I jizzed my pants... J/k but it was like "hmm this isnt gay rap music that i hear so much and its not gay rock i was hearing that all sounded the same". It was Linkin Park. Honestly they should make a genre called Linkin Park
So one day in 2001 I walked into the store, browsed the music area, saw this cd with some cool artwork of a man with wings holding a flag on the front. I then read the name of the band.... Linkin Park. I thought, wow that's a cool name I'll buy the cd and see what kind of music it is..... was incredible. My mind was blown listening to music I had never heard before. HT was the first cd I ever bought. I actually did air bands in 8th grade and used One Step Closer as my song and I was going crazy. I performed in the auditorium and I lip synched to it and pretended to play guitar and I was jumping up and down. Ah that takes me back to that great moment.
Honestly, I never really "listened" to Hybrid Theory for the first time, in its full length that is. However I heard With You (reanimated version) on my cousin's PC (he played it and I loved it) and then when we got in his car he put on Papercut and I was in love. At the time he was probably 17 and I was eh 14.
I remember being 12 and seeing the One Step Closer video on MTV. I was just getting into music at the time and it blew me away. A few months later when Crawling came out I was already obsessed with LP. So a friend of mine made me a tape copy of HT and even with the crappy quality I loved it.
The first time I heard LP was 9 years ago. I was riding the bus home from 8th grade and heard In The End on the radio. I didn't even know what the hell was going on. Rap and rock in the same song? OK? I was intrigued. I didn't do any digging on it, well, because I was 14 and had no idea how to really use computers lol. I think I finally figured out how to use Morpheus to download music a couple weeks later and got the whole album. I can't remember the feeling, but I remember that it was literally the only music I listened to until Meteora came out. That music no longer has much effect on me, sadly, but it does bring back memories.
When I first listened to the song In the end the album with HT, I had a feeling as if I'm not from this planet! Hybrid theory stunning album!