How a Simple Poster Forever Changed my Musical Taste

I was 12 years old on a sweltering day at the county fair. Filled with cotton candy and fried food, I made my way around the carnival attractions, looking for a game that wasn't completely rigged. I happened upon a stand that boasted "win every time!" It caused my to slow down long enough for the man running the game to grab my attention. For just 5 dollars, I got to throw a dart at a wall covered in posters and whichever poster I hit, I won a fresh copy of. There was no way I could lose. Awesome! I forked over my last Lincoln and started scanning the posters for one that I liked. My eyes fell upon a poster of Shaun Alexander, running back at the time for my favorite team, the Seattle Seahawks. I threw my dart at the board... and hit the poster below Shaun. Shit. It looks like a band poster, but I don't even know who it is. Still, it's kind of cool looking, so I guess I'll hang on to it.

I returned home later that night, sunburnt, overstuffed, and feet sore from walking all day. I sat in front of the computer for awhile before remembering my poster. I opened up Frostwire, typed in Iron Maiden, and started downloading songs. The first song I played was one called "Alexander the Great." I was instantly hooked. I had grown up listening to whatever my parents and friends listened to, which consisted of lots of classic rock for the former and rap for the latter. I had never listened to metal before, and it was abundantly clear that I was missing out on my favorite music genre. I spent the rest of the night downloading and listening over and over to Iron Maiden. In only a couple of weeks, I had listened to the majority of Iron Maiden's discography. I spent every spare minute of the day playing they're music, and for the next 3 months I listened exclusively to Iron Maiden.

After 3 months, I still hadn't gotten bored of Iron Maiden, but as it happened, I was going through the tv channels one day and happened across a VH1 special about the top 40 metal songs ever. That's when I first heard "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest. That's when I realized there was a whole 30+ years of awesome metal music that I needed to catch up on. I spent the coming weeks uncovering all of the classic metal bands: Metallica, Sepultura, Pantera, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, Motorhead, Rage Against the Machine, the list goes on and on and on. I spent the next few years diving in farther and farther into metal music. It become my hobby to learn and listen. I watched documentaries, read books, and listened whenever I could. Whenever my birthday or Christmas came around, all I wanted were new band shirts. My interests grew into more extreme subgenres such as black metal and death metal. I had never understood how people enjoyed listening to music like that, but now it was as though my mind could actually fathom the music that was being played. It was like hearing a foreign language, but now I actually understood that language. I soon needed a new mp3 player, because my 16gb couldn't hold all of my favorite songs.

I went to my first metal concert when I was 16. It was Mayhem Fest. I was excited to go, but there were only 2 headliners I was eager to see: Rob Zombie, and Lamb of God. I remember getting into the thick of the crowd when Lamb of God came on. The experience was unreal. I was listening to metal music surrounded by a bunch of people who loved it as much as I did. It was absolutely awesome. I felt a connection to the people around me just from our love of the same music. It didn't take long for a mosh pit to form, and of course I had to get into it. I barreled into people, pushed, was pushed, and danced around. No one was angry at each other though, quite the contrary. Everyone embraced each other in comradery. When someone fell, there were several people instantly picking them back up. Everything about this just felt so natural and right. The whole experience was like one big high.

Metal was clearly the music I was born to listen to. I had an affinity for it the minute I heard it. I still avidly listen to it, go to concerts, and love to talk about it. I am glad to have found it when I did. I have yet to have a bad concert experience, and every time I go, there are new memories to be made.