Heavy Metal Music
I began listening to music very early in life. I am talking about really listening to, and not just hearing the music. The first cassette tapes I can remember owning as a small boy, were Iron Maiden’s “Killers’” “Piece of Mind” and “The Number of the Beast”. I remember being drawn to the album covers. I had no idea what the music was like. I remember being a little shocked at how different Iron Maiden was to the stuff that was on the radio back in those days.
I began collecting everything Heavy Metal back then. It was during my junior year that my local music store finally ran out of Heavy Metal tunes to buy. I had bought everything I could get my hands on. My friend Rich was working that night and he asked me, “you ever heard of Slayer?” “Nope”, I replied. “It’s really fast and heavy”.
Now, back in highschool, I used to fly home after school to catch MTV’s Heavy Metal Half Hour at 3:30 pm everyday. That show opened with a thrashin’ attack and an awesome scream. I had always wanted to know who was behind that tune.
Rich throws Slayer – Reign In Blood on the record player and there it is, in the very first seconds of Angel of Death, the thrashin’ attack and awesome scream from Heavy Metal Half Hour. I bought the cassette and headed home. A new thrasher was born.
I began collecting everything thrash. The bands were easy to spot, and most of them were on Combat Records at the time. It was nothing to walk into Record Town or Harry’s, and walk out with 10 new thrash cassettes! Thrash was huge in the mid to late 80′s.
I graduated highschool in 1987 and went into the military. I spent the next 32 months in Germany. Heavy Metal was huge in Germany while I was there. I would walk down into Bad Hersfeld and visit the two shops that carried a nice amount of metal. I built up an awesome collection of CD’s while I was over there. Cassettes were not easy to find in Germany.
In July of 1990 I shipped out for home. I hand carried home my favorite 50 CD’s and 40 cassettes. It’s a good thing I had. A month later, when all of my stuff arrived from Germany, all of my CD’s, cassettes, and my stereo, had been stolen. That was a bad day!
Since 1990, I have been building my collection back up. I have been able to track down CD’s for nearly every old Speed Metal tape I have ever owned. Heavy metal as a genre stayed pretty strong through the 1990′s.
There doesn’t seem to be very many newer bands that are any good these days. Most of the old bands have grown older, mellowed out, or just plain faded away. But it is the music of these Heavy Metal legends that I listen to more than anything else.
Essential Heavy Metal will allow anyone that is searching out these old tunes to find a review that is written by an actual headbangin’, neck snappin’ metalhead, and conveniently link you to a place to buy it direct should you want it.