For a short window, between the summer after 8th grade and the summer before 10th grade, I listened to metal. Not a lot, but enough, and particularly Judas Priest. I bought all their albums through British Steel (except, for some weird reason, Sad Wings of Destiny). In fact, I bought British Steel first and it hooked me into their back catalogue. Even today, the album bristles with a electric charge that makes my heart speed up. It's the album that ditches any leftover blues or prog and refrains from the terrible radio friendly stuff they'd start releasing on the very next album, Point of Entry.
Around the same time, my friend Andrew M. turned me on to Motorhead. He'd seen them and said they were so loud his ribcage vibrated. Them, I never ditched, but when I got into hardcore I stopped listening to metal. As a snobbish teenager, metal seemed too contrived and theatrical. I wanted "reality" in my music, and hardcore claimed that's what it was presenting to the world.
I've long since ditched that smug, wrong atttitude, but I didn't start listening to metal again until I met my wife. It was the music of her youth - she even worked at Lamour when she was in high school - and still dug it. Hallie convinced me that there was something great to Iron Maiden, a band most of my punk friends had long derided. Listening to Powerslave or Number of the Beast it was obvious who was right and who was wrong.
There's lots of great heavy music today, but a lot of what's explicitly metal is pretty crappy. Whoever thought the cookie monster vocals was a thing to be done is nuts. They're definitely not scary, in fact they're pretty silly sounding. Growing up on hardcore, I don't need perfect vocals by a longshot, but, man, does a lot modern metal singing suck.
Fortunately, there's a great big world of old school metal to listen to. From the sharp and shiny edged New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands to the machine-gunning drums of US thrash to the Motorhead and punk influence sounds of bands like Tank, old school bands offer sounds that still kick ass today when you put them on.
