Being a Metaller.

[jobrok1]

Triple post...  Fuck sake.  😂

[jobrok1]

Helped my young fella (14) cut up a Metallica "Ride The Lighting" t-shirt that he grew out of to re-purpose as a back patch.
Proper DIY metal fashion shtyle
Looks pretty feckin' decent, too. 
Can't make it out from the pic, but the cut/folds are in a wide coffin shape, too.   

[The Wretch]

That's just good parenting.

[Circlepit]

I never had a patch jacket, I fail.

[Eoin McLove]

Her can't fail with that jacket 

[Trev]

I never had a patch jacket, I fail.

Me neither, although I started picking up a patch or two at gigs because I like to get something as a memento and support the bands, but the cost of shirts is getting too much. I've probably got about 30 or so now just stashed in a drawer so figure I may as well get the denim jacket and throw them on. Just need to learn how to sew first!

[astfgyl]

Right so, my turn at the reminiscing..

Was sort of lucky myself in that I had the older brother who first introduced me to Appetite For Destruction at the age of about seven (88/89ish) and through a combination of having to like it because he did and actually liking it, I gave the next couple of years listening to nothing else other than that and the two UYIs. At the time AFD seemed to suddenly be everywhere and plenty of pals in primary school were on the same buzz and we would go around the school yard singing the songs, even though we hadn't a clue what they meant. Funny thinking about little fellas like that singing the likes of My Michelle (I used to wonder where Porno was and why her daddy working there was a thing ) but having a big gang of us like that all into it was probably pretty formative.

Next thing, Nirvana came along and we were all over that like a rash straight away and it came to be a real obsession while others were more interested in the likes of East 17 or the likes but we got a real little clique going around then and I'd naturally gravitate towards the lads who looked like they might listen to that type of thing rather than the xworx lads.

Of course time went on and more and more people began to separate into little groups based mainly on the music they were into. Some went from Nirvana to Oasis while others went to the likes of Metallica and heavier things again but there was always plenty of lads in the area into the rock and metal and it pretty much became our teenage identities, wearing those type of clothes and growing our hair long and whatnot. And we even used to find girls like that, so we didn't even have to drop it to get the shift thank god.

I remember the secondary school ritual of a Sunday night when we'd all go home to listen to The Metal Show no matter what we were doing and talk about what was on it on a Monday morning. I was lucky as well in that I had the younger brother and the older brother both into the same stuff and other pals would make the pilgrimage to the Soundcellar here and there and we'd give each other blank tapes to record albums and mixes of stuff that other lads didn't have and sit around the local park sharing pairs of earphones to hear the latest stuff as soon as someone would have it.

Jaysus the excitement of getting a listen to something we'd only been able to imagine through reading Metal Hammer or Kerrang or Terrorizer, or finally hearing the full albums after getting the taster through Headbangers Ball or MTV2 or Superrock. Every week was like a ritual going down the newsagent to stand around reading the Kerrang on a Thursday to see what was new.

That was pretty much the way of it for years really, all the friends connected by music and of course I went through a couple of goes of not listening to metal at times but would still be with the same lads, only trying to convince them of whatever I was liking at the time.

Nowadays I still listen to metal of some sort pretty much every day and luckily enough I still have the two brothers to talk about it with and listen to stuff with so there's still an element of that old buzz going but outside of that there's really just this place. I still dress in much the same things as I did ie jeans hoodies and t-shirts and the only thing I really can't do anymore is the back prints and I'm sort of rambling and frothing with nostalgia writing all this out but I guess it's safe to say that for better or worse my life would have turned out a lot different without the whole being a metaller thing.

[jobrok1]

I never had a patch jacket, I fail.

Never really got into the whole patch jacket thing either. I had one when I was about 12-13, but as soon as I grew out of it I never bothered with another.
Same for hoodies. Never had one.
No tattoos, piercings, etc.

Purely jeans and t-shirts.
I was never really one to follow fashion. 🤣

[Circlepit]

It seemed most of us outside of Dublin held The Sound Cellar on a pedestal.
When the top ten would come on in the second hour of The Metal Show I didn't know what to make of it. Some of it was so intense.

[Thorn]

Yep, trips to the Soundcellar were as important as gigs if you were from the country. One key trip for me was in the wake of the Kerrang! Black Metal sensationalism whereupon I returned with a shitload of albums and merch and resulted in me introducing Monaghan to the De Mysteriis longsleeve. The Top Ten on a Sunday night was an exercise in fingers hovering over the play and record buttons on the stereo.

[Carnage]

The Metal Show came along after my time, it seems. I have memories of hearing it on the bus to Dublin when I would have been in my early to mid-twenties but I never bothered with it. It was word of mouth, magazines and later Headbangers Ball/Raw Power that I got recommendations from - my jaw dropped when I saw the Ill Neglect video on Headbangers Ball, straight to Dublin and Sound Cellar the following weekend.

[Grim Reality]

I started secondary school in 95, a budding metaller into Metallica, GNR etc. Initially there seemed to be lots of older lads to look up to. But like other posters have alluded to they started dropping like flies. It was weird seeing and talking to those lads who were coming in on Monday morning hair gone, new jacket, all about pills and dance music. Just changed with the wind. That went on for a few years. By 97/98 there were little to no metallers left in my school. I was into the heaviest stuff by far (only pantera, seps, FF etc). Isn't it mad how so many from the 80s/90s explosion were only into it superficially, despite having the cool look and many of the great albums? They weren't fucking in to it at all ever! I remember feeling a bit of bewilderment bordering on disdain for those people. My cousin who introduced me to the genre was one though he went in a Beatles direction. Strange.

I grew up with few mates into the same thing as me and none with the same passion for heavier stuff. However i drifted in and out of the metal scene over the years. But I suppose I was a lifer from the start when I look back at all those ship jumpers in the 90s and how it made no sense to me to be following the crowd like that.

These days my hair is short again through oncoming baldness and I'm just as likely to be wearing a football top than a metal shirt. I live in the country, farm, do regular Dad things like gaelic training u8s etc so I don't cut about in Burzum shirts all the time or anything 😅. But if we have kids and parents over they will invariably sit in our 'middle room' which is stacked high on three sides with cds, tapes, vinyls and lots of cool records on display. Its not like i hide who i am. The black metal listening is still going most nights. Gigs are rare. The recent Emperor one was a reminder of how much I enjoyed that scene, out drinking and meeting like minded lads you don't get down the local GAA park or the mart 

[Skott Furys jizz rag]

Black metal is fucking great for pills. Burzum, WITTR and Drudkh in particular.

[astfgyl]

Just a small one but when everyone went off on the yokes and rave there were still a good few of the lads I knew who would happily sit there listening to metal while buzzing, including myself so that didn't even finish off as many as seems to have for a lot of lads here. I remember listening to SYL - City with a few lads one night like that and the cousin who didn't like metal was there with us and he got right fuckin into it. I remember him looking at me with his big square jaw saying how it just kept getting better and better for him and no wonder the rest of us are into metal   

Black metal is fucking great for pills. Burzum, WITTR and Drudkh in particular.

I would have no bother on the yokes listening to basically any metal tbf

[Carnage]

My ex and I would get off our faces and listen to metal all night. Nothing too heavy - Carcass, Paradise Lost & Lamb Of God were her favourite bands - but it went down well enough between the gurns.