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Would be interesting to hear how everyones love for metal started, be it a song, an album, a gig, or anything. It's given that there will be a lot maidens and metallicas mentioned, but I hope there would be some more ug stuff too, at least occasionally. Some here are a lot younger than me, some probably older. Some born too early, and some too late. But denim and leather brought us all together!!!

I got 3, which I feel are important:

Judas Priest - Turbo Lover video. I actually don't remember the song from that time, just the video. I was probably around 7-8 and this was on the TV. Looks funny now, but back then those skeletons and motorcycles were cool. I HOPE it was that video, and not some other. I'm pretty sure about it.

Europe - The Final Countdown. Heard this often on the radio in the late 80s and early 90s. It was my favourite song until I found Metallica.

Metallica - Sad But True. This song started something. Heard Disposable Heroes before, but THIS was it. That riff after the intro is still great. Made me to buy all the Metallica albums up until Load before I bought anything else.

Listening to V-Rock in GTA: Vice City.

Here we go, I got into AC/DC first who were regarded as metal in the early-1980s but now aren't so it's messy.

I do remember listening to a regular weekly heavy metal radio show in Perth, Australia on 6UVSFM and hearing Metallica for the first time - three tracks from KEA and three from RTL. I had never heard a song as fast as FFWF before that.

There was a heavy metal shop called Twilight Records on the second floor of a always-empty shopping mall in Perth city center. The owner had long blond hair, KK Downing style, and disliked having to turn down the volume so he could hear customers speak! It was very Spinal Tapesque.

I remember taking a Number 105 bus after school in 1984 or 1985 to visit Twilight Records and chatting to a younger guy I knew from elementary (primary) school called Mitchell Duke. It turned out we were both hardcore Judas Priest fans so we had a great half-hour chat, with the Swan River glistening in the afternoon sunshine on our left.

Another memory is sitting on the Mt. Pleasant Primary School oval, New Year's Eve 1985 with Glen "Swifty" Swift drinking beer and singing "Two Minutes to Midnight". He wasn't a metalhead and had to listen to me sing! He was impressed with the brutality of the lyrics in those pre-Cannibal Corpse days - feeding babies to war machines, etc. etc.

I had a Powerslave back patch on my denim vest by 1985. Roy Frost at high-school had The Trooper back patch on his, we were the only ones in my high-school with patched vests as far as I was aware. I'm not sure who got theirs first.

I listened to my first metal album, From Mars To Sirius, while driving in my car. I liked it, but it was a little abrasive for a new metalhead. Then I tried Magma, and that kinda changed everything. It was still heavy, it was still metal, but it was melodic and easy for me to get a grasp of.

Perhaps the first major seed planted that had cataclysmic changes later on was the redbook soundtrack to the computer game Descent II. Some of the tracks were electro-industrial (several members of Skinny Puppy were involved), some were orchestral, but a number were basically industrial metal, kind of Nine Inch Nails on steroids. But the capstone of the album was an instrumental version of Type O Negative's "Haunted". The atmosphere in that song was absolutely incredible, even without Peter's vocals (I wouldn't find the vocal version until some time later). I listened to this album all the time back then, even when I wasn't playing the game. So basically my interest in metal (particularly doom and industrial), electronic music, and gothic rock can all be traced back to it.

When I was a tiny little fetus I watched the music videos for Alice In Chains - We Die Young and Massacration - Metal Is The Law on the TV. The music was heavy and kinda scary, but also really fucking badass. I distinctly remember seeing those guys with long hair playing guitars and thinking "I want to be like them when I grow up!".

My older brother would also listen to Ramones all the time and I loved them, and my neighbour would sometimes blast music really loud. I didn't care for the music he played but there was one song that I loved, which was The Kids Aren't Alright by the Offspring.

But I was just too young at the time, probably 5 or 6 years old. I didn't know the names of the songs or bands, and I didn't realise Metal Is The Law was supposed to be a parody lmao.
I don't care for the Offspring or Alice In Chains nowadays, they don't really appeal to me, but I still love those two songs, they are very nostalgic to me.

Fast forward a few years, I had the first Iron Man movie on DVD and Guitar Hero 3 on PS2.
The Iron Man movie had Black Sabbath in the credits so that's how I got into them.
Guitar Hero had t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶f̶l̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ The Number Of The Beast by Iron Maiden, and this was the song that BLEW MY MIND. I loved this song so much that my mom bought me the full album on CD. I listened to the whole album multiple times every single day, and that's how I got into metal.

