First professional site I ever saw was Misfits' old Misfits Bible. Great info archive they had. THat was fall 95, maybe early 96.
Some people were putting up primitive review boards around 1995. A friend and I looked into it- even got a domain name set up, but we never added much content. I remember typing up reviews for "A Higher Form of Killing" and "Frolic Through the Park" on an old word processor for the 'site'. I think I did one for Holy Terror's 'terror and submission' too. I'm not certain the other guy ever got the stuff posted.
In 1997 another guy we knew started a paper zine w/ a limited website called "Underground Metal". It was aimed at covering the current underground metal scene, particularly in the Midwest (Ohio, Michigan, etc). I wrote album reviews for him for 2-3 issues before he moved to Arizona. Through his site, I ran a small online contest where folks could submit reviews of 80s metal favorites and I sent off some tapes/cds as prizes. We didn't get many entries, but someone out there got a cd of Atheist's 'Elements"
I know I covered some new, bigger releases for 'em (Hammer faall [interesting default setting there Dan
], Iced Earth, others) but also reviewed demos from the local bands. Social Decay was Howard's band; they were a Slayer clone (but a decent one). There was a one-man band called Below, a pretty good gore-death metal band from Mich whose name I can't remember (began w/ an L). Five Story Fall were a crossover band from TOledo that morphed out of CHarlottes Web (the band mainman was a woman named Charlotte Swanson, maybe Swenson). Ton was from Ohio and were heavy, kinda sludgy but also a tad grungy. Hypothermia were from Ohio and did a great tune called "Ballad of a Broken Man". Awakening were from the Akron area I think; they grew out of 80s band Axe Master but had a more prog sound. Don't remember if Symphony of Grief were local or from somewhere else and just sent their demo in for review (they were in the early Anathema style of doom-death/funeral). We even got a black metal demo from a greek band called Macabre Omen! Etc etc etc. For better or for worse I got rid of almost all those demos several years ago when I purged out the cassette collection.
