How you discovered your favorite band...and what band is?

SECULAR: Judas Priest

I was about 4 and saw the video for "Hot Rockin" on MTV. I was always attracted to harder/heavier music (yes even at that age). I was in awe of the scenes in the video where their instruments were on fire. Never forgot that LOL!
When I was about 10 I discovered Metallica (who were my faves for years) and through them, subsequently lots of other thrash/speed/power metal type bands, and then eventually death metal as well. This was all I listened to for a few years.
Then when I was about 15, I met a neighbor who was a huge traditional/power metal fan and he of course was really into Priest and Maiden. Through hanging out with him, I got back into Judas Priest in a big way and was able to see how they had influenced many of the bands I had been listening to in the previous years.
There is so much variety to be found in Priest's catalog. No two albums sound exactly the same and I love all of them.


CHRISTIAN: Stryper

I guess it was 1986 or so. My dad was promoting a local Christian metal show in Wichita Falls, TX. A lot of the teens from our church were going and one of the girls had a Soldiers Under Command cassette. I heard a little bit from her walkman and of course I liked it. Of course all the kids were disappointed that Stryper was not on the bill (LOL!). I was only 8 but I enjoyed that show as much (if not more) than the teens that it was for! Golgotha was one of the bands that played that show. Not sure if they were the ones that later morphed into Valor. There were probably lots of Christian bands called Golgotha back then. A few years later I discovered Saint, Bride, Bloodgood and Sacred Warrior. Anyway as was the same with Judas Priest, I kind of got "distracted" by the Christian thrash/speed metal bands for a while, then kind of found my way back to those more traditional styled metal bands as my favorites. Stryper is my favorite for sentimental reasons as well as for maintaining a great degree of quality songwriting throughout the years.

Constantine wrote:One frustration with that, is if I try to introduce them to another band I think they would like, they are usually not interested, because they are just stuck on the one band.  I cannot relate to that since I am a highly curious sort and like to try new things.

Even though my obsessive ranking disorder (I don't think that's a real thing) makes it where I have to have one favorite band (Deliverance), I have many "favorite bands", even if one is my very favorite.

Deliverance. My dad played Learn on the car radio. Didn't know who it was, and didn't like it much either. Also played Weapons much later, liked that less. Eventually I remembered Learn and wanted to hear it again, and rememberd that it was heavy, and he had many albums from a band called "Deliverance", and knew they were heavy from hearing Weapons. I looked through the album sleeves, remembering 1) the first song was about time 2) the second song had a riff that sounded like it was saying "watcha gonna do" and 3) the chorus to 1990. When I found that "Time" was the title of one album, I read the lyrics to the second song, and the chorus was correct. Next road trip we put that album in and that was how I got into Deliverance, and metal in general.