Loved Limp Bizkit/Linkin Park/whatever when I was in middle school, around early '00s, but then I started listening to Metallica, which led me to Megadeth, who both led me to the Big Four and Iron Maiden, and then I read
Sound of the Beast around my sophomore year of high school, and my education has been too much of a roller coaster since.
I was a mindless, hardcore thrash metal fan until my early twenties when I'd listened to one too many Slayer albums and found out that Lamb of God were pretty cool, and then I was into anything as shameful as Killswitch Engage or Trivium, but after a year or so of that I was back into the metal elitist fold and have been listening to thrash, heavy, death, black, etc metal ever since. The only blip on the radar in the past... five years(?) has been my recent conversion to grindcore.
And a couple of years ago I discovered that Manowar was the greatest band ever, so there's that.