Sounds like a pretty sweet festival, guys :smallbiggrin:
Well, except for Parkway Drive. But lame bands will show up pretty much anywhere :smallwink:
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Sounds like a pretty sweet festival, guys :smallbiggrin:
Well, except for Parkway Drive. But lame bands will show up pretty much anywhere :smallwink:
So, I'm going to see Metallica Saturday, the opening act is Joe Satriani, I'm pretty stoked about that.
I was just thinking about how I got into metal. I borrowed a Lamb Of God CD from a cousin, and by the end of the month I had moved on to more classic metal, and now onto the obscurest of the obscure black and death metal. I am aware that Lamb Of God is not especially popular among old-school metalheads, but they will always hold some significance to me, for being the band that acted as a gateway into the wonderful world of metal.
So, guys, what were your "gateway bands"?
Leaving aside Led Zeppelin I (thanks to a nurse when I was at the hospital for a broken leg), my baptism was during a holiday, thanks to the tapes brought by a friend: Saxon (Strong arm of the law), Accept (Restless and wild) and Dio (The last in line). Then, when we came back, he gave me also Iron Maiden (The number of the beast) and Motorhead (No remorse).
Yeah, I'm that old. :smallwink:
My getting into metal.
My older brother was into all the classic 80s thrash band, and he had his own cover band, he played drums. So I was always aware of metal, even at a young age, and I enjoyed metallica, slayer, testament etc...
But the first band that I got into and started my journey into metal was Fear Factory with Demanufacture, i was 14-15 year old at the time.
I was into Nine inch nails and Ministry at the time, and people would always recommend me FF. The album cover was cool, and I bought it the year it came out.
Been headbanging ever since.
I heard Soilwork and some crappy Nu Metal band in a WoW PvP video and gained an interest in extreme-ish (Soilwork sounds like pop music after you listen to The Oath of Black Blood, but then again, most people don't listen to The Oath of Black Blood lol) music. I went to the Metal thread on a forum I used to post on and had the metal vets there school me on metal. I regretably bought In Flames' Soundtrack to Your Escape as my first ever metal record, and after that I ordered 6 albums in one big bundle: Wintersun's [i]Wintersun[/u], Kamelot's The Black Halo, Ensiferum's Iron, Symphony X's The Divine Wings of Tragedy, The Gathering's Mandylion and... I can't remember what the last one was. Maybe Tiamat's Wildhoney or Kalmah's Swamplord. Don't totally recall. Anyway, after that I just got more and more into metal. Emperor's Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, an album I now ironically cannot stand, was my introduction to black metal, and that's been my genre of choice for a while.
Dragonforce.
Don't look at me like that.
I was some High School freshman, I think. I didn't listen to music- It was something I'd listen to if it was on, but I certainly didn't spend money on it, and didn't know anything about... well, anything. Let me put it this way. I wouldn't have recognized Queen. Any of their stuff.
Anyway, a close friend of mine decided that Dragonforce was the best thing ever. From there, I spread the contagion to another friend, who in turn got me hooked on Iron Maiden. From there, the only other significant jump was yet a third friend who suggested Demons & Wizards- I used them as a seed for Pandora which I discovered around the same time, and found all the stuff I dearly love- Avantasia, Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian, Judas Priest, Sabaton, Iron Savior... And more. But I do seem to be a powermetalhead at heart.
Power metal is a great starting genre for metal, it is usually easy listening and showcase alot of cool elements of metal, and it's a "classic" genre.
I turned one of my friend into metal with power metal, starting with Blind Guardian/Iced Earth, and he went on to discover on his own the classics... the metallica, iron maiden etc...
His girlfriends hates me for it, but that's just too bad for her! :smallbiggrin:
Megadeth was the first metal band I listened to. I had only recently got into music at all thanks to a friend insisting that I must hear as many Queen songs as humanly possible in the hours we were hanging out, and after that - having realised that I do, in fact, like music - I started listening to the radio and happened to hear some Megadeth (I think it was Symphony of Destruction) on it. It got stuck in my head, so I did some research, figured out who did it (the radio station was very bad at announcing such things), and decided I liked it enough to get some CDs.
