I was somewhere around 13-14. Me and my father were riding around town in his car while listening to music. It was basically just random songs that my father burnt onto a CD and played in the car. All of a sudden, Nickelback - After The Rain plays. I'm stunned because never before did sound evoke such strong emotions from me.
Some days later, I told my father that there was a song I really liked from his car that I couldn't remember the name of. We spent a long time playing all the songs from that CD to figure out which one was it. It seemed like we browsed through everything but still couldn't find it. "Sorry son, it looks like it's not on here." But as we were about to give up, After The Rain started playing. "There! That is the song! That is the song" I shouted. My father's response was "Huh, this one is kinda heavy, never thought you would like something like this."
And from that day, I knew I was into heavy music.
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I find it kinda crazy that Americans have such mild heavy metal
Takes guts to admit Nickelback was your first heavy music. I liked one Nickelback song: Leader of Men because that was around the time I was teaching myself guitar and it was super easy to play.
My first taste of heavy music would be like (carbon dating myself here) 1984, first time I saw Motley Crue - Looks That Kill. I had just become fascinated with the occult after finding, at my local library, books on witchcraft and esotericism. So when this MC video with pentagrams on their double bass drums came out right in the middle of the 80's Satanic Panic it was like yessss give me more delicious rebelion!
I was a little kid though, 0 money and the fam wouldn't even buy me black clothes let alone metal records. I went back to my rap stuff, occasionally digging a heavy song I'd see on MTV. Wasn't until Grunge that my love for heavy music fully resurfaced. High school years. I remember being in my grandmother's room watching her tv when the video for Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit was played for the first time and changed my whole life. I rocked out with the tv blasting and the love for heavy music came rushing back. Only now I could get a job and buy my own music and clothes and eventually a cheapo Squier guitar on which I taught myself Smells Like Teen Spirt and then it was off to the races.
A friend I met at work (Halloween Store) was this gutter punk kid and we made a horrible band with no name who played one VFW Hall show for a bunch of skinheads who booed us because I'm Black. We won them over by announcing our name was "KK Kenny and The Nigger Lovers" (my idea, got em to stop throwing cans at us). We had three songs that were like a minute each and we made up the rest of our set on the fly. Just barely organized noise. It got so roudy the cops busted up the show. So now I was into punk, then Goth, then some mainstream Metal. Then a friend introduced me to Death Metal and it Blew. My. Goddamn. Mind. Yeah so that's the evolution of my love for heavy music.
Middle school