Me, around 2 years old, watching my mom rock out to Metallica, Zeppelin and Sabbath.

I grew up surrounded by great music, and then for whatever reason, got really into nu-metal when I was around 12. A couple years into that I got into thrash, death and beyond so all turned out alright.

My first memories of metal are definitely with my dad blasting Black Sabbath at all hours of the night growing up. He called it rock and roll at the time so I didn't associate it with metal until I got older. As for my own journey by choice, my introduction was definitely via nu-metal since I was a preteen when that stuff was huge and I wasn't even aware that its classification as actual metal was up for debate until much later, so it was all metal to me. I specifically remember watching the videos for Bodies by Drowning Pool, Dragula by Rob Zombie, and Dig by Mudvayne on vh1.com more times than I can count. I started getting a taste for heavier and heavier music until I wound up at death/black metal closer to my high school years.

Funnily enough, I definitely watched Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as a kid so I know I was exposed to Cannibal Corpse at a young age, but I honestly have no memory of this. The first time I remember Cannibal Corpse was seeing the "Sentenced to Burn" video at some point when I was getting into metal initially and remember absolutely hating it. Growling vocals (of that style) took a bit longer to grow on me than the more melodic blend of heavier vocals that nu-metal had to offer.

I bought the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack on tape in early 1996 leaving for the winter break, kept listening to side A with KMFDM and such, side B was some guys yelling disgustingly over electric guitar noise.

At that time you occasionally saw some bits of current at the time metal on national TV, "Roots bloody roots" etc., I remember the first time I watched a vid of that kind and thought "wow", it was an Acid Drinkers side project called Flapjack, never really been a fan of them afterwards but it was them who did it. After that I started to hear structure in the "Roots" singles, then dug out that MK tape to check that side B, Fear Factory's "Zero signal" hit me hard and I went to buy "Demanufacture", that was summer and then it was fast, at the end of that year I was already slowly getting into black metal lol

AC/DC and Rush were definitely the portal/gateway to my interest in heavier music. Than I discovered Black Sabbath and after that the whole NWOBHM. Been hooked since.

Yes, I remember all those Fear Factory shirts appearing all of a sudden around 1995-96.

In 1994 at age 14 I had a friend who was a metalhead who got me started with Metallica.

At first I wasn't sure if I liked metal and was (and still am into) funk rock like Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Living Colour, Fishbone, 24-7 Spyz, and also liked Soundgarden, Nirvana and The Offrspring, but that was about it. That was just one year earlier in 93' when I really started to like almost any music at all. Before that it was just whatever I heard on the radio as a little kid, or at age 10 the kids around me (and me very sadly as well LOL) having a temporary Vanilla Ice, Snow and MC Hammer phase, but THANKFULLY none of that lasted lol.)

Then one day at his house I heard Metallica's "Unforgiven" (despite the common hatred for the Black Album, I still love that song) and I really liked it and wanted to hear more.

I became a stone cold Metallica fan, with Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Slayer, Judas Priest, Suicidal Tendencies, Pantera, Faith No More, and a bunch of others being some of the first bands I got into after that.

My first intro to "extreme metal", and if you want to consider them death metal you could try maybe, was Fear Factory's "Soul of a New Machine."

Interesting to hear Collingwood77 mention them, but at the time neither my friend or I had ever heard anything so heavy and I still say it's their best.

My first intro to "PROPER" death metal was Massacre"s "From the Beyond", and I heard videos of Death, Entombed, Carcass, Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse on Beavis and Butthead and got into all of them.

A few years later Napalm Death's "Fear Emptiness Despair" introduced me to grindcore and Emperor's "In the Nightside Eclipse" introduced me to black metal.

The rest is history.

Back when I was probably around 10 or 11 my dad would show my brother and I 80s music videos. Beat It and Eat It and Eye of the Tiger and stuff like that. Then also Calling On You by Stryper. He'd play like, Enter Sandman or Crazy Train on his guitar a little bit too.

Around the same time some of my friends were dabbling in metal. The key song there being Iron Man. We had a running joke where instead of "Is he live or dead? Has he thoughts within his head?" We would sing "I am Iron Man, born from a radioactive frying pan."

