to get the CDs and all the bands they listed I couldn't find. It wasn't until like my freshman year that I heard all the good bands like Hypocrisy, Atheist, Vader, Morbid angel, and all the melodeath bands like Children of bodom. From that point on a became a pretty big metalhead in terms of death, black and all that good stuffs.
