I can see you in line at the mall during Christmas to see Santa Claus and you tell the kid in line with you, like Ralphy in Christmas Story: "I like Mayhem," right after you said that you liked the Wizard of Oz. I just wonder, did anything like that happen to you when you were a child? Or was it the other way around with the kid next to you that told you that "he" liked Mayhem?

ac/dc back in the early 80's..if you want blood is still one of my favourite live albums

That's the main reason I love Mayhem! That drummer, man. I got into Vomitorial Corpulence/Antestor/Horde-esque bands afterwards (Yep. I was a thumper at one point), then found a good niche with melodic death metal. Omnium Gatherum are my favorite in that genre at the moment along with Arsis to scratch that "black vocals" itch.

What are your favorite bands/genres?

To be honest, I digressed into "core" (embarrassingly enough) by the time I was 15-16ish, and slowly built myself up to "elitist" metal when I was 19. I do love atmospheric metal, but take it easy on the "evil" because it just becomes a monotonous message of "THINK FOR YOURSELF! OMG SATAN!" Dimmu Borgir is a bit of a guilty pleasure, however. :P

Yeah, second wave black metal (i.e. the Norwegian black metal scene) isn't really my favorite, with the definite exception of Burzum. Takes itself far too seriously, and has a strange obsession with confusing being inaccessible with quality. But first wave BM like Bathory, Venom, and Hellhammer are pretty much the apex of aggressive metal IMO. Simple, raw, and evil as ****.

Tool are still my favourite band. Can't shake 'em off. Otherwise it's difficult to really pick certain top of my list artists or genres. Going down more of a prog/metal road lately though.

It was 1987 and four albums were doing seriously heavy rotation:

Def Leppard - Hysteria
Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
Guns n' Roses - Appetite For Destruction
Whitesnake - s/t (aka Whitesnake '87).

It seemed that wherever I went there was always one of those albums playing. And that was pretty much all I listened to until I heard 'Harvester of Sorrow' on the radio just after '..And Justice For All' was released. From there, I fully immersed myself in metal although, admittedly, with the exception of Metallica and Megadeth it was at the lighter sounding end of the metal scale.

Metallica, Dream Theater and Megadeth are my favorites buy it was Metallica which got me into metals!

I started with System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Bush, and whatever other such bands came up on the radio when I was in my mom's car. When I started really listening to music, System of a Down was the big name for me. Now, of course, I listen to those artists, but not so much as I used to.

No, what metal band did you listen to? ;)

Slipknot got me into the Metal/hardcore scene. i quickly got out of that stage and Killswitch Engage really opened my eyes to the genre