Musical Evolution

Idea by SapphireRose.

How did your musical tastes develop? For me, it would have to be

Linkin Park -> Random radio stuff -> What my sister used to listen to (Mainstream rock stuff, ie Papa Roach, Staind, etc.) -> Dream Theater -> Machinae Supremacy/Random mainstream stuff.

Hmmm, good thread.

Electronica/Techno ---> Rammstein ---> Old Metallica ---> Led Zeppelin/Jimi Hendrix/Van Halen ---> Iron Maiden/Ozzy/Sabbath/Judas Priest

That's basically how it's been for me.

Wierd Al Yankovich and Space Jam Sound Track -> No Mercy, Aqua, Real McCoy and other late 90s Eurodance and Pop -> Beck, Cake, Indie Alternative -> Ramones, Strokes, Neo-punk -> Emo, 90s Eurodance, and Pop

Excellent thread idea. My evolution went as follows:

Old 50s and 60s rock (the stuff my parents listened to when I was a little kid) >> Aerosmith/heavier rock >> Sick Of It All (and other hardcore) >> Cannibal Corpse, my introduction to metal >> Dimmu Borgir >> Falkenbach, Sad Legend, and other obscure black metal, power metal, as well as prog bands like King Crimson >> Nokturnal Mortum and other symphonic black metal >> Classical and symphonic music in general >> Estradasphere >> Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek "gypsy" music >> Indian sitar music, Japanese shamisen stuff, all sorts of other ethnic folk stuff >> which brings me to now. I still listen to almost everything I listed on here at least once in awhile but mainly viking/folk black metal, gypsy music, prog rock, and sometimes random stuff like old NES music.

Well, I used to always listen to the radio when I was a kid, so that's what started me in music. From there:

followed whatever bands my sister liked (whatever was popular about 12-15 years ago.) -> heavier metal (like Iron Maiden) -> bands like Slipknot -> bands like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, Children of Bodom, Opeth, etc./J-rock and hardcore bands.

After there, I was constantly looking for heavier and rawer music until I suddenly got bored of it:

Black and Death metal -> Darkthrone, Burzum, Bathory, etc. -> Doom metal -> Grindcore -> Technical metal -> Power Metal -> Progressive metal -> Shred/Neo-classical, Symphonic -> Viking/Folk Metal -> Atmospheric/Ambient -> Darkwave, New Wave, Electronic/a. -> Avant-Garde, Experimental.

And that's about where it ends. Since then, which was about three years ago I guess, I've basically broadened by taste further and gone deeper into each genre.

Linkin Park, Disturbed, Trapt, all those mainstream rock bands and music from anime (opening/ending themes) --> Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Cradle of Filth, Children of Bodom, and other various forms of metal --> Currently at indie, punk, and 70's British rock groups (Pink Floyd, David Bowie, etc.)

Like I said before :D :

Linkin Park -> Slipknot -> Cradle of Filth -> Opeth, Bloodbath, Naglfar (Black and Death Metal [I'm also into some J-Rock, Metalcore, and Grindcore as well])

Edit:I have always, and will continue to, love techno, however. :D

Started out listening to Tiffany in the late 80s and early 90s, then I gradually got into U2. From there music didn't really grow in importance with me until around 1999 when I got into the radio-playing bands such as Goo Goo Dolls and Sugar Ray. Then around 2001 I was looking for "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel on Napster and discovered Nevermore's cover, which I loved and inspired me to go further in that musical direction, eventually leading me to Therion, Nightwish, Falkenbach and various other bands that I still listen to today.

Vietnamese and Chinese folk songs
< Old RPG music
< PS I music
< Japanese Pop/Videogame tunes
< Dream Theater
< Death Metal/Videogame tunes
< Dream Theater/Videogame
< Random ****
< OLD Dream Theater/Videogame tunes
< Estradasphere/Jazz/Romanian/Greek/whatever Folk songs/Gypsy ****/SPACE ROCK/POST ROCK/Midis/Videogames tunes/Piano instrumentals


You can see towards the end I had a more open mind - this was due to the fact that I met up with Philsdad and Negative Trend.

- Random mainstream crap
- System of a Down
- Trance, etc
- Random crap from OCRemix
- Nightwish (massive catalyst right here)
- Dream Theater
- Agalloch (second massive catalyst)
- Mercenary
- Skyclad
- Arcturus
- Machinae Supremacy
- Ulver (third massive catalyst)
- Falkenbach
- Kid Loco
- Vintersorg
- Borknagar
- Massive Attack
- Trollfest

So, basically from mallcore to gothmetal to BM/doom/trip-hop.

I was raised around an awful lot of classic rock, folk, and 80's new wave music. As a child, I took a particular liking to bands such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Yes, Peter Gabriel, Howard Jones, Tears for Fears, Billy Idol, Robin Trower, The Police/Sting, Bowie, Bruce Cockburn, The Doors, and The Pet Shop Boys. When I first got into collecting music, I sought more music from most of those artists.

Then I got more heavily into modern rock, particularly grunge bands like Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and Soundgarden. Philsdad introduced me to non-mainstream metal years ago, and I got into it quite heavily. I only listened to a little bit of techno prior to 2004, but Corrupt quickly helped me broaden my horizons in that department. By 2005, my obsession with metal and hard rock was ultimately replaced by electronica, in countless forms. The majority of what I listen to these days is electronic music. When I listen to much of the old rock music I listened to heavily four or five years ago, it just bores me to death and sounds incredibly passe- though, there are also quite a few gems that never get stale.

