20+ years ago I wasn't into music. Everyone likes music, but me? Not much in those days.
I had a Shaggy audiocassette, an Elio E Le Storie Tese CD, and some cheap classical music CDs. I listended to them from time to time, and I didn't like MTV music at all.
After the school I wanted to play videogames, not listening to music.
Something was gonna change.
One day zapping on the TV I heard this song:
Just one time, I could only remember "Metallica". I was shocked.
This rock song it's so powerful!
Ahah, what a noob.
Some days after, my mom (lol) was going to the mall and asked me if I needed something.
Buy me the Metallica album, I will pay you if you find it.
Of course my mom picked the wrong CD (my fault), there was no 'Fuel' in this one:
Well I paid for this CD, so I listened to it. At first I was like:
Whaat is this? Strange music, don't like it much. He screams.
Second listening, it sounded a little better. I listened to it a third time, and then...
OMG AWESOME
A metalhead was born.
I bought/copied every other Metallica album. Then I started reading about metal on magazines. Soon I was into thrash metal, and realized the drummer from Metallica was not good at all :D Slayer, Testament, Kreator, Destruction, Sepultura, Anthrax, Sodom, you name it...
After a while I was heavily in death metal, and in black metal also. A metal newsgroup was helping me in finding the milestone bands / albums. Possessed, Death, Obituary, Deicide, Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Entombed. Venom, Mayhem, Burzum, Impaled Nazarene, Emperor. And many many more.
I was looking for the most extreme music ever, I found Cannibal Corpse and the brutal death metal genre. From there, I found out Suffocation, still my favorite metal band. And Cryptopsy, Dying Fetus, Devourment, Disgorge (Mex), Nile, Brodequin, Mortician...
MTV Italia started air a metal show called Sgrang. There I discovered 'Heartwork' by Carcass, a beautiful death metal album with melodic solos and massive shining production.
So I went to Virgin record store to buy the Carcass album. 'Heartwork' was sold out, the only CD they had was 'Reek of Putrefaction'. The second beautiful mistake.
Oh, nice low-fi intro. I already know the trick, now it will start blasting with a sharp sound.
Nope. It was really bad sound quality from the start to finish.
The exact opposite of 'Heartwork'.
WTF. I paid money for this shit? Well, it is done. Let's listen again...
And then I was suddenly into grindcore.
Now, many people thinks grindcore as a metal subgenre. I do not agree. There are contaminations, and RoP by Carcass is on the metalish side of grindcore. If you mix death metal with grindcore you got goregrind (early Carcass, Regurgitate, Dead Infection, General Surgery, Jig-Ai and so on) or deathgrind like the awesome Insect Warfare. Or Aborted. Whatever.
As heavy metal was born from hard rock, grindcore was born from hardcore punk (and I mean bands like Discharge), which is a total different genre. Early Napalm Death, Aghatocles, Assuck, early Malignant Tumour, Cripple Bastards, Unholy Grave, Yacoepsase (my favorite in grindcore) and so on.
Then I found out Anal Cunt, pure love. So I was into noisecore too. I mean 7 Minutes of Nausea, Deche Charge, Sore Throath, Gerogerigegege, Last Days of Humanity to some degree, etc. I was even playing in several demential noisecore bands, doesn't matter drums, guitar or bass: it's not music, it's noise!
The third mistake was very strange.
I heard a snippet of a Soilent Green song, sludge/grind, not bad. My english was even shittier than now, I was on a school trip and bought this second hand CD in a booth:
I don't know how I confused Soilent Green with Cypress Hill, in my head the sound of the words was so similar.
This is hip-hop, it sucks!!
A year later, I was loving it. It's the darkest album from Cypress Hill, maybe not the best, but then I listened to classic west-coast rappers like NWA, Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre... I still don't like much east coast hip-hop, nowadays, with exceptions.
However listening to this stuff made me realize music don't have to be extreme to be enjoyable (for me). And then ADSL was finally available...
I still love every band I named here, but now I listen to almost everything, jazz, reggae, techno. I even did some psytrance tracks for fun (I never would have thought this when I was a blastbeat-taliban with long hairs).
In my opinion Infected Mushroom are the best living musicians, for sure in electronic music. As far as extreme music, I prefer older stuff, but there are new awesome bands like Infant Annihilator (OMG the drummer) or Hymenotomy. On my last.fm profile you will find various stuff.