1987, and I was into 80's pop/rock. Tears For Fears, Dire Straits, Talking Heads, Queen, A-ha, you name it.
And Samantha Fox was starting to get well known. She'd put out that 'Touch Me' song and an album too.
And had her boobs everywhere. I was 14 and hormonal.

I don't know what triggered it but a friend at school was selling the Penthouse with Sam Fox nude in it. He said for $5 he would throw in 'Number Of The Beast'.

I knew nothing of this lot. Iron Maiden .. I'd seen the odd article or mention in Smash Hits or on the TV. But they scared me. Long hair, guitar solos. And very very satanic (according to everyone because I came from a religious background)

Anyway there was a sneaky transaction at the lockers - he had sticky taped the cassette to the front cover of the magazine.

At home that night, I was delightfully blown away by both Sam's funbags and Invaders at the same time. And it started. I went out and bought Somewhere In Time later that week, and the local library had cassettes you could borrow, and for some reason they had 'No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith' and I recorded it because I had one of those double tape deck thingies.

Now I'm still into all of it. The 80's pop/rock, the metal, and I was also a techno DJ who taught himself to scratch in the late 90's when I got bored with metal around that time.

HAHAHA!!! Best quotes ever.

When I was just a wee mallcore kid, barely 12 and just starting to get into your usual music that 12 year old boys were into back then (which at the time was Van Halen, AC/DC and Kiss, though the latter was winding down about then) I heard a song on the radio.
The guitar work was electrofying and screaming, the solos blazing, and the rhythms chugging. I HAD to know which band this was. It was Ozzy of course, with Randy Rhodes on guitar, doing "Over the Mountain." Thus- long story short, Ozzy was my gateway to metal.

A couple weeks later, the "Diary of a Madman" tape barely leaving my tape deck the whole time, I was at school talking about music with a couple other fellow sixth graders. "You've never heard of Black Sabbath?" One of them said. "Uh, no. They sound pretty good though, that's a cool name." I replied. "HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF AN OZZY FAN IF YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO BLACK SABBATH IS!" He cried. Well, uh, I was 12 and uh, new to metal. What can I say. I did discover Sabbath soon after that, though oddly I got into the Dio era albums much more, at first anyway, than the Ozzy era albums for some reason. (Though nowadays I like both eras of the band equally.)

My dad played The Number of the Beast in the family pickup truck (which is now mine, the NostalgiaMobile) during a family roadtrip when I was 11 or 12 or so. That was the beginning. The dive into the rabbit hole began as soon as I got home. Still have that CD in the truck.

Probably hearing Enter Sandman on the radio when I was a kid, if that counts. I didn't really get into metal until much later though

The Mortal Kombat soundtrack, which of course had Fear Factory on it. That track definitely stood out above the rest.

The Twisted Metal games, Iron Man & X-O Manowar In Heavy Metal, Destruction Derby 2, metal was thrown at me in all the first games I played for Playstation in the late 90s. I wouldn't get into metal proper for another 5-6 years but I've always believed those games planted seeds in my head for what my music taste bloomed into.

The earliest came from my dad playing stuff like Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Uriah Heep on pretty much constant rotation growing up. The first records I got into on my own were things that were relatively easy to come by for a semi-rural teenage in the mid-to-late 90s: Type O Negative, Sepultura, Danzig (via Misfits). Around that same time I bought a few guitar magazines and was drawn to the aesthetics--if not to the souind--of death metal. Eventually, I bought Dusk and Her Embrace and a friend loaned me a copy of Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk and I've pretty much been hooked since then.

Remember being young like probably 6 or 7 and my dad put on black sabbath by black sabbath on the hifi. I remember my younger brother (3 or 4) getting so scared by the intro he literally shit himself.

There was always metal playing but I never really paid attention, hearing Disciple by Slayer and Through Ages of War by Dark Fortress about age 10/11 got me into it. Was more into black and thrash before I ever got into earlier stuff.

I remember heavy metal being portrayed in the cartoons I watched back then, and thought their looks and 'evilness' were pretty cool. Fast forward to when I was a scene kid in my tweens, a friend introduced me to Metallica and Megadeth and that was my gateway to metal. I can't say I listen to them much these days as they're not really my type anymore, but their music defined my early teenage years.

