What else do we listen to?

Perun

His name struck fear into hearts of men
Staff member
We have a new influx of members - hello everyone! - so I thought it would be nice to dust off some of the old introductory questions and see what the common musical taste is on an Iron Maiden forum in 2021.

When I started listening to Maiden, I was very much into old 70's hard rock of the Purple/Sabbath/Rainbow/Led Zep variety, although I was also on the tail end of a very intense Pink Floyd phase. Most of the bands I listened to back then have stuck with me, but as the years went by, I went on to explore the various metal genres, picking up a few lasting loves from most genres along the way. For the last few years however, my musical home has mostly been in the epic/doom area, and some of my favourite bands include Atlantean Kodex, Primordial, Moonsorrow, Grand Magus and Bathory. I like it when music takes time to develop, and if that means slow meandering for ten minutes, I'm all for it. I carry that sentiment over to the extreme metal areas, with bands like Nocte Obducta, Geist, Lunar Aurora and Ahab (really only the first album, though).
I don't mind more upbeat stuff either though, and some other favourites of mine include bands like Vreid, Annihilator, God Dethroned, classic bands like Dio, Iced Earth, Priest, Megadeth and Slayer, and I always like myself some cheesy trad/power metal of any variety. I'm also happy if there are folky sounds in the music I listen to. I'm not terribly big on thrash and death, although I do enjoy some bands in those genres. Basically, if it sounds like Anaal Nathrakh or Melechesh that's pretty much what it should be for me.
Prog, on the other hand, is almost completely lost on me. I used to listen to Rush for a while, but I can't hear in them what others do.

Next to Maiden however my all-time favourite band is Queen. I'm just coming out of a rare listening binge I afforded myself.

This of course isn't an exhaustive description of my styles - I haven't mentioned bands like W.A.S.P. or Enforcer or my deep love for NWOBHM and traditional US Metal (as in the epic metal genre), but then we'd be sitting here all day.

Your turn.
 
When I started listening to Iron Maiden in the good old 90´s, Bruce announced his departure from the band. I also listened to: Guns N´ Roses, Europe, Faith No More, Nirvana, Alice In Chains,...
A few years later I discovered prog rock and more metal and my favourites became: Rush, Marillion, Yes, Jethro Tull, Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Queensryche, Savatage, Vanden Plas, Enchant, Evergrey,...
Other music or non metal bands I really like: jazzrock/fusion, Depeche Mode, XTC, Prince, Simple Minds
 
Interesting that the first two posts here both labeled Black Sabbath as rock rather than metal. The times are changing.

I have brought shame to my Beatles-loving family by concluding that the Stones are better than the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo made great music, but the Stones played great rock'n'roll.

I've dug into the first rock'n'roll era. I love Elvis, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I'm a big classical music fan. I like it loud and bombastic, so it's Beethoven, Dvorak and Wagner for me.
 
These days my tastes are all over the place, but I do primarily listen to hard rock/heavy metal. I grew up on Gn'R and Iron Maiden and eventually moved on to faster, heavier bands. Some of my favorites from this year are Cannibal Corpse, Helloween, Creye (swedish AOR band), Asphyx, Fear Factory and Powerwolf.

That being said, I also love I guess what you'd call Americana or whatever Jason Isbell is (seriously, the best show I saw in 2019, eeking out Maiden), and also love pop punk (silly stuff like Teenage Bottlerocket and Masked Intruder) as well.

Then some weeks all I listen to is Springsteen and Queen.

Music variety rules.
 
My YT/Spotify playlists are divided into different types of music.

Maiden, Sabbath, Metallica are my top picks.
Megadeth, Sabaton, Nighwish, Epica, Helloween, Ensiferum, Children of Bodom, Alestrom, Rammstein, Blind Guarian, Linkin Park are also on my list as fav.

From Rock music I listen to AcDc, Zeppelin, The Doors, The Who.

Last few years I am into Sinatra, Elvis and other legendary singers, classic music, soundtrack music, electro/techno and old school hip hop.

Never been into Priest, Motorhead, Slayer, Queen, Stones, U2, Guns and any type of grunge bands.

