If it's possible for a band to change the course of your musical life, it was Iron Maiden that did it for me. I was always into hard rock - two of my earliest album purchases were "Kiss Alive II" and "British Steel" by Judas Priest - but when I got into Maiden, it just blew me away, and there was no going back. It's amazing that Maiden is still kicking ass after all these years, but their 2003 release "Dance of Death" was as good as anything they'd done since the mid-80's. Imagine selling over FIFTY MILLION albums with very little airplay... wow. Up the Irons! (Click this link for a look at a piece I wrote for the Ultimate Metal Reviews website inducting Maiden into the charter class of the UMR Hall of Fame.)

Another of my all-time favorite bands is Savatage, a metal band out of Florida that has released 12 studio albums and a handful of live and greatest hits selections since 1984. They've become more progressive and theatrical over the last ten years and most releases now are concept albums. But fortunately they've never lost the metal sound that made them great.

In the last few years, one band has rocketed to the top of my personal favorites list: Grave Digger, the venerable German metal force. If you like music based on headbanging riffs with growly, ass-kicking vocals, this is for you. In the past ten years, the band has become especially well-known for concept albums based on watershed historical events. Their latest release, a live album in celebration of the bands 25th anniversary ('25 To Live') is one of the most comprehensive live albums ever, and the accompanying DVD is great.

Once upon a time, there was a band named Metallica, that the entire metal community could get behind. This band made a number of great albums and developed a tremendous underground following, all the while maintaining that they would always remain true to the music, even going so far as to saying that they'd never make a music video because of the bullshit MTV culture. Then that band got a taste of big money, and immediately had their hair and balls cut off, leaving us with a pathetic parody of what they once were, and leaving the metal world with a void that would one day be filled byIced Earth. Picture a perfect blend of Metallica (the version with hair and testicles) with classic Iron Maiden, and you're beginning to get the picture. The loss of singer Matt Barlow hurt the sound, but they're still Iced Earth and you're not.

Ever wonder what the music library of a math professor might look like? Click here for an alphabetized list of every damn thing I have - even the embarrassing stuff that really sucks.

Click here to check out what I've been listening to a lot lately.

If you're looking for information on metal bands that you either have or have not heard of, if you want reviews, discussions, top album lists, and a killer message board with more metal info than you can imagine, go to Ultimate Metal Reviews. While you're there, you may run into something that I wrote.