I was born in the early 60s and became interested in music at a very young age--before I can remember really, as even as a baby/toddler, I was enchanted with it.
As a young kid, via elders who were musically savvy, I was very much into Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Cream, Iron Butterfly and so on--most of the "proto metal" stuff. Hendrix was my first concert, by the way.
I got into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and the like from their beginnings--again via elders at first, especially one of my uncles and my older sister.
When I was 12, in the mid 70s, I joined my first band, which was hard rock/early metal oriented. I continued to play in bands that had a hard rock/metal edge--though quickly we were incorporating progressive rock and jazz fusion influences, too--through the 80s, although increasingly during the 80s, I was working in a number of other genres as well.
My social circle loved and closely followed the NWOBHM bands and then the early thrash and crossover/hardcore bands.
By the time death metal, black metal, etc. came around, the genre wasn't clicking with me near as much as it had--I was more interested in the funk/groove metal thread, which eventually turned into nu metal--which I still like a lot. I like a lot of the more recent progressive metal artists though, and to an extent I like some technical death metal. Some subgenres started moving too far afield from relatively traditional songcraft for my tastes though--I want stuff that still focuses on harmony, melody, grooving rhythms, etc. Even though I like experimenting with those things, I want stuff that still has some relationship to them. And most stuff with an intentionally lo-fi/diy production aesthetic doesn't really click with me.
I still consider metal and hard rock a couple of my favorite genres, though, and I don't outgrow any music I used to like. But I have really broad tastes. There are 20-30 genres/subgenres I like at least as much, and that's been the case since I was a kid, really.
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