Everything depends on my mood, sometimes I am so extreme and as every Croatian I listen to "forbidden" Serbian turbofolk music :D
 
Last edited:
Never been into Priest, Motorhead, Slayer, Queen, Stones, U2, Guns and any type of grunge bands.
All of those are very good bands. I hope you come around to their charms someday. Among the grunge bands, Pearl Jam is a good choice for fans of The Doors and The Who.
 
Was first exposed to metal in depth in 1984. Metallica’s Ride The Lightning, Dokken’s Tooth And Nail, Van Halen’s 1984, Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force, and of course Iron Maiden’s Powerslave. While I was more into U.S. metal at first, Maiden was always in my orbit in some fashion, with everything from Number Of The Beast through Seventh Son finding radio play or being in my friends’ music collections. Priest’s British Steel through Defenders Of The Faith were in a similar secondary position for me.

I first got into Megadeth in 1988 when my brother who was at college asked me to buy So Far, So Good…So What!, tape a copy, and then send him the CD. “Into The Lungs Of Hell” totally hooked me, and that helped me get over the hump of accepting Mustaine’s voice.

Unrelated, I got into a lot of dark New Age music at that time too, especially Vangelis, someone who I religiously follow to this day. I also had a brief Yanni phase. (Forgive me.) Got heavily into post-Gabriel Genesis as well, everything from Wind & Wuthering forward.

In college in the early 90s I discovered Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime, which was a revelation. There I also ran into some more hardcore Maiden fans, which drove me more fully into their back catalogue, starting with Powerslave which I already knew I liked, and then expanding out in both directions. I remember noticing a major difference from Seventh Son to No Prayer For The Dying, and from Killers back to the debut, and figuring out as a result that Adrian Smith was a major component of what I liked about the band.

Bruce left Maiden while I was still in school, but I followed him into his solo career. I soon set up a fan page for Bruce’s solo career on the nascent web and submitted it for human approval on Yahoo! It then expanded to cover Adrian’s solo work as well, and I maintained it until both of them rejoined Iron Maiden in the late 90s. That web site got me an invite to the U.S. Accident Of Birth release party back in 1997, as well as a shout-out from Adrian in the liner notes of The Chemical Wedding.

Most of the U.S. metal bands went all commercial in the 90s as grunge was on the rise. I enjoyed Alice In Chains’ first two albums, and Pearl Jam was OK at first, but then U.S. metal got very shouty and rappy and I had to look elsewhere for the heavy melodic roller coaster sound I enjoyed so much. In 1995 I stumbled across Gamma Ray’s Land Of The Free, which was exactly what I was looking for, plus a strange Queen / Broadway show tune element that I definitely wasn’t looking for, but soon adjusted to.

I went on a big power metal kick for about 10 years, seeing the epic ProgPower USA III show in Atlanta with Gamma Ray, Blind Guardian, Angra, and others; but mostly being hardcore on Gamma Ray during that time. I also really got into Luca Turilli’s first couple of solo albums, as well as latter-era Martin Walkyier Skyclad, especially The Answer Machine? and Folkémon. This opened the door to an interest in folkier folk metal, which remains to this day.

I really fell in love with Powerwolf’s Lupus Dei, and they became my go-to power metal band for a while after Gamma Ray’s post-2005 decline, but their direction drifted a bit and didn’t re-find itself until Preachers Of The Night in 2013. They’ve been pretty consistent since then.

I’ve always really disliked shouty, black, and death metal. They’re like nails on a chalkboard to me, with a very small handful of exceptions like In Flames’ The Jester Race, Aegonia’s The Forgotten Song, Crescent Lament’s Land Of Lost Voices, and maybe an Amorphis or Borknagar album or two. But for the most part I can’t stand stuff that leans in that direction — I like complex melody and rhythm that doesn’t get so crazy that it loses cohesion, and aggressively non-melodic vocals tend to ruin the things that I enjoy most about music.

That doesn’t quite touch everything, but it’s pretty good coverage of my musical taste. Early Metallica and Megadeth with a few latter-era gems, Dokken up through Erase The Slate, Iron Maiden, Bruce and Adrian’s solo work, Queensrÿche from 1988-1994 and 2015-present, Yngwie Malmsteen up through Concerto Suite, early 80s Priest plus a few of their other albums, early Alice In Chains, Gamma Ray (largely 1995-2005), Powerwolf, Luca Turilli, Skyclad from about 1994 onward, Genesis from the mid-70s forward, Vangelis, Faith No More, early Def Leppard, early Dream Theater, early Linkin Park, early Nine Inch Nails, latter-era Mekong Delta, latter-era Jesus Jones, 80s and 90s Depeche Mode, almost anything George Lynch and Jeff Pilson do together, etc., etc.