I have 3 or 4 defining Metal Memories/Moments(tm).

1. In around 1993 or 1994, I heard Enter Sandman on cassette. I was in the 3rd or 4th grade and fell in love with the sound of the drums right away. I bought the tape myself and used to listen to Enter Sandman over and over.

2. A few years later, I signed up for one of those Mail-Order CD Club things (LOL, for all the younger people here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_House) and they used to have a little metal section in their catalog. I saw that Metallica was in there and thought "huh, I liked that one Metallica cassette" so i decided to re-purchase it on CD, as well as a couple other related titles by a few bands named Megadeth, Pantera and Slayer.

3. A few years after that, in late 1999, when watching Much Music's LOUD program at 11pm, they debuted a music video by a little Finnish band named Sentenced. After hearing "Killing Me, Killing You", I started to wonder just how many international, unknown (to me) metal bands there were. So I started buying Metal Maniacs and Metal Edge magazine

4. Buying those magazines at the time in which file-sharing was just becoming a thing was the REAL pivotal moment. This was before high-speed and album torrenting for me. I'd take the magazine, and search band names I liked/album covers I liked on file-sharing programs and download whatever I could find. Often, the files were 128 or less in quality, and took almost an hour to download.

Once I had a couple tracks from a band or album, if I dug it, I'd go to my local record store and order the album. It would sometimes take 2 months to come in, and cost over $25 canadian.

But, oh, my friends... those were the DAYS let me tell you. The thrill of the chase. The anticipation of having to wait for something you loved. Truly the best era.

I used to be really big into the WWE, and I really liked Triple H's matches.

Now of course as you know, Motorhead did his entrance theme, and I really liked it when I heard it, so I looked up the full song on youtube.

I think I remember seeing another bands song (probably AC/DC or Metallica or smthn) in the recommendation feed beside the video, and I clicked that, before long metal was all over when I watched youtube.

And now I'm here.

I erupted forth from my mother's fronthole and then preceded to stab the doctor with a rusty Swiss army knife.
If you don't buy any of that, I think my cousin was the person at fault for having it on in the background.

My earliest metal memories were seeing a video for Anthrax's "Madhouse" back in the mid-80s (wasn't very old then, fucking hated it ) and Celtic Frost's "Circle of the Tyrants" (that didn't go over too well either). I ended up liking those a lot more once I hit my teens.

In 88, watched some Megadeth and Iron Maiden on TV and actually liked them, so that's what got the ball rolling for me.

I seem to remember that "Madhouse" video was actually banned by MTV in the US; it might well have aired in Canada, Austraila or Europe though. I never actually got to see that video until Youtube. "Indians" was the first Anthrax video that American MTV officially aired.

The first time I remember hearing the term "heavy metal" was a news story on TV in the early 90s that mentioned Led Zeppelin. I guessed it meant the bands favoured instruments mostly made out of metal, like metal drum shells or something.

By 1997 I'd heard a bit of Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Tool but hadn't gotten as far as liking them. Then a couple of classmates told me about Metallica when Reload was coming out soon. I changed radio stations and heard an advertisement with a snippet of Fuel and I think I kinda knew metal was my thing right then.

When I heard Ace of Spades as the intro for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 back in 2001 (when I was 10) I knew I loved it. Then I found a CD in my dad's CD drawer called "Metal Mania" with a panther on the cover. My dad didn't even know what it was, but that's how I got acquainted with Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Venom, Angel Witch, UFO, Hawkwind, Nazareth, Magnum, Girlschool and Uriah Heep.

Honestly a pretty kickass compilation, I still have it and listen to it today. https://www.discogs.com/release/7144228 ... etal-Mania

Edit:
Actually, thinking back I think my very first metal-related memory might be being somewhat intimidated by the cover of an Iron Maiden CD I found at my older cousin's place. I think it must have been Fear of the Dark.

Hearing the Scorpion's Blackout album on some kid's boom box in the bus in 1982.

That's a great track-list!

My first real defining metal moment. I was always familiar with the genre and casually appreciated what was on MTV (def Leppard, black album Metallica, nirvana and the grunge guys etc); but the first moment I fully understood metal was when my buddy visited me and asked me to put on this new tape he just got. Great Southern Trendkill by Pantera. Needless to say it scared the shit out of me, infinitely heavier and darker than any “metal” I was used to.