From there it was Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and then I only got into power metal after I heard some Helloween (Future World, I think it was) by chance on another radio station. I consider this a stroke of luck, as I've never heard any on the radio since.
Now I'm mostly into power metal, though I do like some other kinds from time to time.
My Little First Metal Band?
Probably Opeth. I think I got into them via, like, Porcupine Tree or something. Around the same time I was listening to Tool, which introduced me to Isis, so it's hard to say. I still adore Blackwater Park and Panopticon.
I mean, technically, the first metal that I heard was probably Metallica; however, Metallica really sucked so it drove me away from the genre more than it brought me in. I also went through a teenager-y phase where Nine Inch Nails led me to Skinny Puppy (don't tell anyone, but I still have fond memories of Too Dark Park) which in turn somehow led me to Ministry. That didn't last for too terribly long, though, and it didn't have any effect on me when I eventually did get into metal.
Hmmm, probably Rammstein was the first metal band I listened too a lot.
(they're industrial metal, right? sort of? except on tuesdays?)
I also listened to some Black Sabbath. And whatever else, when it was on. I knew that I liked the genre a good while before I started to get more into it.
Then one day I finally decided to do it, and asked my metalhead friends to recommend some stuff to me. They threw a bunch at me, Electric Wizard, Agalloch, Powerglove was mostly what stuck.
I like to joke that I find all my new music through en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu_Mythos_in_popular_culture#Music
My mother was using a P2P system* to download Suzanne Vega's song about domestic violence My Name is Luca. One of the results that her search turned up was Luca Turilli's Black Dragon, and out of curiosity, she downloaded it. While playing around on her media player I saw that and, being 12, thought "Dragon!? KEWL" and clicked it. I had never heard anything like it, and I was hooked. Having been a bit of a metalhead herself when she was young (Master of Puppets is still one of her favorite albums) she understood and downloaded the rest of Luca's solo discography (which at the time stopped at Prophet of the Last Eclipse) and Rhapsody's (Power of the Dragonflame). I introduced these Italian geniuses to my grandpa, who thought they were pretty neat. He bought me the albums on CD, and as a bonus gave me a compilation CD that was a collection of Helloween covers, most notably Rhapsody's Guardians, Luca Turilli's I'm Alive, and Sonata Arctica's I Want Out. With this introduction to the world of modern heavy metal, my grandpa's taste expanded, and he'd often give me CDs he'd liked mixed in with classics he'd grown up with, notably Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime, Dream Theater's Octavarium, Savatage's Dead Winter Dead, Pain of Salvation's Remedy Lane, and every Pink Floyd album ever. The rest, as they say, is history.
*This was when filesharing and the viruses they came with was a new, exciting thing. Don't judge her too harshly.
Good ol' Metallica for me. And not via one of their classics like Ride the Lightning or Master of Puppets or something like that, no. I got into metal thanks to Load and Reload. Of course, almost everything was an improvement after that :smallbiggrin:. I had paved the way beforehand by being a huge Queen fanboy, plus getting into some grunge/alternative bands like the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana (I still love them all today). After those two albums I started working my way backwards through Metallica's albums and, of course, found that each one I heard was better than the last.
Then I branched out, trying some other stuff like Megadeth and Maiden, but the two albums that hooked me into metal for good were Blind Guardian's Imaginations from the Other Side and Demons and Wizards' self-titled debut. Just to dig myself deep into the hole, I went to an open air festival with some friends, discovering a handful of interesting bands in the process (Lacuna Coil, In Flames, Sepultura, Slayer, Kreator, Kamelot, Symphony X...). That was 2001. I'm still digging today. And I don't feel a little bit tired, thank Dio.
Sabbath. Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age. Queens->Kyuss->Sleep->Acid Bath, and it was downhill from there. :smalltongue:
omigod
i just scored an email interview with alestorm :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:
any advice or questions i should ask?
Here are some question I'd have for them:
With songs like Swashbuckled and Scraping the Barrel, are they trying to move in a more meta/humourous direction with their lyrics?
What bands inspired their sound? Conversely, what kind of sound are they trying to avoid?
Do they believe there is demand for more pirate metal bands, or do they think they and Swashbuckle have the niche covered?
