How did you end up here?

[Random Axe]

OR more specifically, how did you end up joining this web group?

For me, I came in contact with this group in late 1998 or so once I actually had a computer of my own.

Prior to anything online I relied on fanzines and magazine ads for Impulse Music and other various late 90s vendors. I was getting a fanzine called The Progress Report, a black and white no frills newsletter that had a bunch of cool recommendations and reviews for bands like Conception, Braindance, Power of Omens, Psychotic Waltz. Somehow that led to a website called Heady Metal and that somehow linked to a prog group called Perpetual Motion.

This was actually the first online group, board or organization I ever signed up for. I'd never had an online handle or username prior so I chose Random Axe, the name of my old band. It's crazy to think its been 23 years. That's just insane that I've talked to some of you for two decades and still haven't met any of you in person. I'd really like to change that sometime.

[Packgrog]

Some time in 1996, I was working at an area grocery store with one of the original members of the band Enertia. Through him and some other coworkers, I got exposed to some of the less known metal like Angra's Angel's Cry, Fates Warning, etc. In 1997 the MP3 explosion really took off. Being broke and in college, I started hunting for more music in a similar to the above, and stumbled across a website that had some samples of stuff like Vanden Plas (Rainmaker), Symphony X (Eyes of Medusa), Chaos Theory before they became Dali's Dilemma, Empty Tremor (Rules of Time) and a few other things that struck my interest. In my hunt to actually BUY some of these albums on CD, I came across an early version of lasercd.com. From there I was introduced to ~D's original version of the Perpetual Motion board. The rest was history.

[Mardoch]

One year during the annual "Do you need a roommate?" thread for PPUSA I ended up sharing a room with a long time member here, who introduced me to Larry, Todd, and the rest of the gang, whose booze I promptly got drunk off of. It was a fantastic evening of music talk and bullshitting, so I joined up. Definitely one of the better choices I've made.

[introclaus]

I think it was around 1997 - I had started Intromental a year before and we already had some good contacts around Europe for promoting our bands, when I was contacted by Larry D who told me about this forum where he wrote up some reviews and in general where people talked about the kind of music we were working with. So I sent him some promos, and since then I've stuck around. When the forum split into two I tried staying involved at both in the beginning, but this one here feels more like "home" so this is where I have chosen to focus my energy on, rather than the other. I haven't posted there in probably 3 (?) years by now, and I don't miss it. The people here are so much nicer anyway haha

[Psychotic Symphony]

It was sometime after 1999. I think I was 14. I had heard about it from Erik Welty Metallic Symphonies. I still visit that website reguarly via this: https://web.archive.org/web/20020103060 ... vlist.html

[BC]

That was way back in my WebTV days! Was just getting into prog and was directed to come check the board out. I think my first post was a response to a Savatage review and I was trashing Jon Oliva’s singing.

[Locust0311]

I honestly don't remember the specifics. It would have been circa 97/98 when I first discovered Dream Theater thanks to a fraternity brother. Some searching resulted in my stumbling on (I think) Dr Metal's page which introduced me to Vanden Plas and Empty Tremor. I'm sure somewhere in there was when I discovered the original PM board. What I do remember though was finding out that one of the posters lived in Rome, GA to where my parents had just moved. So one of the times I went home on a break from school I went to this guy "Glenn"'s house and we spent the day in his basement listening to metal. Who knew what that would lead to?

[sez]

Hard to remember; it was so long ago. I think it was a link from the original Helloween board, which I discovered first in 1994 or 1995. I was just getting into prog after re-discovering Helloween and Gamma Ray on the Internet--two bands as an American I thought had broken up since I hadn't heard anything about them through other means. Their releases from 1990-1994 were the first discs I ever imported. Here, I discovered Dream Theater, Stratovarius, Symphony X, Vanden Plas, Pain of Salvation, Circus Maximus, Seventh Wonder, and who knows how many other bands.

I followed the other board for a little bit during the hiatus, but never went back after this board came back up. As others have said, this one always felt more like "home," even though I haven't met anyone in real life.

[T'ski]

That was way back in my WebTV days! Was just getting into prog and was directed to come check the board out. I think my first post was a response to a Savatage review and I was trashing Jon Oliva’s singing.

WebTV! So I wasn't the only one!

I really don't remember how I ended up here. It was the late 90's, thats all I know.

Its been a great source of music and information for me for 20+ years and I'm grateful for every band/song/album it opened my ears to.

