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We all have “those bands” that really got us started on a path in music, be it getting into metal in general, or into death metal, black
metal... bands that, for all intents purposes, changed our lives and molded what we listen to today. We are going to start featuring a
piece with each update on the bands that influenced us and special guests. We’re kicking things off with yours truly, Al Kikuras.
IRON MAIDEN & METALLICA - these were gateway bands. My older brothers were in to metal and got me started with Maiden &
Metallica. I took it so much farther. The main thing that got me in to the underground was listening to a radio show called Midnight Metal that was on Saturdays from midnight to 6 AM. I started
listening to it when I was around 9 or 10 years old and that is what got me in to tape trading, demos, heavier music and starting a 'zine.
MAIDEN!
SLAYER - I first heard Slayer when Show No Mercy was released, but Reign in Blood was the first album that scared me. I got it from
my girlfriend for Christmas in 7th grade the year it came out. In the almost 20 years since then, I have listened to it several times a
month consistently (at least) and can still listen to it over and over. My #1 album of all time.
 VOIVOD - RRROOOAAARRR & Dimension Hatross
Such a raw, freaked out, insane album. I love almost all Voivod, but RRROOOAAARR is the band at their hungriest. I was into Maiden, Metallica, Mercyful Fate... RRROOOAAARRR was the first really
RAW album that I loved and opened up my tastes to much more. Dimension Hatross is the album that showed me how adventurous metal can get.
VENOM - I got a crappy copy of Venom's 1984 bootleg from one of my brother's friends. It was raw and evil, but so catchy. "Warhead"
remains one of my favorite songs. Venom opened me up to blatantly Satanic music. I was raised Catholic and felt guilty for listening to them, but I couldn't stop. I got over that pretty quickly...
MERCYFUL FATE - a band my brothers were kind of in to, but I loved, starting with Melissa. Don't Break The Oath was the album that really grabbed me. Another one that scared me as a kid and I
felt even more guilty listening to at first because it wasn't cartoony Satanism like Venom. It was the real deal.
 KREATOR - Terrible Certainty, especially the song "Behind the
Mirror." Another one that scared me when I first heard it (remember I was 13 when I first heard it on the radio, sitting up alone in the dark at 3 AM on a Saturday).
POSSESSED - One of my brother's friends (the same guy I got RRROOOAAARRR from) once brought over a copy of SEVEN CHURCHES on vinyl. I saw the cover, with the
flames and inverted cross, and was immediately obsessed with it. He put it on and I heard "The Exorcist" and my skin crawled. I was
a kid that had no money. I saved everything I could to spend on tapes and comic books, and Seven Churches was an album I could not find. I taped a few songs off the radio and listened to them
over and over. Seven Churches was the Holy Grail of metal albums, one that I didn't get until years after I first heard it.
DEATH & OBITUARY - When I first heard "Mutilation" on the radio, the DJs were laughing at the vocals, as if this was some passing
trend that would never catch on. The sound was so raw and ugly. They got used to Death, and stopped laughing. Then they played Obituary and it started all over again because the vocals were
even MORE extreme. That caught on as well, then death metal was everywhere.
 MISFITS - There was a pretty good
record store about 10 miles from my house which, when you are 12, is halfway around the world. My parents would take me there every other month or so and I would buy one album with the money I had
saved over that period. The album I got was a BIG deal because I was spending a fortune and I would only be able to get one album until they took me back again. I got Earth AD
after seeing Metallica wearing the Misfits t-shirts. I thought it was going to be a metal album. I remember getting it home and listening to it, and HATING it. I
actually cried because I was so disappointed that I had blown the money I had saved for two months and this was the album I had until I got to go back to the record store. I didn't listen to it again
for months, but then one day I put it on and it clicked... it became one of my favorite albums and remains so to this day. It was dark and heavy in a different way than Possessed, Kreator and the
other bands above.
RAZOR - I heard the song "Evil Invaders" on the radio show. I taped it off the air and listened to it over and over and over for
years. When I was getting off the bus for school, the tape that had the song (along with PROWLER's "Thrash and Bang" and other
stuff) fell out of my pocket and in to the sewer. I was devastated and stood there, staring at it down in the shallow, dumpy water. My neighbor, who was actually a scummy drug dealer, saw me out
there. My parents hated him and he hated them, but he saw me standing there and this huge guy that was with him came up and the guy kneeled down and lifted the fucking sewer grid, which had
to weigh a few hundred pounds, and reached down and got my tape! I thanked him and shook the water out. It never played quite right again, but was still listenable. Though the guy caused my
family a lot of grief, I always had a soft spot for him saving my tape with EVIL INVADERS on it. I could never find a RAZOR album as they weren't released in the US, until I went to the record store
I mentioned above (Tapeville USA) and saw a copy of VIOLENT RESTITUTION which, to date, is the only RAZOR album to see a proper US release. I was so excited. My brother had taken me to
Tapeville that time. Hanging out with my brother was such a big deal to me, but after I got the tape, I waited in the car, just looking through the cover and lyrics while he went to the stores he
needed to go to. Still one of my favorite and one of the best thrash albums of all time.
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Hades “back in the day!”
HADES - Like so many of the bands on this list, I first heard HADES “The Leaders?” on Midnight Metal. I was blown away and hooked
the first time I heard it. I hunted for the albums, finding them at that same store (where, incidentally, I later met HADES during an instore at the tender age of 13 or so). HADES were the first band
that was “my band.” You know, that band that the guys at your school that THINK they are into metal haven’t heard of, that when you play it for them, totally kicks their asses. The band that you
sing the praises of wherever you go... that you need every version of every album on CD, cassette and vinyl. That you have more than 5 t-shirts from (I think I am up to 11 as of a few months ago).
HADES were one of NJ’s finest metal offerings that never really got their dues, but fuck all if I didn’t try to see those dues paid!
 CIRITH UNGOL - there was a local record store by my house that I got
to go to more often, but man, did it suck. They had almost NO metal, but two albums they did have that had to be sitting on the shelves for years were CIRITH UNGOL's "Frost and Fire"
and "King of the Dead." When my mother went to CH Martin, a department store, I used to go to the record store and just stare through the glass of the case at those two
tapes, wondering what they sounded like. The cover art was so amazing, the name so obscure, in my mind it had to be the heaviest, most extreme music ever. I had no
money to buy them (I was 9 when I first saw them in there). I read a review of "Frost and Fire" in The Heavy Metal Encyclopedia at the
library (a crappy review book) and he called it one of "the worst metal albums of all time." I KNEW I had to have it. Years later,
when I actually had some money (from a paper route) I went in to that record store and bought both tapes, still the same tapes I had been staring at 4 or 5 years earlier. By then I was in to much
heavier music. Cirith Ungol wasn't nearly as extreme as Possessed, Kreator, Sodom, etc., but fuck... I finally had them! Cirith Ungol were a big transition band that came out of progressive hard rock
in the 70s and had a lot of those elements in their music, but were still so metal. They helped me understand how metal grew out of rock. King of the Dead is still one of my favorite albums.
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