Hello my fellow metalheads,

Ever since I first heard Priest’s “Hell Bent For Leather” (ok I am not that old but it was one of the first pieces of metal I’ve got exposed to) or Maiden’s “Children Of The Damned” I was hooked, or more like addicted to a 20th century phenomena called Heavy Metal. That is what this site is all about. Pure, true Heavy Metal. Let me clarify that little further.

There are lot of debates out there on what true Heavy Metal is and what it’s not. Speaking strictly as a guitar player and fan of the genre itself my opinion is that Heavy Metal is well defined and easily recognizable and cannot be mistaken for anything else. For example:

Aerosmith is NOT Heavy metal. Even though they have some metal like tracks, as a general rule they’re not metal. Same deal with Rush, Ted Nugent, ZZ Top, Bad Company or Foreigner, so those kind of bands will not be discussed here. There is simply too much of a true metal out there to be wasting pages on bands like those. No offense to those bands since I really love most of their stuff but they’re simply don’t belong on this page. No true metal academic will ever say that Foreigner is a metal bend. Bluesy vocal delivery, blues chords and scales. Nothing metal about that. The only thing Foreigner and metal have in common is that they both use guitars and drums. Don’t get me wrong. I love Foreigner, but it’s simply not Heavy Metal.

All of following bands are Heavy Metal: Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Savatage, Manowar, Accept, Helloween, Saxon, 220volt (no pun to my nick intended), In Flames and so on. I distinguish Heavy Metal from other genres mostly by three things. Riffs, vocals and scale system. Even though Metal is much more then just riffs and scales, it is the first thing that attacks my ear and inner being.

There are some (what I call fence sitters) bands out there and are border line with metal. For instance: GNR, The Cult, Whitesnake, Dokken, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and so on. These bands will be discussed here, but NOT as extensively as true metal bands.

We can debate what metal is (including clothing, styles and other metal accessories) all night but melody itself is the numero one what makes metal such a driving force today. Tell me if you’re still thinking about clothing when you hear Maiden’s dual guitar lead or Helloweens guitar melody runs, or early Savatage crushing riffs. Listen to the Dan Dark’s (Torch) or Halford’s vocal delivery and then tell me if you still think Metal is all about styles. I didn’t think so.

I hope that you will enjoy coming to this blog, and I really hope you will start contributing your own words so we can spread the word and hopefully educate some people and help discover some truly uniques gems in metal music that got missed by media.

220Volt

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Something about me,

I own Les Paul 1960 reissue (honey burst). Click here to see it in action

My favorite metal era is 1977-1985

Right now I work for ISP in their NOC (Network Operation Center)

I own quite a bit of metal music (over 1,000 CD’s and probably double that on my hard drive)

I used to be in the band called Bridger. I played lead/rhythm guitar. We were all Europeans. We officially never recorded anything (except few garage demos). I still play guitar and damage my wallet every time new metal comes out. Here is the picture of my ex band. (I am the one on the far right)

I am currently married and live in US.

Here is one of the first song we’ve written. It is called Vivid Games. Excuse the recording since it was recorded on simple 4 track in a garage.

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