EDIT: Oh man, how could I forget to mention Rush? For shame…
 
Last edited:
This is pretty much everything on my iPod:

AC/DC, Adam Lambert, Alcest, Alice In Chains, Amaranthe, Anathema, Anthrax, As I Lay Dying, Avenged Sevenfold, Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, Battle Beast, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Blind Guardian, BlutEngel, Candlemass, Captain Beyond, Coven 13, Declan Galbraith Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Devil Driver, Dimmu Borgir, Dio/Elf/Heaven And Hell/Rainbow, Disturbed, Dommin Dragonforce, Dream Theater, Dredg, End Of Green, Endrone, Evanescence, Fairyland, Fates Warning, Fifth Angel, Fiver Finger Death Punch, Ghost, Gojira, Hawthorne Heights, Helloween, HIM, Iced Earth, In Flames, Insane Clown Posse, Iron Maiden(and all side projects of the band members), Jethro Tull, Judas Priest, Junkyard, Karnivool, Kim Fowley, Kingcrow, KMFDM, Lacuna Coil, Led Zeppelin Libera, Linkin Park, MC5, Megadeth, Men Without Hats, Meshuggah, Metallica, Ministry, The Moody Blues, Mot The Hoople, Mushroomhead, My Dying Bride, Neil Young, Nightwish, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Northland, Omen, Opeth, Overkill, Ozzy, Pantera, Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, Plasmatics, Porcupine Tree, Power Symphony, Primus, Queensryche, Ra, Red, Rush, Savatage, Sabaton, Scorpions, Sir Lord Baltimore, Skid Row, Slayer, Sonata Arctica, Soundgarded, Stone Temple Pilots, Steve Vai, Stryper, Sylvan, Symphony X, System Of A Down, Ten Years After, Tool, Triptykon, Twisted Sister, Type O Negative, Uriah Heep, Van Halen, WASP, Wildestarr, Wishbone Ash, Within Temptation, Wookie Foot, Wovenwar, The 2 Live Crew
 
No long essay, but in addition to Maiden, my favorite artists are Queen, Black Sabbath, Metallica (first five albums), Beatles, Rolling Stones, Rainbow, Replacements, The Clash, and Rush.

Newer artists I like: Kvelertak, Baroness, Wolf Alice, Chvrches, Power Trip, and Ghost.
 
Interesting that the first two posts here both labeled Black Sabbath as rock rather than metal. The times are changing.

I have brought shame to my Beatles-loving family by concluding that the Stones are better than the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo made great music, but the Stones played great rock'n'roll.

I've dug into the first rock'n'roll era. I love Elvis, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

I'm a big classical music fan. I like it loud and bombastic, so it's Beethoven, Dvorak and Wagner for me.
@SinisterMinisterX is back?!?!?!
 
I have a system to choose my favorite bands. I've got to be able to sit through any studio album comfortably without skipping tracks.
Being in my late 50's life really is too short for this, but it would be easily achieved for;
Bolan/T.Rex/Tyrannosaurus Rex - 12 albums - '77 RIP
Motorhead - 23 albums - '15 RIP
Slayer - 12 albums - RIP?

Alot of stuff gets very close. Maiden are a very special case. They fail this test, but somehow get under my skin like no one else. I feel happy for them, and not critical, when I see that big, fat plane. If I don't like a song, I care, when I shouldn't give a toss, but I do.
Metallica fail too. I like everything on release but it doesn't last. Maybe overplaying.
So my system is flawed.

Currently listening to Nile, Sepultura and Maiden. I like Carach Angren but not crazy about their last two.
 
Besides the obvious Metal Stuff I tend to like some of this stuff

Punk Rock : Lagwagon, NoFx, Bad Religion, Pennywise...

Rap / HipHop : Eminem, NF, DMX, some German Stuff ( rarely)

Pop : Depends what's on the radio , sometimes Shakira, Madonna, 80's

Nu Metal : Linkin Park, Staind, POD...

