Thrash was my favorite when I was younger. My favorite if I have to pick one is Progressive Metal.

I am a guitarists/musician. I tend to focus towards technical excellence and how long it would take me to master a song. Something like nirvana for example... some of their songs took LITERALLY 30 seconds to learn.

That wasn't that appealing to me. If I were not a musician then likely different stuff would appeal to me. Thrash was the most challenging to play at the time it came out. Progressive Metal still has stuff I cannot play, because they are so much more skilled than I will ever be.

Technical ability is obviously NOT the only reason for music. Yet neither is some extremely skilled DANCER performing some dancing they trained for years to do. Sometimes you just want to go out and dance without that training, yet people still tend to get watching a skilled dancer.

Visual art.... "Holy crap, look how real that painting looks" is a lot different than "Holy crap look at those colors on the paper".

In every art there is a point where you admire stuff that is beyond your abilities. For a long time that was thrash. By the time Grunge came out I was skilled enough that for the most part I could of played pretty much all of that. I would still practice a thrash song for weeks before I had it down.

The better I became the less this was true, and I found myself becoming more and more interested in Progressive. That has some of the most truly insane musicianship I am aware of on the planet. Though it is not always something that is appealing to those that do not view it from such a frame.

So that is my motivation...

Though I often like stuff just for the sound and in that case I like pretty much every sub-genre of metal, and tons of non-metal.