Your Prime Years

[The Heretic]

What were your prime years as a metalhead? Prime for me means no other music mattered, scene excitement, mystique etc etc

For me its 86-96, bands were mystical figures that could only be read/seen in Kerrang, Metal Hammer or when you had enough money to buy a cassette or vinyl (cd's were a 90s thing for me), getting to Dublin/Belfast for a gig was difficult (well difficult for me anyway)

I remember tuning into the BBC Friday Night rock show (with hit and miss reception) to Tommy Vance, Alan Freeman, Johnny Walker to hear Metallica for the first time, Manowar, DIO even Ted Nugent, fuck me even Larry Gogan use to play Harvester of Sorrow on the Sunday top 40 countdown. I would save up and make the trip to Dublin to hit HMV/Virgin Megastore and buy what was on my to get list, then eventually the sound cellar, before that I used to order CD's from ST Records in the UK, sterling postal orders were a pain but the only way

In 91 we got SKY TV in so Headbangers Ball was available, that was a game changer for access to new bands, Glam/Thrash/Classic Rock.

From 96 on, and especially when Nu-Metal arrived on the scene its just never been the same, even before the internet took a real hold.

86-96 = my plateau!!

[Pentagrimes]

I'd say similar - 86 to about 95 was the "golden era" for me, from really discovering metal as a 10 year old *via all the stuff you mentioned, and the classic  thing of knowing a few older kids or friends' older brotehrs who were into thrash) through to getting really stuck into death metal and tape trading at about 15 through to the Norwegian wave of BM. by the time I was about 18 as mentioned elsewhere I was really geting more into punk. hc, noise and other stuff more extensively as BM was taking over and I didn't really care for it musically, aesthetically or politically. That whole decade or so was absolutely formative though, and I can see now as well it was an absolutely fascinating and groundbreaking period musically and in terms of how the underground operated.

I suppose I had a second period that came close from about 2006 to whenever I left Vircolac,where the underground metal scene definitely took over for me again, but over the last 3 or 4 years it's kind of gone back to saturation point for me and the magic is somewhat gone. A lot of that I think is down to having been in a band that were active during that time.

Not that you asked but conversely my low point was from about 97 to about 2004, I just had absolutely no interest in the metal scene. Ironically a lot of the heavier hardcore bands I was into (particuarly the stuff on Slap a Ham, Pessimiser, early Hydra Head, and bands like Cattlepress, enewetak, and Gehenna) were drawing heavily from the death, grind and black metal stuff I'd been into  and worked it into what they were doing, which kinda lead me back. A lot of the Sludge/Southern Lord/Melvins inspired stuff also kinda got me back interested in going back to checking out underground metal again also.

Nowadays it's like any other kind of music, some times it's all i want to listen to, other times I couldn't care less, depends on the day. Metal is probably the most formative music on me all things considered,  and a lot of my interests in things like films, or art, are shaped by it as well - if you were into death and thrash metal as a kid for example you probably also liked horror movies and things like that. It'll always be my first love musically so I can't see myself completely losing interest again..but it's really not the most exciting thing to me nowadays, if that makes sense.

[Bürggermeister]

87-93

I was always big into music but started getting into Metal around 87, helped by a new friend in 2nd Year making me a mix tape with the likes of Whitesnake and Cinderella, that kind of thing, and I rapidly sped towards Megadeth, Celtic Frost, Metallica, Nuclear Assault, etc.

I was fully into Thrash, went to as many gigs as I could afford, and loved Death Metal from my first hearing of Open Casket on Tom Hayes radio show in 89. It was a fucking lovely time to be a teenager hoovering up all the new bands coming out who were taking the music further than you could ever have imagined. By this stage I was staying up until 4:30am every Friday night/Saturday morning to watch Power Hour/Raw Power/Noisy Mothers and whatever else it was called, finger hovering over the record button to video anything with an interesting first couple of bars. Several times I bought an album on the strength of the artwork and the label it was on, or seeing someone in a band I liked wearing a t-shirt, most notably Control and Resistance. It seemed hard to find shit music. Everything was new and exciting.

In 93, we had Focus, Elements, Grin, Individual Thought Patterns, The Outer Limits, the future of music seemed full of possibilities but, instead, the following years got progressively worse. There were still great albums coming out, but they were fewer and farther between. I still tried to keep an interest but most of the bands I love broke up or got shit. What took over was shit to my ears. The Metal Show on 2fm was several years too late. The second half of the 90's was a fucking wasteland in Metal, generally, and there were other forms of music far more interesting which attracted me. I kept a toe in the water, so to speak, but it wasn't really until the turn of the century that things started getting interesting again.