OST : Movie Scores by Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman or Videogame Soundtracks played by Orchestra
 
Born in the mid seventies, I grew up with pop music, in that same decade but especially in the eighties. In that decade I also liked some rock(ing) bands like Queen (I Want It All!), Survivor (Eye of the Tiger) a few Bon Jovi albums and Michael Jackson (Beat It is still good!).

In the nineties I became a metalhead (tried to follow as much as I could) and this stayed this way til around 2009. I still like metal but I got more pickier.
I also got into other stuff like jazz (especially mid-1950s - 1960s), prog rock, music from the bands who debuted in the seventies or late sixties. Next to metal and rock I am a big fan of Midnight Oil and Bad Religion. I rate these bands higher than most bands from any other genre. They are veterans but still impressive live., not afraid to use their great catalog and mix it up in concert. Very fresh to see that old passionate bands can do that.

I got into Maiden in 1991. They are eternally my favourite band. Other genres I like are power metal (especially Helloween and Gamma Ray but not all their records), nineties black metal (e.g. Sear Bliss & Ancient), doom metal (especially My Dying Bride), various bands from the north (e.g. Soilwork, Amorphis, Gates of Ishtar, At the Gates, Stratovarius, Nightwish, Scar Symmetry, Opeth). In 1994, ignited by a phenomenal gig, I started listening to Gorefest (very cool Dutch death metal band with superb drummer and vocalist). Iced Earth made the best metal from America in my view. In 1999 I heard Rush and was (still am) very impressed by their combination of playing and writing grabbing "tunes". Around the same time I got into Pink Floyd, via an uncle. Judas Priest and Black Sabbath have been on my alltime favourite metal bands shortlist since the moment I heard them (1991 and 1995 respectively). I've also been heavily into Epica and After Forever (Dutch symphonic/progressive metal bands).

Jazz: a lot really. I am a lot into the jazz music and their drummers of the older era. E.g. Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Tony Williams, Philly Joe Jones. And artists they played with e.g. John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Larry Young, Grant Green. I am not playing this genre all the time. Sometimes I do not need to hear it for a year or so.

Rather than continuing to follow the current scene, since the 2010s I got more and more into exploring seventies bands. Several of these influenced Maiden, others were introduced to me by collegues: names that come to mind are Golden Earring, Jethro Tull, Hawkwind, Steve Hillage, Genesis, Wishbone Ash, Van der Graaf Generator. In the last five years or so I became interested in Tangerine Dream, pioneers of electronic music and krautrock. And since this year: The Beatles! So yeah, I turned into a "grumpy" old school music guy. ;--) But I love it all the same.
 
Last edited:
When it comes to metal, Maiden started it all for me. The next bands I discovered were Guns N Roses and Metallica, altough I have lost most of my interest in both bands.

These days I listen quite a bit to power metal.. Helloween, Avantasia, Stratovarius, Blind Guardian, Sabaton and Savatage are regular listens these days.

For a while I listened to lots of Dio, Sabbath, Rainbow. Quite a bit of hard rock from mid and late 70's and onwards. But you will find artists and bands like Taylor Swift, ABBA and Lady Gaga on my Spotify as well. I listen to most genres.

Top bands for me all time are probably

Maiden, Rainbow, Queensryche, Avantasia, Helloween and Priest. Probably.
 
and as every Croatian I listen to "forbidden" Serbian turbofolk music :D

Lmao you don't speak for all of us. I can't see why you wouldn't listen to Slayer but that shit is ok. To each his own.

I may be the only person here that's actually listening to electronic music/techno - and have been for all my life. If there's something special about a live rock band playing hard, with all the chemistry and little nuances and imperfections, there's something special also about machine generated, perfect waves running perpetually. Both those things are pure in what they are.

There's too much music that I like and too much anecdotes to recall but it's been a journey with people. Through people, and sharing of music, I found what I wanted to listen. I have discovered many bands because friends would play them for me, that would leave a mental mark and later on I could properly get into them.
 
Mostly metal (classic, power, speed) & rock -> bands from the mid-70's and from the 80's.

Metal: Maiden, Priest, Helloween, Accept, Saxon, DIO, Black Sabbath, W.A.S.P., Metallica, Manowar, Grave Digger etc.

Rock: Kiss, AC/DC, Krokus, Rainbow, Scorpions.

From the ''new'' bands: HammerFall, Nightwish.

^ These are my favorite bands and genre.
 
Back
Top