I grew up to my father’s favorites, Billy Joel, Simon and Garfunkel, Pink Floyd, Meat Loaf and stuff. Then as I got my own radio I started listening to regular 80s rock bands and moved into hair bands. Then one weekend when I was 14 I heard a lot of Anthrax and Metallica. I started trying to find more and more heavy music after that. I went on to Slayer, then Morbid Angel, Morgoth, Carcass, and Sepultura.
Now, I am so steeped in heavy metal it’s almost all that I listen to. Sure, I have a few rock CDs laying about. Chevelle (playing now), Skindred, Hurt, A Perfect Circle, Butthole Surfers, nine Inch Nails, Disturbed, and Living Colour, but most of what I listen to mixed metal.
36 Crazy fists
The Acacia Strain
All That remains
Amon Amarth
Amorphis
Ankla
Arch Enemy (right now)
At the Gates
Between the Buried and Me
The Black dahlia Murder
Bleeding Through
Bloodbath
Bolt Thrower
Bury Your Dead
Callenish Circle
Cavalera Conspiracy
Children of Bodom
Chimaira
Cyanotic
Daath
Darkane
Dead Horse
Deicide
Demon Hunter
Dethklok
DevilDriver
Devin Townsend (SYL, Ocean Machine, Physicist)
Diecast
The Dillinger Escape Plan
Droid
Dry Kill Logic
E Town Concrete
Entombed
The Faceless
Fear Factory
Glassjaw
God Forbid
Gojira
Gorguts
Grave
Grip Inc.
Hate Eternal
The Haunted
In Flames
Indorphine
iwrestledabearonce
Kilgore
Killswitch Engage
Lockedown (local band, now defunct)
Lykathea Aflame
Machine Head
Mastodon
Megadeth
Meashuggah (now playing)
Mors Principium Est
Mudvayne
Mushroomhead
Nile
Nothingface
Novembers Doom
Obituary
Pantera
Paradise Lost
Ripping Corpse
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder
Scar Symmetry
Shadows Fall
Six Feet Under
Skinlab
Sky Eats Airplane
Slipknot
Soulfly
Stuck Mojo
Testament
Thine Eyes Bleed
Threat Signal
Three Mile Scream
Trivium (their older stuff, when they screamed and growled)
Unearth
Vampire Mooose
Zimmer’s Hole
And that is just the stuff that I like. There were a few dozen bands that I didn’t mention! And this reply is wrecking havoc with my spellchecker…