It was a slow evolution for me. I would say the primer for metal for me was to a degree Led Zeppelin. I'd also have to say some of the guitar playing on Mahavishnu Orchestra had something to do with it. But, King Crimson with the Larks/Starless/Red era and their most recent work was probably the biggest factor. True, it not totally metal but there is a lot of influence it would have on metal and songs like Fracture and Level Five may as well be metal songs anyway.
In terms of actual metal bands it was Opeth. I started getting into them right around the time I was really into prog. It just worked out that Opeth is a metal band and has tons of prog influence and sounds that made the transition really easy for me. The mixture of growls and clean vocals, bombastic sounds and quiet interludes was very accessible to me. That led to more progressive and technical metal acts for me such as Atheist, Nevermore, Agalloch and probably my favorite out of all of them, Meshuggah.
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