The metalhead in me (I)
Metal music, either you love it or hate it, very few people have neutral views about it. In my case it's love... more of an old flame, if you will, since it doesn't have the same weight in my life as it once did, but it's still there. It's been huge presence in my musical upbringing and, indisputably, a part of my personal and musical identity.
Metal, the hairy kind, was huge in the 80's (in my early childhood, which is when I started listening to music for thrills). It was everywhere and it was easy to get into, and then deeper and deeper. I was pretty much a copycat of my brother, 4 years my senior, and he listened to heavy metal, therefore I did too. That's how I was exposed to the genre, the cheesy mainstream one as well as slightly harder and more elaborate forms. Let me give you a few names, and you decide which falls into which category: Whitesnake, Poison, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Megadeth, Metallica, Europe, Guns N'Roses, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani... I lived for that kind of music from 8 to 18, give or take. Let's watch something, to get in the spirit of the decade...
Then I outgrew the master... In college I became the singer of a metal band called Growing Cells. Metal music, in all its forms, became the soundtrack of my life. The exquisite Prog (Dream Theater), the Hard Rock in between (Van Halen), the infamous Black metal (Dimmu Borgir), the extreme Death metal (Death), the vicious Thrash metal (Kreator), the pure Heavy metal (Iron Maiden), and so on and so forth... As for my band, yeah, it was pretty extreme... everything but my vocals, haha! Have a listen:
I have such fond memories of that band, the guys, my life then, how special everything felt (a shout out to Alex, Mikrobi, Cesc and Rícar, I miss you guys! ). I guess I associated metal music with intensity from a very young age, and that's why I liked it, always looking for a thrill...
This subject is no easy subject... Now that I've given you the background, I feel this is a good place to stop for now, I'll leave the philosophy and metaphysics for another day...