The Tampa Bay area is known for a few different things, like cigars and Cuban sandwiches, but there's one thing that often gets overlooked.
Tampa is widely considered the death metal capital of the world.
Bands like Obituary, Nasty Savage, Deicide and plenty of others got their start in the area, beginning in the early to mid-1980s.
Dave Allison has been following these bands since their inception and has become friends with many of the members. Now, he’s considered the go-to guy when it comes to Death Metal history and lore.
“To me, it was just my friends,” Allison said. “I would support them, and that's what I'm still doing. I'm supporting them.”
This weekend, Allison — with the help of others — is holding the second Tampa Bay Museum of Metal Historic Florida Metal Exhibition at Magnanimous Brewing in the Seminole Heights area of Tampa on Saturday from noon to 10 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
The Tampa Bay Museum of Metal isn’t a physical museum, with most of the items he’s showcasing on loan from various bands. He’s kept a lot of the items in his Brandon house as he prepared them for the event.
One of the people helping Allison out is Tim Hubbard. He’s well-known in the Death Metal scene for taking pictures of the early bands before they became popular. He turned his hobby into a lifelong career.
“There was no way to think it was going to be this big,” Hubbard said. “It was just like punk rock. It wasn’t going to be big, because most people went to pop shows, most people liked everything else ... very few people liked punk rock. Very few people liked death metal.”
But that niche start to death metal ballooned over the years into a popular subgenre that bands would use, tweak, and build on.
Admission is $10. Magnanimous Brewing is located at 6809 N. Nebraska Ave.