[MitchG]

Sometime around '98 for me; I was doing a web search (I think it was pre-Google..probably Alta Vista or something ) on Riot's Fire Down Under. I don't remember what I was looking for exactly, but it led me to the PM board and a post of Misfit's. Stuck around ever since (both boards actually) to some degree or other.

[BC]

That was way back in my WebTV days! Was just getting into prog and was directed to come check the board out. I think my first post was a response to a Savatage review and I was trashing Jon Oliva’s singing.

WebTV! So I wasn't the only one!

I really don't remember how I ended up here. It was the late 90's, thats all I know.

Its been a great source of music and information for me for 20+ years and I'm grateful for every band/song/album it opened my ears to.

Did you get shit for being a WebTV user too?

[Kez]

I can't remember anymore. It had something to do with trolls on another board somewhere.....

[AllMediaReviews]

I originally mixed with the Dream Theater fans on Yahoo Clubs and mostly Mike Portnoy's forum.

Also the Epigram Prog Metal mailing list, which I think a guy named Bjornar ran. I wonder whatever happened to.

I ended up attending the 1st 3 ProgPowerUSA's (and 2 more later) and it may have even been the 1st one, the one I hold in highest regard that I actually made a video about talking about the Pain of Salvation performance here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6apTxVbmxA .

I'm pretty sure though from Glenn and many others there and name-dropping Perpetual Motion at the festival and the PPUSA Forum on ultimatemetal led me to the other boards here.

Granted, I mostly lurked, and still do, but this current forum seems pretty harmless (which I don't know I would say the same about the other forums here).

I would love to interact more here and the others, but it's one of those things that comes down to taste unfortunately. Back 20 years ago, the Prog and Prog Metal was a large focus of the music I consumed. Now? while I enjoy some of it, people's taste change and thus many people who shared your taste, may not anymore. I remember thinking when I was at the last ProgPowerUSA in 2009 for Fates Warning, Orphaned Land, Diablo Swing Orchestra (and Andre Matos if from memory, had to cancel), that "it didn't feel like my scene" anymore. Which maybe shouldn't matter, as the people themselves were pretty much all cool and nice, but the bands on the rosters I wasn't as into as I had been.

Sadly, I don't really feel like there is any forum or fb group that I have found, that has fans that are into a lot of the music I am most passionate about. The alternative progressive rock/pop and technical metal fans are fragmented so much, it's not exactly as focused as Prog Metal and Power Metal is. It's like No Man's Land in some ways, for better or for worse.

[Digital Man]

Back in the day, I used to frequent the Usenet Internet newgroups using the engineering Unix machines at work...when I was supposed to be working. I think they were rec.music.metal, rec.music.metal.progressive, etc. One day Dietrick posted an announcement for a new web forum called Perpetual Motion, the original one. I immediately joined and have been on ever since. I back off when I go through music burnout, like right now, but have been on all the incarnations of the board for a long time.

[LarryD]

Much like most here, I had been on the alt.prog sites all over the internet at the time. I had met Ken Golden at the time, ( man I miss The Lasers Edge catalogue ) and at the same time I met the great Erik Welty, whose now famous prog band listing helped me find all sorts of prog that was circulating around the world. Between Ken and Erik and me, we searched and tracked down every prog metal band known to man and more......the hunt was the fun.

I met Dietrick there online, who approached me about starting a Prog Metal website - and The Perpetual Motion Board was formed. He gave up the site at that time, and the board was split into two. I took over the "new" Perpetual Motion Board around 2004 and here we still are after all of these years.

Powermad is where lots of us originally met - my friendships with Glenn, Ken, Todd, Guy, STevie and so many others started in 1997 at the first Powermad .....one day, while a lot of us were sitting around the huge tables they had at Powermad, someone mentioned the legendary words - " I can do better than this " ...... it was Glenn stating that he had an idea about starting a new festival, as Powermad was starting to go down the tubes - and all of a sudden we found ourselves in Chicago, at one of the most memorable, groundbreaking, fun shows ever at JJ Kellys. Those of you who were there at that legendary show know what I'm talking about and where it all started....... the rest is history as they say.

Thanks for going down memory lane with me - sometimes its sad, sometimes its fun - but in the end, we are still here. Rock on brothers..........

[Packgrog]

Powermad is where lots of us originally met - my friendships with Glenn, Ken, Todd, Guy, STevie and so many others started in 1997 at the first Powermad .....one day, while a lot of us were sitting around the huge tables they had at Powermad, someone mentioned the legendary words - " I can do better than this " ...... it was Glenn stating that he had an idea about starting a new festival, as Powermad was starting to go down the tubes - and all of a sudden we found ourselves in Chicago, at one of the most memorable, groundbreaking, fun shows ever at JJ Kellys. Those of you who were there at that legendary show know what I'm talking about and where it all started....... the rest is history as they say.

