For me growing up in the late 80s and 90s, I was listening to just random stuff I found at the record store. I didn't get into metal until about 2000 when I discovered Halford's "Live Insurrection". I bought it because of the cover, and it's still my favourite live album. I knew of bands like Kiss and Motley Crue, Metallica...but it wasn't until I bought that Halford album that I was hooked. THEN I got really into Motley Crue, Kiss, Judas Priest, etc.

Metallica's "One" song is what instantly drew me into the metal genre. I'd heard heavy stuff before, but that song just clicked with me and I've been hooked ever since.

One is an intense song and the music just added to the atmosphere of it. For a lot of years it was the only Metallica song I liked.

A story concerning metal health
 

I got into heavy metal via Blue Öyster Cult. Here is my weird story:

In 1972, when I was 18 years old, I came down with schizophrenia. I was committed to a mental hospital in Sweden for a period of 15 months. I was released from the mental hospital in January of 1974. I was beginning to recover. My recovery from my psychosis was accelerated by a habit which I developed during the first months of 1974. I began listening to my sister´s two BÖC albums for hours on end, every single day of the week! I developed an obsession with the tripped-out metal music of those heavy metal kids from Stony Brook University!

I believe that the music of BÖC was actually good for my "metal health". What happened was that my fascination with the songs on the first two BÖC albums, which I learned by heart, motivated me to focus on something "out there in reality" - namely those weird songs. Instead of spending all my time cooped up in the useless daydreams brought about by my psychosis. So the music of BÖC weaned me off of my habit of daydreaming and induced me to focus on "reality out there".

A couple of years later I developed an interest in other heavy metal bands - primarilly Budgie, Led Zeppelin and Kiss. Later still I began listening to Van Halen, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Deep Purple and other stuff.

But Blue Öyster Cult remains my favorite heavy metal band. I have every single one of their albums as CDs excepting some of the compilations (there is so much overlap on the compilations).

:clap:

When I was 10 years old (1989) I got up at 5am on Saturday morning to watch cartoons. In a bit of amazingly perfect timing when I switched on the TV it faded up from a black screen to the opening of the video for One by Metallica. Completely scared the crap out of me and blew me away. Before then I'd only seen Metallica t-shirts and wondered what they sounded like. Perfect introduction to metal.

Judas Priest was the first band that had a distinctive metal tone and sound to the electric guitar(s) for me.

Black Sabbath.

That was the first metal band that simply blew me away, and that's where my journey started. A bit cliche, but true. I don't specifically remember a song, I think probably War Pigs, and then I purchased a Greatest Hits album from the Ozzy era, and my obsession has been going ever since.

No particular album but several songs.

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Metallica - Damage Incorporated
Death - Spiritual Healing
Sepultura - Dead Embryonic Cells
Napalm Death - Hiding Behind

When I was a kid there was a rock station that had two hours of late night metal once a week. This was back in the early 90's before real metal went mainstream so I was curios back then to what real metal was all about, and NOT Poison and Motley Crew which you could hear anywhere, and I hated. They mostly played early Alice in Chains, Anthrax, and mostly thrash and power metal but a few times they threw in some songs that completely blew my mind. The five above were those songs, and they were the heaviest most insane **** I had ever heard until that point. Growing up in a religious environment the way I did these songs blew my mind. They scared the crap out of me, it was 1992 and I was a kid, but I also could not get enough of them. And the rest is history. :band:

Mom and dad gave me a mix cd when I was a kid and I got stuck on Queen and Deep Purple when I was about 7-8 years old :)