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great stories to hear!!! My defining moment: 1983(?). Sitting in my friends house, who was the only kid in a 10 mile radius whose family could afford cable tv. We were flipping through using the big new channel box , and came across a video by the band Asia...Heat of The Moment. This caught our eye and ears, so we stayed on the channel. After this video, another one came on with the coolest drumbeat I had ever heard....then, that riff. These dudes with long hair, a killer looking metal-light rigged stage set; a guy with a blue sparkly bass...then the main riff; fast, chugging...the crazy drummer with super fast hands...and then the lead singer witht he full studded leather arm band..."The White Man Came, across the sea...." It was the Run to The Hills video, coming on in my firs t5 minutes of watching a verryy young MtV. My freind and I were hooked. Metal it was for me. My gateway bands were Styx and Kansas, and my ultimate most favorite band: Rush. I already had decent mane of 70's era "hesher-hair" going, but this was it. I was in. Later that week, we raided my other friends older brothers album/cassette collection: Ozzy, Sabbath; Deep Purple, BOC, Van Halen, Judas Priest; Motorhead; Budgie.... moment 2: later on that fall, I was at home listening to the radio when another song moved me forever....the opening strains of rushing wind, chirping birds...and then a haunting e minor to C picked chord progression and a mournful whistle...my ears perked up..then, the most AWESOME voice I had ever heard: "All alone, we walked this morning, A Light mist in the air..." I was transfixed as the "New Iron Maiden" as the DJ called them played The Lady Wore Black...Queensryche. Next level achieved. My freinds and I went out that weekend and bought the ep. I spent all my time in class learnign how to draw the font on the cover, and learning the drum and bass parts moment 3: the next summer...summer of 84, I was at Boy Scout summer camp. I had smuggled in my electronic pride and joy into camp - my sony Walkman cassette player - and was hanging with some friends from my troop, when some kids from another troop saw our Maiden and Ozzy shirts, and came up and said "you guys like metal? Listen to this"...he flipped me a tape and I put it in. This cool sounding acoustic guitar riff came on. I thought it might be a new Ozzy song....then cymbal roll/swell/crescendo into....the fastest, most evil, brutal sounding thing I had ever heard...ever. The double bass melted my brain... I think I remember just giggling uncontrollably, and thrashing around the picnic table....Fight Fire With Fire by Metallica had upped the ante...the world of underground thrash, speed, hardcore punk etc had opened up, and I was head first down the slide!!! There have been millions of other "indoctrinations", and metal has been the central core of my being since I can remember.

Motorhead "Orgasmatron" Motorhead "Rock n Roll"

This is a thread for people who remember a world before youtube, facebook and google, where there was a great mystery around metal. I'm interested in hearing how people accessed metal and metal related things prior to the internet. Some of my fondest musical memories are from that romantic era in the late 80s to mid 90s. I grew up in a small town where we didn't even have a music store, so trips to the larger town nearby would be focused around heading to one of the two record stores. There was a small but ok metal section, and I would trawl through the tapes (at first), then CDs (once they became more prevalent). Most of the time I would end up buying something (if my parents were kind enough to shell out) that I had never heard of but really liked the cover. If there was a band that I had heard of before and really wanted, like My Dying Bride, Anathema, Paradise Lost etc the store would order the CD in and it would often take a month before it arrived at mega prices. I'd be lucky to get a new tape maybe once every two months. News and information about bands was also minimal and clouded by mystery. Metal magazines were mostly from the UK and US, so were often months old by the time they reached my friends and I in Australia. My walls were covered in posters of metal bands. Do kids still do that these days? I remember reading about the rise of the second wave of black metal and Euronymous' murder in a magazine and just being amazed at the whole black metal thing in general. This would have been early 1994 I think. I hadn't even heard a black metal song before, but ordered Satyricon's 'The Shadowthrone'. Can you imagine the first time I put it on after the 4 weeks it took to come in to the store, and heard the intro to 'Hvite Krists Dod'? Everything was shrouded in mystery when it came to figuring out who was in various bands, what they looked like, even what their discographies included. It was a real jigsaw puzzle of information from here and there. A lot of word of mouth too from kids at school. I remember being amazed when I first discovered the name My Dying Bride, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Talk about a mystery band back in the mid 90s. I first heard them on a metal radio show and taped the track 'Like Gods of the Sun' onto a blank tape. I had heaps of blank tapes full of tracks from that metal show. You had to be really quick when the song started, and if you discovered you were recording a dud you would stop the tape and rewind, ready to go again when the next track started. We also swapped a lot of tapes at school with the few other metal fans back in the 90s. I discovered Ozzy, Maiden and even early Metallica this way. Nowadays I google any band's discography immediately, with a plethora of band photos etc. Metal Archives contains all the information about band members past and present, and youtube has almost every album you can think of, ready to be heard. It's a totally different world. While it's handy being able to listen to every single band anyone ever mentions, there is also an element of sadness in instant gratification. Never again will I wait for weeks for an album to come into the store, then get to the next town to get my hands on it, gaze at it, amazed, before putting it in the tape player and discover what they actually sound like! Sure there were some misses amongst the hits, but the magic of the newfound hits remains with me to this day. And because music was so damn scarce, the classics were revered and worshipped with unprecedented obsessiveness. Every lyric learnt, every speck of artwork digested and understood. I'm sad to say that rarely happens now, even though I still buy a lot of stuff. Anyone else got any memories/stories they would like to tell about the old days? EDIT: Can someone please move this to Deep and Meaningful? I think it fits that forum better.

