In 1976 when I was 12, for a penny one could join a mail-order record club and receive a stack of records via the U.S. Postal Service. Of course, there was a requirement to purchase a certain number of records at their regular (i.e., exorbitant) price, but who cared? One of the albums I ordered in my initial cache was “Kiss Alive” and, oh man, it was the most awesome thing I had ever heard!

To my mother’s horror, a slew of now-classic Hard Rock and Heavy Metal albums began to arrive at the house on a regular basis. Bands like Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rainbow, and others.

Fast-forward almost half a century later. After Eddie Van Halen died on October 6, 2020, I committed myself to listening to the entire Van Halen album catalog. I had never been a huge fan of the band, but was curious to revisit. Some of the albums were familiar, but most I had never heard before – or even heard of. Eddie Van Halen’s unique guitar virtuosity was mesmerizing.

Bored and locked down by a certain pandemic, I had time on my hands to wonder about other great rock/metal guitarists. This led me to revisit the Heavy Metal albums of my youth. Which led me to explore some of the well-known Metal bands I’d heard of, but had never actually listened to before (Motorhead! Iron Maiden! Slayer! Megadeth!).

Which led me to explore bands I had never even heard of before (Death! Opeth! Mastodon! Pantera!). Which led me to explore entire genres I had never heard of before (Deathcore!). Which led to further explorations. And so on, and so on.

Two years into my Metal explorations, I’ve now listened to over 1,200 albums by over 225 different bands, covering genres of Heavy Metal, NWOHM, Thrash/Speed, Glam, Death, Black, Progressive, Stoner, Emo, Doom, Power, Symphonic, Metalcore, Deathcore….

Tactical Metal features my lists, as well as occasional short blogs by myself and some of my friends.