Lizzie Boyle

When I was a teenager, I started going to a drop-in youth centre in Leiston, Suffolk, called CYDS. There I met a group of people – some of whom I am still friends with 28 years later – who liked the same music as me: heavy metal. Some of them liked very very very heavy metal, and that is how I first got into the extreme metal scene.

The youth centre was a place where young people experiencing various difficulties, ranging from addiction to unemployment, abusive family situations to mental health problems, could pull out an electric guitar, or stick a death metal album on the stereo, and feel safe and included, in an environment without judgement.

Over the years, the entire metal scene came to represent that sense of safety and inclusion for me, and this is why I have chosen to support Metal For Good.