Growing up in the mid to late 1990's was a little tough on a burgeoning metalhead like myself. MTV had completely disavowed all knowledge of the genre. The local radio station was soon bought by a national conglomerate and began referring to itself as a modern rock station, switching from heavy metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera to more mainstream friendly acts like Days of the New, Creed, Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Marilyn Manson. If you were lucky, occasionally you would hear something decent. The last straw with the radio station was when they stopped syndicating the Power Hour. That's when I knew it was a sinking ship. Years later, the station would overplay groups like Nickelback, Green Day, and U2, bands that they never would have considered in the early 90's.
Nu metal was almost inescapable and was really they only thing close to metal that those outlets allowed. As such, I was not as excited about music as I had been in junior high. My genre of choice was somewhat stale. Unfortunately, I had virtually no knowledge of the international scenes, which would have cured my issues with the genre as some truly astounding music was being made in Sweden and Norway at the time.
As mentioned before, nu metal was everywhere. People who claimed to be metalheads were listening to bands like Korn, Deftones, Slipknot, Staind, Sevendust, Static X, Rammstein, and more. I listened to those bands a little. But my favorite bands I was listening to at the time were bands like Testament, Fear Factory, Ozzy Osbourne (who I had developed a sort of hero worship to), Sepultura, Danzig, Prong, and Misery Loves Co. I was in a leadership position in the high school marching band, and as such often had to drive the younger members around. My car quickly became infamous with people as one to avoid if one had an aversion to loud music. I relished in that image.
It was during high school that I discovered my first issue of Metal Maniacs, a pivotal point in my development into a metalhead. I curse myself for throwing it away some time ago and am constantly on the lookout for it on ebay. As I recall, it had Pantera and Trouble on the cover and came out in 1996. I remember a lot of those articles well: articles on the aforementioned bands, Misery Loves Co., Helloween, Eyehategod, Kreator, Edge of Sanity, Skrew, Pan.Thy.Monium, Strapping Young Lad, and many more. This was my first exposure to a lot of these groups and I sought many of them out over the years. The magazine showed me there was so much more than the American metal scene out there. However, it would not be until college that I would really begin to experience that.
Toward the end of high school, I picked up a tribute album to Celtic Frost. I picked it up blindly, I had only heard one Celtic Frost song, which I had enjoyed. But I was anxious to check out some other bands and the H.R. Giger art on the cover caught my eye. This album freaked me out. It included songs from groups like Mayhem, Emperor, Enslaved, Opeth, Slaughter, Grave, Sadistic Intent, and many more bands that I had never heard of before. At first, I wasn't sure what to think. The music was so extreme, so angry, so unlike anything I had ever heard before. It wasn't long before this album was a favorite and I would go on to seek out music from those bands. My friends hated this album, and in particular the Mayhem track, although the back story of Mayhem became a favorite story to hear. I'll go into that some other time.
I survived high school as a metal head, but nu metal would soon overpower the rest of the country, making it that much more difficult to be a metal fan.
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