[leatherface]

88-93

Thrash, the end of thrash, the beginning of death metal , 'triple thrash treat' on headbangers ball. Browsing Sound Cellar/ Borderline/ getting cheap tapes in Freebird, dayglo gig bootlegs on O Connell Bridge/ Record Collector . T Shirts and guitar tab books in Virgin Megastore. 10 rothmans (dont smoke anymore). I could go on..good days, still  as F.

[John Kimble]

I'm gonna say maybe 89-99...89 cos that's roughly when I started with G'n'R and progressed from there, and 99 was when the fatigue set in from years of over exposure to the likes of Metal Hammer and the whole nu-metal scene. I was conscious of the early BM scene but it wasnt what I was into at the time, perhaps I was too invested in the Roadrunner sound of the early 90s. The early 00's was when I started getting more into the BM stuff I'd previously overlooked, and apart from the likes of maybe Converge, Isis etc, I was definitely looking 'backwards'. I'm still the same now tbh, and am more likely to pick up something I may have missed at the time than listening to newer stuff.

[The Great Cull]

My interest in music kicked off in 87 when I first heard Animal by Def Leppard. Bear in mind I was only 6 at the time. I spent the next few years listening to a shitty copied version of Hysteria and remained that way until around 1990/1991.

From there on out it was Metallica (Ride The Lightning and Black album), Megadeth (Hanger 18 and In My Darkest Hour) and Suicidal Tendencies (How Will I Laugh... and Lights, Camera....). I became obsessed with searching out new stuff. That continued until around 1996 when it all seemed to run out of steam.

Originality seemed to die that year over either music being a product or the rise in marketing nostalgia (the KISS and Sabbath reunions being the start of the metal nostalgia train)

While things did return somewhat from around 2003-ish, it wasn't the same level of excitement and I view the last 4 or 5 years as the absolute worst in metal history (way worse than the late 90s)

[Barrytron]

Ah memory lane, my favourite
1989 my brother brings home a Def Leppard tape from somewhere and I remember being literally thrilled by it ha ha, just the darkness of a heavy riff scratched something for me. 89/90 had great music, still love music from that time. Remember Joe Elliot on that music quiz show with Dave Fanning!?

I started not giving a shit around the mid noughties I think, when twin guitar harmonies came back into vogue. Bands like Killswitch Engage and Trivium, and that insufferable Lamb of God - so boring (to me). I put it around 2003 maybe, Iron maiden got Bruce back and I think Thin Lizzy tshirts were cool. Around that time I started to regress and stopped buying into the new stuff as much

[Circlepit]

It's a hard one to pin point.
As said in previous posts there have been times when the obsession wanes.

Sharing a room with my older brother exposes me to loads of Bon Jovi, Def Lepperd, Motley Crue plus The Beach Boys.
He then discovered GNR which caused my parents to lose their shit.

Pottered along with that sort of stuff until 93/94 when I was given taped copies of Vulgar Display, Individual Thought Patterns, Arise, Covenant, Puppets and The Real Thing.

I remember vividly putting on Puppets and  turning it off about 10 seconds into  the intro of Battery and thinking fuck this acoustic shit. I soon thereafter discovered my mistake. After that it was all guns blazing.

So I suppose from 87/87 - 95 it was all metal and the glorious discoveries.

It stopped for a while as I thought I was into hip hop but it turns out that I just liked to hear Ice -T and Icecube saying fuck.

In 98 I moved to Cork and not long after I met Ronan Hayes - Belinus and he introduced me ti Black Metal. Is heard bits on The Metal Show and thought it was shite.
He gave me the 3 Darkthrone albums, some Satyricom and Bathory.

That's all a long winded way to say i had a peak and a lull but overall my listening is probably 95% metal. Mostly DM, BM, thrash, HC etc.
Mostly older stuff, classics and stuff I missed when it came out.

I see people's end of year lists and I check out stuff I don't know. A lot of it sounds the same to me. There is so much of it.

On a different point I wonder do new and younger listeners still get that feeling of fear/danger/thrill from hearing Deicide, Mayhem etc for the first time.

