Yup. Mostly old school stuff, early 70s to mid-80s. Also some heavy bands that describe themselves as "just rock" rather than HM - e.g. ACDC, Motorhead. Stoner rock, yeah baby! Also like heaviness in other genres. BTW what's the heaviest song in the history of the universe? IMHO, PJ Harvey's "Oh my lover" has to be a prime candidate. Never heard anybody even consider her music as metal (then again that kinda makes sense because it's not a very metallic song is it, just very heavy).
Black, death, or nu-metal, not so much.
Being an over-analytical type I've often wondered why I like this stuff? Certainly not the lyrics, most of them I totally dislike and in fact make me embarrassed to admit publicly that I'm still into metal at my age (though I still sing along when I think no-one's listening!)
Ditto the whole death / destruction / depression imagery that surrounds it all, most of it just makes me cringe - but nevertheless I still like to belt out "seek and destroy" every once in a while.
So recently I've come to like instrumental metal because it comes without a lot of that baggage. Then again, add a voice like Rob Halford's to the mix and the whole thing just gets so much more exciting. I don't even care what he's singing. I don't mind that they named that one song "Genocide" (even before I found out that song is actually about something else altogether). All is forgiven for that amazing voice...
I guess it's mostly some kind of instinct driven, animalistic thing. Like chocolate is yummy even if you know it's unhealthy, and pron gives you a boner even if you're horrified at the thought of your own daughter getting snapped in some kind of, ahem, compromising situation, and you know full well that each of those ladies has got to be someone's daughter. In the same way, some riffs just make me want to nod, and nod, and nod... Proper headbanging would give me a headache these days, but back when I could and would do it, the feeling was in the same "pleasurable" category as sex - though sex was always orders of magnitude better. Ever tried headbanging while shagging?
_________________
Father of 2 children diagnosed with ASD, and 2 more who have not been evaluated.