In the run-up to Metal Month II, and in an effort to make it more participatory, I asked for recommendations for albums I should feature. You responded strongly, and I received a lot of tips on what albums to review. I also asked for top ten lists. Again you responded well, and I chose three, two of which have now been run. Finally, I asked if anyone would like to write a short --- or long --- entry on what metal meant in their lives? How does it make you feel? I asked. How does it affect your life? Have you favourite albums, fond memories, gigs you've been to, moments in your life when metal has been the soundtrack? Why did you get into it, and how? Any or all of these questions could be asked and answered, I said, or you could write whatever you wanted.
The response was this time very low. I think I had two people who said they would participate. Now that's fine: not everyone can or wants to write on demand, and many of you may prefer to keep your innermost secrets, you know, secret. But thanks to those who did respond, and if you still want to, there's time yet. Just scribble down whatever you want to share with the world --- or at least, the readers of this journal --- and pop it over to me either in PM or with a link from which I can download it, and I'll run it before the end of this special.
First up to the bat was our old friend Briks, and this is what he has to say...
(Note: to preserve the spirit of what was written I have not changed anything in the text other than incorrect spelling (of which there is none). I have left the formatting as it is, not changed paragraphs except once where I think it needs to break up the flow, and have done my best to leave everything as it was written. I think it's only fair, given the time and effort that must have gone into this, that I don't
fuck with it.)
A brief history of my metalheadship
by Briks
Picture this. You're eleven, you only listen to whatever's on the radio, the stuff your parents play in the car, and some albums that are on on your little 2GB MP3 player. You've just gotten home from the mall, where your father bought you a sweet-looking CD by a band you'd never heard before. You put it on, and are totally overwhelmed. The vocals are more energetic than anything you've ever heard, the guitarists are unbelievably skilled and the riffs are hella technical, the choruses are catchy and make you want to sing along, and it's live, so the chanting and clapping from the audience enhances the whole experience. It just feels like you're there.
This is what happened to me. The album was Flight 666 by Iron Maiden. I didn't really care THAT much about music back then, so this was just another album added to the little stuff I knew, but it sure made a lasting impression. My interest in music started growing when I was twelve, I think, but I was still just listening to Queen, Bruce Springsteen, a little Oasis thrown in there, y'know, some of the big names in rock. But eventually I got the desire to listen to other things, and listening to Iron Maiden felt natural, so I booted up Spotify and heard the studio versions of the hits for the first time. That's how a kid discovers music in the internet era. I ended up buying Powerslave. Yay, my first metal studio album! It was on sale, and it had some of the songs I knew on it, so of course I had to buy it. I had by now gotten used to Iron Maiden, and was curious about more metal. The natural next step was the other classics, and I'm pretty sure Black Sabbath was my second metal band. I started listening to the hits (I hadn't started listening to full albums yet), and dug them pretty hard: “Heaven and Hell” was some of the most bitchin' stuff I'd heard. So, you know, I started listening to the other classics: some Judas Priest, some Motörhead, that kind of stuff.
Late 2012 I registered here on Musicbanter, mostly to ask stupid questions in the emo forum, but I liked it here and decided to stay. New music surrounded me on all sides, and I couldn't avoid stumbling over a metal recommendation or two, so my musical knowledge expanded faster than ever before (and it didn't take long before I started listening to full albums rather than songs). I also got recommendations from one of my friends in my scout group. He liked some cool stuff, so we started discussing music, and soon our tastes were developing parallelly. One day in the fall of 2012, he sent me a Facebook message saying something like this (it was in Norwegian):
Dude, if you want to hear someone who's sick at power metal, search on YouTube: 'Through the Fire and the Flames'. Watch it all, you'll be impressed.
I've already mentioned this in a journal entry I made about Dragonforce. Anyway, I searched them up, and holy mutton, I was amazed. “They're playing so fast!* And the chorus is big and catchy! Did he call this 'power metal'? Gotta look into that.” So both of us started listening to power metal, and it became his favourite metal subgenre as well as mine. Actually, I think it was the first subgenre I got into other than classic heavy metal, but it stayed my definite favourite for a while. And so we went on, both digging deeper into the realm of metal (as well as other genres: both of us were fans of Green Day, for instance). Then quite recently, early 2014 actually, we decided to make a metal album club. It was only the two of us to start with, but soon after, two other metalheads from our scout group joined, and we made a little Facebook group to organize stuff. We were (and still are) using a “pack system”, were we chose around seven albums at a time, each in a different subgenre, and selected new ones when everyone had listened to them. I also opened a journal section named “chunks of metal”, where I would review the albums we chose. Actually, that was my first journal section to not be a Trollheart ripoff. Anyway, the pack system meant that we had to explore parts of the metal realm we had barely dared to touch before, like black and death metal. We started off lightly, with Venom as our first black metal album, but eventually we had to move on to the rawer stuff. I was surprised when we listened to Hvis Lyset Tar Oss by Burzum and I actually enjoyed it, despite it being the work of one of the most infamous Norwegian murderers ever. And now black metal is slowly becoming my favourite metal subgenre. Well, that's the history of my metalheadship. So:
What does metal mean to me?
Warning: This might sound like a Manowar song
It's like the Force, man. Once you learn to appreciate it, rather than use it, it will flow in your veins, and be there for you even during the hardest times. Also, the Metal Gods have something for you no matter what mood you're in. There's thrash metal if you're angry, there's black metal if you're absolutely pissed, there's power metal if you're happy, there's folk metal if you feel like dancing, there's doom metal if you feel like having your soul crushed by blackness and so on. And if I'm faced with a challenge, like having to do something hard in gymnastics at school (well, I'm not really faced with a lot of other challenges), I find myself thinking “what would Dio do?” or “keep running in the name of Dio” and it keeps me motivated. Cheesy? Naah.