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.

MetallicA! MEGADETH!

Never got the appeal of Megadeth. I remember listening to them in early years of discovering metal, and thought they were pretty meh, boring, stale. They actually for the first time turned me off the genre.

Thank you! I've given them a lot of chances, and even seen them in concert, but have never been able to really see the appeal.

They're kind of in the middle with me as well. I like them, but I never seem to be in the right mood to listen to their albums consecutively.

They were the band that actually got me into extreme metal. Originally I could never jump from say Iron Maiden into thrash or death etc but along came Megadeth who played fast rather than agressively and they changed my whole perspective on the genre. I never listen to them these days, but I'll always have a soft spot for them.

I don't listen to Megadeth like I used to back in the day, but I still put on Rust In Peace on a semi regular basis and every now and again I'll go on a Megadeth binge. I will always remember them as the band that got me over losing faith in Metallica though. Of course then I realized just how much their nineties material sucked and I've never really been that obsessed with a band ever since. Of course I was also around sixteen or so when that happened so I imagine that it was about time to stop having number one favorite bands anyway.

My brother showed me Four Leaf Clover by Metallica when I was pretty young and I've descended into the metal, hardcore, punk, etc. madness ever since.

My buddy let me hear Until it Sleeps by Metallica. I was hooked from then on

Following the current trend, Metallica's "Enter Sandman" hooked me the first time I heard it on the radio