The first CD I ever bought was Black Sabbath - We sold our Soul for Rock n' Roll.
My dad alway played Black Sabbath and Zepplin and the sorts (early metal as its called) when I was a kid, then Later I got really into Ozzy and Sabbath on my own, and then from Ozzy I got into Metallica and Megadeth, and even a bit of Slayer. I liked SOAD for about 2 months before I just got bored of it and sold traded my albums away for stuff like Pantera (good deal on my part
)
Then my freind showd me some In Flames telling me how they opend for Metallica, and from In Flames came CoB, Norther, and Sonata Arcitca. Mainly because I was like "OmG Europe AWESOME!" And from those bands came Ensiferum, Nightwish, Turisas, Dragonforce...and the list goes on.
And somewhere along the line I listend to RUSH, which is still the greatest band ever
Edit-
SOAD is Nu Metal which isnt really metal
Avenged Sevenfold is shitty EMO. EMO kids like to think Atreyu and A7X are metal so they can go around saying they listen to everything, when they don't, they listen to EMO.