On an unrelated note, I'll be going to my first metal festival next weekend (Heavy TO). Up until now, the biggest show I've been at has been a few hundred people. Anything I should know about festivals before heading out to one?
Personally I like folk metal, like Ensiferum and Sonata Arctica and Northern Kings and all that. And symphonic metal, like Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I kind of like power metal too. Any recommendations?
Also, I just noticed that on Sonata Arctica's website it says Tony Kakko likes WoW. Gasp.
New to the forums, figured I'd be able to find a fairly large contingent of fellow metal fans around here somewhere. Lo and behold, I was right.
Classic metal is probably the subgenre nearest to my heart. Iron Maiden are my favorite band evar, with Judas Priest and Dio (RIP) not far behind. Naturally I also have a good deal of affection for power metal bands like Iced Earth and Blind Guardian and am getting quite a kick out of the NWOTHM (New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal or New Wave of True Heavy Metal depending on who you ask) revival movement that's been going on lately through bands like White Wizzard (this video of theirs is simply wonderful) and Holy Grail. I've also been known to enjoy Prog Metal, and other various subgenres.
The gateway metal band for me was Disturbed, who I still enjoy a lot to this day. Just about everything I listen to now stems outward from an initial investigation of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden as bands that Disturbed had listed as influences. Probably everything in my collection is within 6 degrees of separation one way or another. By way of example, I became a fan of Maiden from the starting point of Disturbed, became a fan of Dream Theater after learning that they would be supporting Maiden at a show I went to last year, became a fan of Opeth after seeing them frequently compared to DT on the internet, and discovered the wonders of latter-day Death in my subsequent investigation of Progressive Death Metal as a whole.
Because this novel of a post isn't long enough (it is an unfortunate tendency of mine when on forums), here's a random list of bands I like...
Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio, Iced Earth, Blind guardian, Dream Theater, Symphony X, Death (mostly their last two albums), Control Denied, Opeth, White Wizzard, Holy Grail, Seven Kingdoms, Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, Kamelot, Avantasia, Primal Fear, Demons and Wizards, Black Sabbath, Orphaned Land, Masterplan, Epica, and some others that are slipping my mind just at the moment.
Less proggy Death Metal (Necrophagist, Obscura, Arsis, Bloodbath, Morbid Angel, etc.) doesn't make the list because I generally don't find them to be particularly varied and so usually don't bother getting more than one or two songs from a given band.
so any other questions for alestorm?
Y'ever listen to any more Sabbath influenced metal? Acid Bath, Kylesa, Electric Wizard, Boris, et cetera...
So, Metallica was probably the biggest show in the history of Quebec, maybe Canada, with over 115 000 people attending. And it was a great show too, Dance Laury Dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qnQ21Vsl18) are pretty good and the singer was hilarious (a small no name band playing for over 150k people in their home city? You can bet they had fun). They kinda sound like a less metal version of Motorhead, actually if you search them on youtube one of the top videos is a cover of Ace of Spades. Joe Satriani is quite simply a virtuoso, but as a showman he's average at best.
And the main act was fairly awesome, they played all the classics and a big chunk out of death magnetic, with seek and destroy as an encore.
It was totally worth waiting for like 10 hours in the sun and feeling like crap yesterday.
I don't like really doomy stuff all that well. It fixates on what is to me the least appealing aspect of Sabbath's sound. That Boris song was okay, but the singer sounded flat and the guitar a bit out of tune. I've also heard some Candlemass songs that I thought were alright, but even then they were a bit too long with too little going on and their singer is pretty mediocre. The same is true of a lot of Sabbath's stuff when it comes right down to it, and I'm generally fonder of their albums with Dio as a result.
In that case, you'll fit right in in the Metal Thread. I think I can count my fellow sludge metal fans on one hand. :smalltongue:
Wow, I've been away for too long. Anyone been to some great concerts recently? I saw Symphony X a month or two ago and they were fantastic.
My gateway to metal came when I first heard Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills". I don't think I knew what a guitar solo was (literally) until I heard that song. I think I listened to it about 20 times in a row, and the rest is history...
And now I'm on this crazy Running Wild kick. I simply cannot stop listening to that band, no matter what I do.