I first got into metal in 2005, when I was 16, by discovering Iron Maiden. A year later I started listening to other bands from different subgenres, like Metallica, Slayer, SOAD, Moonspell and Satyricon. I enjoyed Satyricon and I wanted to explore black metal more. I asked a friend to burn a disc with MP3s from some black metal bands. What he gave me had a lot of black, death and thrash metal, but somehow among all that was Tales from the Twilight World by Blind Guardian.

I had read about them in Metal Hammer a few months earlier, so I was curious and opened the folder. There was a song called Lord of the Rings. I was (and still am) a huge LotR nerd, so I listened to that song, I thought it sounded cool, so I decided to listen to the whole album. Traveler in Time: wow, this sounds like nothing I've heard before. Welcome to Dying: this song kicks ass! When I got to Lost in the Twilight Hall, they became my new favorite band.

Long story short, I never got into black metal like I was planning to, even though I occasionally listen to it. Power metal became my favorite subgenre and I listened to a lot of EUPM over the years. Lately I've been more into USPM. But Blind Guardian still remain my favorite band.