[Bürggermeister]

Remember Joe Elliot on that music quiz show with Dave Fanning!?

Number One! 😂

I think there are a couple of episodes on youtube. Surreal having the singer of one of the biggest bands in the world, at the time, being a regular fixture of a low budget RTE quiz show.

[Ducky]

Never really had peak metal years, as my interest in guitar music kicked off properly with "Daysleeper" by REM in 1998. I was listening to Slayer and Death within a year of that, but any purchasing was always tempered with other sounds.

I remember being in Tower Records in Dublin circa 2006 or so (with Barry/Bane), handed the guy a bunch of CDs. The reissues of the first two Trouble albums, Blessed Are The Sick, World Downfall, and Chic's "C'est Chic", your man says "think you picked this one up by mistake", and I says "no that's the main one" 

[Eoin McLove]

Was Aidan Walsh on that show as well?

Remember The Lyrics Board?? Now that was telly 

I dunno, for me getting into GNR around 89/90. Weirdly I can't even remember the first time I heard them, I just remeber being utterly obsessed. Then Metallica knocked them off top spot and I lost interest in them for decades as they weren't heavy enough. Whatever, couldn't give a shite about that these days.

The 90s were fun with the Metal Show and the odd peek at Headbangers Ball if one of the lads who "had the channels" recorded it. Despite listening to a real wide mix of good and bad stuff, at the time it was all magic to me. Being a kid, someone in their twenties seems old, so the distance you feel between where you are in your life, and these "legends" you look up to is incomprehensible. Funny the difference ten years made back then, whereas now you look at the cool up and coming 20 year olds who know it all and you just laugh and think, muppets 

I found the 00s really exciting as the internet opened up the underground to me, and I had my own money to spend on records. The doom, death and black metal scenes were in revival mode and I jumped in with both feet.

In 2026 I'm at a point of oversaturation. I find it hard to muster much interest in new bands with the deluge of stuff. Instant scenes pop up over night... people with 50 bands going and hundreds of recordings to their name and they've been operating for two or three years. It's all so bland and uninspiring. But I'm also just burnt out to death with all of it. I'm hoping it's a phase and I'll get excited again, otherwise I'll just keep buying reissues of stuff.

Boring old fart syndrome in full effect 

[John Kimble]

Can't recall if it was here or the old MI forum, but there was a topic about the "Iceberg of metal" and how it's only possible to scratch the surface given the amount of stuff out there. This kind of applies to me in that (I think) I have amassed a reasonably large collection of music over the years but nowhere near enough that I've exhausted all the older, classic material. Occasionally a newer band might pique my interest but there's so much I've overlooked, i tend towards older stuff and dont feel a real need to check out new material. It's only recently I paid Autopsy much attention. Ditto earlier stuff from the likes of Sodom, Kreator. Greek BM, RC aside, pretty much passed me by.

[open face surgery]

Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine and the likes got me in 4th class around 95/96. A friend's sister then had recordings of old Noisy Mothers which got us into Slayer, Pantera, Fear Factory, Machine Head and Biohazard He also had Sky so recorded SuperRock and Tommy Vance so found more off those. Free cds with Kerrang and MetalHammer were also a source as well as The Metal Show on 2fm. Black and death metal started around 98/99.

[Yung Led Zeppelin]

Jesus, I'm significantly skewing the average downwards if I state the years for me, lol 

[Goosebumples]

Bit later for me I suppose, from about 06-10. Right about when I started writing and putting tunes out there. Hadn't a notion what I was at but I absolutely lived for it, being in the shadow of bands active around that time was something else, AOP, WOTH, Mourning Beloveth, Abaddon Incarnate, all kicking out top tier albums that lit a fire in me. Really inspiring. MetalIreland was super active and I was a regular dossing in computers class trawling the forums and finding dodgey downloads on the school broadband of bands I seen mentioned on there. Then when I left home it was all just music music music, attending shows, every waking moment with a guitar in my hand, counting down the hours till rehearsal while I drudged through minimum wage shifts.

Ofc, theres still amazing talent out there and nostalgia certainly plays its part, I guess ya just get more accustomed to it as ya get older and maybe less likely to "look up to" bands in terms of what Im at these days as the whole mystique fades as ya get to know people/get used to it. Took a few years out playing to sort my life out but that fire never really went away. Working on two records for two bands atm and its my best work imo, so perhaps minus nostalgia Im feeling in the prime now