What band/song started it all for you

[The Great Cull]

...in rock/metal circles that is.

For me it was hearing Animal by Def Leppard the year it was released. I was only 7 but it blew me away. Despite having long since moved on to far heavier stuff I still consider Hysteria a phenomenal rock record.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Opening riff to Sgt. Pepper's. I was probably only 8 or 9, but I was instantly hooked on the sound of that distorted guitar.

Always worth a listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dQjOCLQI8

Getting into rock through that album prob explains my prog leanings too tbh.

[Bürggermeister]

I've been hugely into music as long as I remember. My earliest memory is of listening to my Ma's Mothers of Invention records, Absolutely Free and We're Only In It For The Money, when I was 3. However, the moment that really got me was seeing Megadeth in 1988. I had heard a fair bit of rock and metal through lads I knew in school, but Ellefson playing an extended intro to These Boots was genuinely a life changing moment. No going back after that.

[Thorn]

Animal was pretty big for me too, great track..hmm, have to think about this but the very first thing that comes to mind in the transition from hard rock to Metal was hearing Can I Play With Madness by you know who.

[Eoin McLove]

Appetite for me. I strangely have no memory of my first time hearing anything from it but I remember pestering a neighbour to record it for me and being utterly obsessed by it. An enterprising older neighbour got a GNR calendar and was selling each picture individually and I must have pestered my parents for a few sheckles and ended up with half of them up on my wall. I remember him telling me that one of the pics of Steve Adler was worth more because the string vest he was wearing in the photo was worth a million dollars    at eight years old it made sense!

[Thorn]

Yeah ,Appetite , wow, what a gamechanger  that was . Before I came to that though it was all about Slippery When Wet for me and away from the big hits I'm thinking of that opening riff in Let It Rock.
What is 100% fact though is that Bon Jovi and Europe, because they were a tandem, was where it all started for me.

[Mooncat]

Bat Out of Hell for me (not at release, I'm not that old!). I'd been wild into Michael Jackson as a sprog, but that kind of harder, higher energy sound really grabbed me. I used to listen to that piano intro on vinyl over and over.

Weirdly it was Maiden who got me into metal in a way. I'm not much of a Maiden fan even now, but I heard one of their albums then and thought it was ok, but knew instantly that distorted guitar was the sound for me, but just not quite like what they were doing. The only other metal band I'd heard of at that time was Metallica so I got one of their albums and there it was.

[Carnage]

After the usual absorption of what was in the house (trad, country, and the likes of Horslips, Mushroom and a baffling Rick Wakeman solo album) I went down the radio pop route for a while before diversifying into Fleetwood Mac and so on. My cousin was into rock/metal and gave me a few tapes by Lizzy, Purple and Maiden.

The Trooper on Live After Death was the one that set the default switch to metal, while I and a friend got big into Guns And Roses too. He went down the Ppison, Bon Jovi route but I got progressively into metal, thrash, death metal etc. but it was that version of The Trooper that was the Damascan moment for me.

[Born of Fire]

Hearing the electric guitar kick in on Fight Fire With Fire for the first time was like heroin for my young brain, instantly hooked 

[Putrefaction]

Hearing The Cure for the first time - "Never enough". Hooked on how "heavy" it sounded, loved the video and their style, then wanted something more heavier, noisier, darker... man, what a journey it's been since then...

[The Heretic]

ACDC- Riff Raff from If You Want Blood is where it all began for me

[Mithrandir]

Edit: long as message that wasn't even really answering the original question

[ochoill]

I was sort of always around it from my brothers.  I remember listening to Nirvana, FNM, GNR up through primary school but I didn't really obsess on any of it.  I remember hearing heavier stuff on and off but I can still remember the night it all clicked for me - when I was 12, watching one of them colouring in hand drawn band names on a green canvas schoolbag with Strapping Young Lad "City" on the stereo.

I was obsessed.  I heard two albums that night, also Fear Factory "Soul of a New Machine", and from there I just went up digging through CDs and old magazines, and finding what I liked.  Most of which I already knew from hearing it over the years without even realizing City is still one of my favourite albums and goes on regularly.

[Emphyrio]

Animal was probably the first to strike a chord, then Thunderstruck.

However, Right Next Door to Hell followed by Dust n' Bones on a C90 while I spent a few days in hospital over one Christmas was what did it though. The first rock/metal tape I bought shortly after was Use Your Illusion 2, and that was me officially signed up.

[Don Gately]

Was into pop music first like chart stuff I'm the early 80s, my cousin from NY came to visit and she popped Pink Floyd's Shine on you crazy diamond in the car one day. I realised then there was more to music.
My first metal experience was Number of the beast album being played in the youth club I guess in 84 or 85. I was like what, gimme that!