He also gave me Nativity in Black tribute to Sabbath album and that was a great education for me. Fell in love with Type O from there (and many others). Finally - as alluded to previously, the final nail in the coffin for my conversion to full blown metal head was the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Notably Zero Signal by Fear Factory. Never looked back.

1996 was the year. I was 15. Good times.

My dad came into my bedroom one day when I was 12 and showed me Rob Zombie, calling it "real heavy metal stuff". Of course it wasn't, but for 12-year-old me it was the heaviest thing I had heard and it was a pretty defining moment for me and my music taste. By the time I was 14 I was into all the classic bands and went to my first show at that age as well (Amon Amarth, Belphegor and Ensiferum).

A classmate passing me the headphones from his Walkman (certified boomer here) and listening to 'The number of the beast' for the first time at age 13.
That moment is engraved on my soul and it seems like it was only yesterday, it's so vivid. I felt like the world had stopped and that I already knew this, somehow.
The rest is history.

A similar event took place years later when I sat down facing my speakers and blasted 'Reign in blood' from beginning to end without moving an inch. First time listening to it after trying several records and not liking any (Diabolus, Undisputed Attitude and Divine Intervention, I know, it's just what was around at the time), I left the house feeling like I had been plugged into the mains supply.
Major turning point and total gateway into extreme metal.

I'm sure the soundtrack to Command & Conquer and Red Alert helped in preparing my ears for what was to come. After liking one or two Rammstein singles on the radio and some early Korn and Clawfinger, a good friend of mine brought a ripped-CD "Arise" by Sepultura (owned by his brother) to me around 2002 and it was too much, couldn't handle the brutality - but I still thought it was kind of amazing. Took two more years or so until this finally clicked with me, but got my ears prepared via Nightwish's Wishmaster/Oceanborn/Century Child and In Flames + Soilwork.

That day of revelation was sometime in mid-April 2004, I remember that...and two years later I was covering melodic death metal songs on stage in a band while looking like I was part of the Beatles wasn't the worst times in my life.

growing up i heard a lot of led zeppelin and thought that was as heavy as music could ever be. then in 1991 at my town's Septemberfest fair on a ride called the thunderbolt they were playing enter sandman and sad but true. me and my brother (ages 8 and 6) loved it so my dad bought the CD. turns out that my dad had every black sabbath record hidden in the garage but my mom wouldnt let him listen to it inside for fear of corrupting the children

I had a similar moment when a classmate passed me the headphones from her walkman (we are in the min-1980s here) and "The Eliminator" by a band I had NEVER heard of- Agnostic Front- was playing. I had discovered metal a few years earlier, and had just gotten into Metallica the previous spring. But that Agnostic Front song was on the RADIO! She had it tuned to a college station that had a program consisting of a four hour block of underground punk, metal, and industrial music. All of a sudden, a whole world of underground music opened up to me, and I discovered bands- punk, thrash metal, death metal (Such as it was in 1986) and a host of underground/experimental music from entire genres I never knew existed.

While I had already discovered metal four or five years earlier with Ozzy, discovering college radio basically was like being reborn into a whole new world of musical awesomeness.

I remember being like 6 or 7 and I was really obsessed with that Nativity in Black compilation (not the red one, that one sucks dick for the most part) and I brought it to school and for some reason everyone was extremely interested in listening to it, I really don't get it, because after that point I was always the only one I knew that was seriously listening to metal.

I remember hearing the song From Out of Nowhere by Faith No More, and It's seriously the first song I ever remember feeling sad listening to, it kinda made me realize I was eventually gonna die, I was about the same age at that time.

Another one though not exactly metal is I was absolutely obsessed with the album Evil Empire by RATM as a child, and I recall getting really mad and throwing the cd on the ground and the cd cracked, but I was so obsessed I kept playing it and would get yelled at when I put the ripped cd on lol

Same with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, I remember being absolutely obsessed with that one too as a kid, and remember I used to carry this small shovel around and pretend it was a guitar because I literally didn't have anything else

A Punk/Metal store i used to pass by on my way back from school about when i was 7-8 years old,grew up watching all those Iron maiden and slayer t-shirts in the store's showcase. I still go through there sometimes, bought a real good leather jacket some months ago.