Metal is my favourite genre. Most prominently progressive and melodic death metal. I can see a clear progression towards that through my life.
When I was young I was never really particularly interested in music. I enjoyed it to some degree, but while other kids around me were getting in to current pop music, and some in to forms of pop rock or pop punk, nothing really stood out to me as music I actually wanted to listen to. Nothing was really "my" music.
Then I discovered System of a Down [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-iepu3EtyE]. I was pretty young at the time too. Maybe around 10. My brother was a teenager at the time and he was getting in to them, so he introduced me. While I actually usually seem to be put off by music that other people suggest (I apparently have some kind of unconscious hipster tendencies) SOAD struck me right away as something that was for me. Around the same time my brother introduced me to the likes of Tenacious D, Foo Fighters, and Queens of the Stone Age, and while I appreciate all of them SOAD was the one I went out of the way to listen to much more than the others. They still remain a favourite now.
But for a while after that I still didn't really delve that much in to music. But then when I became a teenager my peers and I started getting in to metal more. This is the point where I think I really started caring about music, and also developing my own taste that strayed away from what others were listening too. People I knew started listening to metalcore and melodic death metal in the vein of the Gothenburg bands. While I somewhat enjoyed those bands, yet again I didn't really feel like they were my thing in particular. In that phase of my musical exploration I came across a metalcore band called Still Remains [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQBMdK7Qwm0]. They only had one album at the time, but I really liked it. Even though it's pretty different to my favourite stuff now, I still do. They were also the first band I saw live.
Not long after that I discovered what is still one of my absolute favourite bands. Scar Symmetry [http://youtu.be/3IjeqxwqKa0]. This was a further progression towards heavier and more complex music. They're a melodic death metal band, but with heavy progressive leanings. They're also a bit heavier than the Gothenburg style, and just generally more interesting too, in my opinion.
Then I kind of settled in that area for a while. Started finding other bands I liked such as Amon Amarth and Children of Bodom. It was mostly stuff around the same kind of musical level, albeit maybe somewhat less progressive and technical than Scar Symmetry. Although at that point I did start listening to different genres on the side. Things like folk metal such as Korpiklaani, and I gained somewhat of an appreciation of Devin Townsend [http://youtu.be/YtSnXU8DfCA] and Strapping Young Lad [http://youtu.be/zwuReRw23_0] at this time too. I had been aware of those two latter examples for a while though, since my brother also introduced me to them, but it was only at this point I really started to listen myself. Not long after this time I also started branching out in to electronic stuff in a minor way.
But then I started getting bored. I wanted to continue my progression. So, naturally, I turned to progressive death metal. I wasn't really aiming to, I was just trying out bands that looked interesting and seeing what caught my attention. What did catch my attention was a band called Persefone [http://youtu.be/33iPIizR6tI]. One I'd never heard of before, and I didn't immediately warm to. But before long I fell in love with their musical style. They quickly went straight to the top of my favourite bands. They seemed like the perfect mix of great melodies with lots of feeling to them, but also really interesting and engaging progressive elements. Not long after I also discovered Gojira [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvVAc4EWbFg], and found their style to be really fantastic too.
I know that the kind of stuff I like is very much an acquired taste, especially with some of the vocal styles, but that's exactly how I like it. It keeps me challenged. It demands my attention and investment in it. I know that if I heard these bands way back when I only liked SOAD I would have thought they were just a terrible racket, but as time has gone by my taste has been refined in a very clear and direct way.
But I don't think my taste will go much further in this direction, if at all. I feel like there's a point at which heaviness and technicality take away too much from melody, which is what I really look for in music. I've heard several bands that go in those directions. Things like brutal death metal, technical death metal, grindcore, and even less melodic forms of prog death, and they just don't do it for me. It's too far. To me they sound like they've focused so much on pushing the boundaries and becoming more technically proficient that they lose their musicality. They become the ultimate expression of their sonic aesthetic, so much so that is all that's left. I might be wrong, but things haven't changed for me in that sense for a while. I haven't felt like I'm not being engaged or challenged by the stuff I listen to for a while. I'm happy with my music.
Since then my taste in other forms of music has spread out. I've gained more interest in electronic music. It's still fairly minor, and although my increasing interest has actually been going relatively steadily for a long while, I'm definitely listening to it more than I used to. In that vein, since reaching my aforementioned plateau, I've gained an appreciation of chiptunes. Although, the main thing that was holding me back before was simply not knowing what the genre was called.
I also started listening to classical music more. Mostly soundtracks. Stuff like the work of Joe Hisaishi [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Za9O0Z0_qQ] and Koji Kondo [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7yZ-jAj7Zk].
I toyed with the idea of getting in to prog rock too. I certainly enjoy it, but the only album I actually came to acquire was In the Court of the Crimson King [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujIbpt-CCTY], naturally by King Crimson. Pink Floyd also appeal to me. I saw The Wall and thought the music in that was great, and other stuff I've heard from them has been really good too.
So yeah, that's my self-indulgent story of my musical taste.