There is a god in man And in nature He who sits in the dark The bringer of light This beauty The sign of an open eye Call him to black flame Call him (the bringer of light) Call him to black flame Call him, call him, call him - "Sign of an Open Eye" - Gorgoroth

I bought so many albums for the artwork first...Grim Reaper; Venom, Diary OF A Madman by Ozzy, tons of punk and hardcore 7"s...we also had a great metal radio station...WAZU, but it was only on for a year. By then, hair metal was starting to blow up, and the local big stations were either playing pop crap, or hair metal, or straight up rock. As metal in general got more popular, the radio stations around here played it less and less...which was fine with me...let me have my niche genre that made me feel like I knew something no one else did...

Great stories. I loved those black and white catalogues too but I can't remember ever having ordered anything from them except a Cathedral 'The Carnival Bizarre' t-shirt back in 1995. I loved that shirt and wore it everywhere. I was always fascinated reading through those catalogues and looking at all the different t-shirt designs for Metallica, Megadeth etc. It was amazing. Same here, especially listening to the radio with the tape recorder at the ready. I'm not sure I ever heard Paradise Lost for the first time that way, but I remember taping 'Like Gods of the Sun' and 'Grace Unhearing' by My Dying Bride from the radio in about 1996. Also stuff by Evereve and Theatre of Tragedy. When gothic metal was fairly popular the guy managing the playlists for the metal show just played so much gothic metal. It was amazing. Great days for sure.

We used to change tapes with friends, this was probably the main way of finding new bands for a good few years to me. The quality of course degraded after copying the songs over and over, but so many bands that i have discovered this way.. and even genres! My first introduction to black metal came with traded tapes. Music was the way to make new friends back then. You talked to someone somewhere and you found that you like the same band, instant friendship. We had this amazing metal radio show in the 90´s, it was something i was eagerly waiting for every week with my tape recorder ready. You started recording every song, and if it was good you kept it, if not you rewind so you are ready for the next song. I actually discovered one of my all time favourites Paradise lost this way. Maybe a year ago i remembered a song i recorded from the show that i had not heard for over 20 years. Spent a lot of time finding it and eventually did. Amazing moment to hear something you loved as a kid, and hear it again after so many years. The song was "Fall of the leafe - Wings of my desire untamed". We had one music store in town that had a great selection of metal. I used to spend all of my money on cd´s. Many times you chose something because you liked the cover, other times it was because a friend had talked about it. Albums really mattered back then. You spent so much time with your purchase. Even if you didn´t like it at first, you gave it quite few tries and it had a far bigger chance of growing on you than these days. Sometimes i really miss those days.. the thrill of finding new music you loved was so much bigger..

I´m aware of them, never been huge on listening folk music myself. I do find it interesting, and something that has certainly some value. My grandmother and great grandmother were Karelia evacuees, these people had to leave their home when we had to give it to the Russians during ww2. The Karelian people were spread all around Finland so a lot of us current generation finns have some Karelia in their blood.

got into metal in the late 70's and early 80's....raiding friends older brothers music collections and mix tapes were the way we discovered new music. College radio stations, and some local stations were good also got into underground punk/hardcore, so there was 'zines.... but seeing live shows at all ages clubs, VFW's, church basements and punk houses were my biggest exposure...people would hand out flyers about other shows; record distro's would have 7" records and 'zines....so organic....it was true Social Media.... early MtV exposed me to some cool stuff as well. Headbangers Ball was awesome in it's first 3-4 years...before the clog of hairspray and grunge happened.... I LOVED those catalogs!! Got sooo many patches and pins form them...never even considered the scam possibilites...but I think back then, the notion to scam was not as prevalent

Forefather - Engla Tocyme Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

Demilich - Nespithe ...in other Finland-related non-metal news, I was listening to Hedningarna's "Karelia Visa" earlier. @ChainsawAkimbo, you familiar with them at all?

"Litourgiya" - Batushka "Destruction Algorithm" - Doomsday Cult

I know that feeling of being spread too thin so that there's nothing left of you. Take care buddy. Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

Hope your son feels better and keep your head up have fun in Boston

I suppose when I'm after background noise I'd watch a show where a bunch of people mainly sit around and tell each other what they're currently listening too.

Discovery was mostly word of mouth for me at first - that and MTV, I think I discovered Queensryche on MTV... probably several other bands. This is when I was 10 or 11. I'd dub tapes from other people's collections. I had an incomplete copy of "And Justice For All"; a copy of "Master Of Puppets" that I'd dubbed over a tape of sound effects that came with my Casio sampling keyboard, which didn't get completely erased, so various sound effects (farm animal noises and whatnot) were audible during pauses and quiet moments; a tape of Rush's "Moving Pictures" that I'd recorded by sticking a recorder in front of one of our living room speakers; and incomplete copies of "The Wall" and "Operation: Mindcrime" that I'd rearranged to get as much of the music as possible onto their tapes. Those two tapes in particular were late night companions. When I was a little older, I'd sneak out of the house with my boom box, start a little campfire on the vacant property next door, play acoustic guitar, smoke cigarettes, and listen to those tapes over and over till all hours. An experience best shared with friends.