My Metal History Pt. 2: Metallica and Beyond in Middle School

Part 1 discussed me getting into metal via Metallica's Ride the Lightning album. After RtL, Metallica was my focus. Within a few months I picked up the remaining Metallica albums in the following order: ...And Justice For All, Metallica, Master of Puppets, Kill 'Em All. At the time, the self-titled album was considered their magnum opus by everyone I knew. Yet strangely, I was not as drawn to it as I was to the other albums. It was somehow lacking the energy and aggression of the rest of the albums. To this day, I feel the same way. Quickly, MoP became my second favorite Metallica album, featuring epic length songs and powerful riffs. The other two I also listened to frequently. I still own all five of these albums on cassette and still drag them out often enough. These were the albums that laid the groundwork for my interest in metal music.

I ran into a problem though. After those five albums, Metallica had nothing else out. Luckily my older brother had a rather brief interest in mainstream metal music. He had albums from groups like Alice in Chains, Faith No More, Motley Crue, White Zombie, Danzig, and Megadeth. I discovered his collection which allowed me to broaden my horizons a little bit. At the same time, I was listening to some of his other tapes like Guns 'N Roses, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the like. But these other groups never interested me quite like the earlier list of bands. I would listen to them if I was bored and wanted to hear something different, but it was never quite the same.

As I continued in middle school, I began to tape my brother's stuff onto blank cassette tapes for my own listening edification. Eventually, he would just give me the albums by Megadeth, Danzig, and Motley Crue. I also began branching out a little more. I would begin to compile albums from Black Sabbath, Megadeth, Pantera, Anthrax, White Zombie, Faith No More, Queensryche, Testament, Ozzy Osbourne, Type O Negative, and more. Megadeth quickly became one of my new favorites and I began picking up as many of their albums as possible. I also picked up non-metal bands such as Monster Magnet, The Offspring, Bush, Stabbing Westward, and others that were heavier rock bands.

I actually got my first CDs around Christmas of my ninth grade year. I received CDs from Alice in Chains, Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne and, oddly enough, The Smashing Pumpkins. The Pumpkins CD never sat well with me and became the very first album I owned that I eventually sold.

The one thing that never changed throughout middle school though was the fact that even though I purchased albums from non-metal bands, they never interested me in quite the same way that the metal albums did. I still have most of my cassettes from those days, but I still dig out the metal albums.