My Metal History Pt. 1: The First Album

I’ve decided to look back a little bit into my history as a metalhead, and probably reveal some rather embarrassing things about it (I used to own albums by KORN!!!!!). Anywho, let’s start at the beginning.

At first, there was nothing. Some time after that I heard Metallica.

Seriously though, prior to my metal addiction, I listened to some random crap that I’m not even sure I own anymore. Mostly R.E.M. though, which is fucking weird to think about now. My older brother started getting into a little bit of heavy metal though, and that’s when I started becoming interested. He was listening to groups like Faith No More, Motley Crue, Metallica, Megadeth, Alice in Chains, Danzig, and White Zombie. He also listened to a laundry list of other artists from genres like alternative rock (the grunge scene was very big when we were growing up) and rap. That was the beginning for me.

Back then, MTV played these things called music videos. They are very rare these days. Most kids have never seen one on MTV. Also back then, they played a rather diverse grouping of music videos. As the decade wore on, they scaled it back completely to rap and pop music, but they would occasionally play metal videos in the early 1990's. My older brother, being the trendhopper that he was back in those days, picked up anything and everything played on MTV that was not pop music. MTV played groups like the ones listed above, and my older brother bought into them. He used to play his music as loud as possible when we were the only ones home, so I heard a lot of this stuff. I also saw them on MTV.

It all started to change when MTV started playing live videos from the recent Metallica box set Live Shit: Binge and Purge. They played videos from lesser known songs (at least for the mainstream) such as "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Fade to Black". These songs quickly became favorites of mine. When my 13th birthday rolled around, I went birthday shopping with my grandmother. We stopped off at the usual places a 13 year old boy likes to shop at: baseball card store and comic book store, then we ended up at the mall to get some clothes. It was there that I decided I wanted a tape. I had it in my mind that I was going to get the Metallica tape that had those songs on it. We went into the music nook, literally a corner of the store with a temporary wall full of tapes put up, looked around until I found it: RIDE THE LIGHTNING. I remember my grandmother asking if the band swore at all, I really didn’t know so I just said no. She would not have bought it for me otherwise. This was my very first metal album. The rest is history.