As most people who have known me for any reasonable length of time will be aware, I've been a full-on and all-out obsessed Metalhead since 1991. It all started when my brother paid £4 for a second-hand LP copy of Iron Maiden's "Piece of Mind" from the grubby basement of a charity shop in Bridgnorth, Shropshire (I think). He was drawn in, as any 13 year old boy would be, by the grotesque cover art depicting Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie, in a padded cell and clad in a straitjacket. As soon as the needle touched the vinyl and the opening bars of Where Eagles Dare kicked in, my life was changed forever. It triggered something in me. I was hooked.
Ever since then, I've been an obsessive, wanting to hear anything and everything I can lay my hands on. To this day, I still listen to hundreds of new albums every year, covering pretty much every genre of Rock and Metal (and most other genres too). In recent years, however, the musical landscape has changed dramatically. In the early 1990s my only access to heavy music as a fledgling Metalhead in the UK, was via the Radio One Rock Show, MTV's Headbanger's Ball and through tape-trading with friends. On top of this, there was also a healthy selection of physical magazines (if you can imagine such a thing), including Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Raw Power. These, especially Metal Hammer, sometimes came with a free cassette or CD feraturing new songs by both established and up-and-coming artists. This was invaluable for me as a burgeoning obsessive.
For the first couple of years, between the ages of 15 and 16, my paper rounds and my Saturday job skivvying in a restaurant kitchen, paid for one new album per week (on cassette, at first), purchased from Our Price, HMV and later Virgin. Other than that, my music "collection", such as it was, consisted almost exclusively of formerly blank TDK tapes (other brands were available), now replete with copies of albums from friends, songs recorded clumsily off the radio and albums loaned from the local library. If memory serves, the first tape I got from a friend had Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power on one side and Overkill's Horrorscope on the other. In this pre-Spotify / internet world, my access to new music was limited, which of course meant that the few albums I had were subjected to many, many repeat listens. Therefore, albums released between 1990 and 1993 by the likes of Metallica, Iron Maiden, Nirvana, Pantera, Dream Theater, Sepultura, Skid Row, Judas Priest and many more, cemented my love of and my devotion to Metal music and to the album as a concept.
Once I became gainfully employed, I was able to invest more money into my passion and made weekly trips to HMV, Virgin and Langland Records in Telford as well as semi-regular trips to Mike Lloyd Records and Ruby Red in Wolverhampton to satiate my ever-growing thirst for all that was hard and heavy. The pinnacle of my music buying (career?) was between 1999 and 2006, when I worked for HMV in Telford. During these heady days, I bought between 15 and 30 new albums every month. The reason for this is of course, twofold. First, I obviously now had access to much more new music and second, I had a rather tasty 30% staff discount. That's without even mentioning the ability to order in obscure music and listen to it before I committed to buy.
Leaving my job at HMV conincided rather neatly and conveniently with the rise of The Pirate Bay and similar torrent sites. This, combined with my depleted funds, made downloading music an irresistable temptation. I still bought as much music as I could, went to countless live shows and bought a staggering number of tour T-shirts, but the reality is that my purchasing of physical albums took a noticable hit and, truthfully, never recovered to pre-2006 levels.
Fast forward to the present day. Here in 2025, Spotify is king. It's how most of us consume our music, for good or for ill. I still buy as much music as my situation and the rising cost of physical records will allow, but the majority of my music consumption is inevitably via Spotify. The change has been gradual, but I now find myself listening to a new album, regardless of how good it is, maybe only once or twice, adding favourite songs to various playlists and then moving on to the next one, as if I'm living a perverse aural sisyphean existence. This is due as much to the sheer qauntity of new music being released and my seemingly unquenchable thirst for it as it is about my own changing listening habits. Although it is rare that I listem to an album multiple times these days, I still enjoy compiling my albums of the year lists. If I'm being honest, and I am, this is as much to do with me clinging vainly on to an outdated tradition as it is about genuine engagement in the idea, but there you have it.
These days, it is individual songs compiled into inumerable playlists on Spotify that matter most to me. I tried for many years to deny that this was the case and was reluctant to accept that the music industry had drastically changed around me. I tried almost desperately to carry on living in the past, clinging onto the notion of the album as sacrosanct, but eventually even I had to begrudgingly succumb to the new reality. The truth, however, is that deep down I think that I actually prefer it this way. Albums are rarely brilliant from start to finish and, realistically, how much music can anyone listen to in a day, a week or a month? Life is finite and so, therefore, is the time I have to listen to music. Surely then, it is pertinent to select the songs you like from an album and add them to one or more playlists for consumption at a later date and depending on mood or sitaution. Of course there are still albums which I will listem to on repeat, but these are becoming scarcer with time and the number of play throughs is diminishing.
I remain a dedicated and passionate fan of music and I genuinely resent the all too common idea that the best music ever made was released when I, personally, was a teenager. I mean, that would have been a crazy coincidence. This does, however, seem to be an idea that many people have. No, music today is as good as it has ever been. If you disagree, I would suggest investing more time listening to new music by the bands you already like and to take advantage of Spotify and the internet to discover new and exciting artists.
To be honest, I'm not really sure what the point of this rambling post is and, if you've made it this far, I salute your perseverance. You are a real trooper and as a reward, here's a Spotify playlist of songs from the bands which shaped me between 1990 and 1993. You're welcome.
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