I was in my 30’s in the 1990’s. That was sort of weird decade in music in the US, because everything was in flux. There was alot of good music though.
This just about explains everything haha.
Did not expect someone around the age of my father to be part of this forum given how the heads of h’phones com run the whole business the way they do.
Well, I’m in my 30s now but my musical journey started way back in the mid 90s when I started taking up the piano, and later the oboe and sax in my high school years.
Until my enlightenment to metal in the mid 2000s, I was mainly listening to Jpop and anime music. My mother was a huge fan of SMAP and we usually watched their TV shows every week. They had a music segment where they’ll sing their newly released songs, and frequently collaborated with other popular artists. They even got American pop artists to join in as well which was a huge surprise.
Anime music was huge to me during my tween ages. When I reflect on it now, I don’t know whether I liked the songs because it reminded me of the shows I watched or it was legitimately good on its own, but I was immersing myself in it.
Then came the metal wave in my early teenage years as I touched on earlier.
My friend showed me Slayer, Pantera, Blind Guardian… then it really took off when I found Dragonforce.
This was the time when YouTube JUST launched and there were a LOT of music videos online.
I never joined any forums, but I was quite literally face-splattered with a gargantuan list of sub-genres simply just searching for the term “metal.” Slash, power, death, gothic… then I was thinking “Are there genres that mix these genres together?” then discovered viking metal, melodic-death, symphonic death… Black metal though, that genre took a LONG time for me to get used to. Tried numerous times over the years, and it wasn’t until recently when I watched a musical featuring Vampillia (band I posted a video of earlier) that totally changed my perspective on the genre.
Anyways, it was so much fun during lunch breaks going through music videos upon music videos discovering how much of a variety a single genre can provide.
Things got really interesting though when I found myself going through avant-garde and experimental metal. My mind was thinking I’ve exhausted every kind of genre I could think of.
But things changed again when I went on a one-year exchange to Japan during my college years and met a friend from Europe who coincidentally had similar tastes as me and introduced me to a whole another culture of underground Asian artists.
We went to a massive festival, and that was where we saw TURTLE ISLAND, nego, The Heavymanners with RUMI, and on another event, Vampillia (some of the artists from the list of videos I posted earlier)
That was really when my interest for Asian music took off.
I was so immersed in these types of music that whenever I heard something that’s all the talks on TV or social media, everything seemed so bland. Nothing was as grappling of my interests as the stuff I was listening to.
So as much as people may think I’m one of those try-hard counter-culture people, I’m more of a “I’ve listened to so much stuff that’s out of the ordinary, popular stuff doesn’t appeal to me at all” sorta person.
But then who knows. I might be enjoying them after a few more years.
Still not at that stage of life though 
Because I was also an anime fan. And was aware of some J-pop from that. Cowboy Beebop, Evangelion and Vampire Hunter D were a few of my favorites. So I guess that was technically the beginning of my exposure to the music.