I didn't get to be part of much of that early history, as I was never One Of The Guys, but at least I got to be present for Powermad '99 (Evergrey and Mayadome) and the first two PPUSA shows. Some very good music and memories there.

[LarryD]

Powermad is where lots of us originally met - my friendships with Glenn, Ken, Todd, Guy, STevie and so many others started in 1997 at the first Powermad .....one day, while a lot of us were sitting around the huge tables they had at Powermad, someone mentioned the legendary words - " I can do better than this " ...... it was Glenn stating that he had an idea about starting a new festival, as Powermad was starting to go down the tubes - and all of a sudden we found ourselves in Chicago, at one of the most memorable, groundbreaking, fun shows ever at JJ Kellys. Those of you who were there at that legendary show know what I'm talking about and where it all started....... the rest is history as they say.

I didn't get to be part of much of that early history, as I was never One Of The Guys, but at least I got to be present for Powermad '99 (Evergrey and Mayadome) and the first two PPUSA shows. Some very good music and memories there.

****That Evergrey / Mayadome show was absolutely magical -- one of the best 1-2 punch shows ever...... and then add in Lethal, and it didn't get much better for a Powermad show. Amazing.

[Packgrog]

****That Evergrey / Mayadome show was absolutely magical -- one of the best 1-2 punch shows ever...... and then add in Lethal, and it didn't get much better for a Powermad show. Amazing.

Not to get too off-topic here, but I went to that show specifically for Mayadome (man, I need to dig that back out again, I loved that album), and was completely taken by surprise as Evergrey took the stage. They started playing around the time I showed up and started flipping through the CDs at the Laser's Edge station. They were playing something from SDT, my brain instantly went "what is THAT!?!?", and I grabbed the first two Evergrey discs from the bin and bought them on the spot, along with Event's Electric Skies (which I remember because Matt Scurfield came up to me while I was holding it and complimented me on my choice, heheh). Those first two Evergrey albums were fantastic stuff, even if some of the lyrics were still pretty goofy compared to the more mature and personal stuff that they've dug into in recent years. TDD in particular was an unrelenting monster of a disc.

Anyway, I'm grateful for those memories, and of those from the first two PPUSA shows. Magical, simpler times.

[Chris R]

I honestly don't remember the specifics. It would have been circa 97/98 when I first discovered Dream Theater thanks to a fraternity brother. Some searching resulted in my stumbling on (I think) Dr Metal's page which introduced me to Vanden Plas and Empty Tremor. I'm sure somewhere in there was when I discovered the original PM board. What I do remember though was finding out that one of the posters lived in Rome, GA to where my parents had just moved. So one of the times I went home on a break from school I went to this guy "Glenn"'s house and we spent the day in his basement listening to metal. Who knew what that would lead to?

You dragged me to Ds board at ProgPower 1

[Chris R]

Much like most here, I had been on the alt.prog sites all over the internet at the time. I had met Ken Golden at the time, ( man I miss The Lasers Edge catalogue ) and at the same time I met the great Erik Welty, whose now famous prog band listing helped me find all sorts of prog that was circulating around the world. Between Ken and Erik and me, we searched and tracked down every prog metal band known to man and more......the hunt was the fun.

I met Dietrick there online, who approached me about starting a Prog Metal website - and The Perpetual Motion Board was formed. He gave up the site at that time, and the board was split into two. I took over the "new" Perpetual Motion Board around 2004 and here we still are after all of these years.

Powermad is where lots of us originally met - my friendships with Glenn, Ken, Todd, Guy, STevie and so many others started in 1997 at the first Powermad .....one day, while a lot of us were sitting around the huge tables they had at Powermad, someone mentioned the legendary words - " I can do better than this " ...... it was Glenn stating that he had an idea about starting a new festival, as Powermad was starting to go down the tubes - and all of a sudden we found ourselves in Chicago, at one of the most memorable, groundbreaking, fun shows ever at JJ Kellys. Those of you who were there at that legendary show know what I'm talking about and where it all started....... the rest is history as they say.

Thanks for going down memory lane with me - sometimes its sad, sometimes its fun - but in the end, we are still here. Rock on brothers..........

Met you at Powermad 2000...... "OMG YOU ARE THE EYE OF THE STORM GUY" (You had a little to drink that day)...

Then ProgPower 1(you told me about this at Powermad)