Growing up, when I was in car with my parents, we were listening to bands such as Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Genesis, Led Zepplin, Heart, along with some Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John or Phil Collins solo career.
I always liked musically complex stuff. I wasn't someone who knew much prog, as my parents were not much into Yes, ELP GG or Jethro Tull, but with Pink Floyd and Genesis, I still had some experience with the style and I loved it.
I became a metal fan at around 16 years old, where a friend made me watch Metallica's S&M show. At this point i've been a lot in commercial punk and metal bands, until one day I started working in a music store. I was working graveyard shift (I've done that most of my life) so it gave me the opportunity to work while listening to music, and we were allowed to listen to any CD in the store. At that time, a friend of mine made me listen to Rhapsody and Sonata Arctica. The melodic power metal became a big focus, andI always thought the covers looked nice.
So after I had listened to everything I wanted to try, I started going through the Metal section to find cool looking covers, in hope that I would find more power metal. One day, I was placing discs and I stumble on that disc with a huge face made of multiple little images and I thought "how cool is that cover?!" Let's hear it.
From that day, somewhere in 2003 (It was a little before ToT came out), SFAM became my favourite music album of all time. It had the musicallity, the solos and the power of Power Metal, but had all those weird timings of Genesis. I fell in love.
Been a fan of DT ever since, and now it's almost the only thing I listen to...