Up until I was eleven or twelve all I listened to was whatever was on the radio. I think my favorite band during this time was Smash Mouth. Then, In The End by Linkin Park started being played on the radio, and I fell in love with the band. I pretty much exclusively listened to Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd, a little bit of System of a Down, alternative rock such as 3 Doors Down, and some punk rock up until I was fourteen. At this point I was becoming slightly bored of Linkin Park and the rest and started downloading songs I used to like a lot when I was younger, such as Barenaked Ladies, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Wallflowers, Nirvana, etc. I also had a brief fling with Green Day and blink-182 after their newest albums were released about this time.

Then it all changed.

During that year of school, I was taking a guitar class, and come December or so I had to write two reports on a guitarist of my choice. I had all ready done one on Jimi Hendrix, and couldn't decide on a second, until I remembered that there was this huge Dream Theater fad here at VGC and this band supposedly had a good guitarist. Thanks to Sabredog, I did the report on John Petrucci, and got into that band. A lot. I dropped all of my old tastes (save Red Hot Chili Peppers) in favor of this new type of music I was exposed to: progressive metal. Within a couple months I had all the Dream Theater CD's I could find off of eBay and had been expanding my metal tastes into such subgenres as thrash, power, and symphonic. Still, I was attracted most to progressive stuff, which is why I ended up looking into prog rock such as Rush, Queensryche, and Porcupine Tree.

So there I was listening to a substantial amount of heavy metal and prog rock. I had been introduced to death metal all ready, but I disliked it passionately. Still, I felt the same way about symphonic metal at first, so I decided to start looking into bands with harsh vocal styles and ease myself into hopefully finding something to like about the genre. Thanks to Klarth, I was able to very easily become adapted to harsh vocals via the band Agalloch. Songs with slower tempos and lots of harmony and acoustic stuff with harsh vocals on the top. I loved it. Then, Pit told me to look into Wintersun. Which I did. And I loved them. So here I am liking some heavier, more "extreme" bands, and enjoying it. From here, I started listening to In Flames, Kalmah, and Norther, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly. Yay. Still, for some reason, I couldn't get into the one band that made the most sense based on my tastes that I should like - Opeth.

Opeth deserves a whole section simply because of how hard it was for me to start liking them. I couldn't stand the vocals at all, clean or growled, at first. I had two albums - Ghost Reveries and ****ation, neither of which I liked much. I didn't like the death vocals on Ghost Reveries, so I never finished listening to it, and I didn't like how completely boring ****ation was. I did, however, find one song I could get into, which was In My Time of Need. I liked the bass, I think. So I decided to keep trying to like this band. Eventually, I decided to take the risk and purchase their album "Blackwater Park." I had read many excellent reviews and I knew of one song on it, "Bleak," that Klarth seemed to like a lot. I'm very glad I made this purchase now because it ended up getting me to love the band. Bleak was an instant favorite of mine due to Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree contributing to it. Before too long I realized that there were some other songs I loved off of Ghost Reveries that I never listened to because I didn't get past the first few songs when I listened previously. Yay.

So here I am, loving everything from mainstream rock to melodic death metal. Yay.

edit: wow, this post turned out longer than I expected. my apologies for spelling/grammar mistakes, it's 5:30AM and I need sleep.

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers. These are the ultimate music-get-into types. Listened to them, never really thought "OMG AWESOME" but I definitely enjoyed them.
2. General shat really. If it was on the music channels I'd watch it. Not necessarily enjoy it but I could flick through them for extended periods of time.
3. Decided that I liked mostly the alternative rock kinda stuff. White Stripes and Muse were both bands that I really enjoyed whenever they came on.
4. I discovered Blind Guardian, Nightwish, and Therion, three bands which really affected me in a way that no music I'd heard prior to that had.
5. Started listening to more power metal. It was little bits of different bands, so maybe a few Angra songs, a few Within Temptation songs, just handfuls, because this is back when I was downloading quite a bit. At that time I'd listened to a little Dream Theater, but it wasn't a huge one for me - again, just a handful.
6. Found Blind Faith and 6:00 by Dream Theater and my interest in the band skyrocketed. Huge favorite for ages.
7. Started to move from metal to rock in general. Started with Rush, then moved onto Mostly Autumn, Porcupine Tree, Spock's Beard, etc.
8. Now levelling off into a nice balance between rock and metal, delving into a lot of lighter stuff. Anything that's innovative and captures me, really.

I started out listening to a combination of mainstream rap and some System of a Down, Korn, P.O.D., etc., but I was never into more than 1 or 2 songs from any of those. Then I got into Nightwish, then Therion, Dream Theater, and stayed around Progressive and Power metal for a very long time. Then I started expanding into thrash metal, viking, then into death, and then black metal and ambient. I have tons of satan-worshipping black metal now. :) I'm also very attracted to black metal bands with good drumming, such as Old Man's Child and Behemoth, because I'm a drummer and the drumming in both of those bands is practically orgasmic.

And now, I'm in a classic rock band!