Bands like Metallica never sat around and said, 'We're speed metal,' or 'We're thrash metal.' If it feels good at the end of the day, to me, that's metal.
I hardly follow the Finnish metal scene at all at the moment. I'm more interested in traditional '80s heavy metal, and I'm still a little scared of black metal and death metal and their provocative imagery.
I don't want to preach, but I would like to see metal become more of a united thing. I'm tired of people breaking things down into categories like thrash metal and death metal. I think people tend to stick to one category, and I want people to support all kinds of bands, whether it be Slayer or Queensryche or Death. I miss the days when it was acceptable to listen to everything from Priest and Maiden to Slayer and Venom.
Me being the metal fan that I am, I like to listen to thrash metal to get me pumped - that kind of music will get your heart racing and ready for a crowd.
I was listening to a lot of Norwegian black metal and death metal. There's a great history to Norwegian black metal. That music is very dark and violent, but it's also beautiful.
I like Jay-Z, 50 Cent and Common. But I like the underground stuff like Young Jeezy, Black Rob and Shine. I also love heavy metal like Slipknot and Pantera, It's very intense stuff.
My attitude was always, if you are a huge metal fan, the more dedicated and more obsessive a metal fan you are, then why wouldn't you like more metal, widen your net, and include hair metal?
Metal isn't necessarily aggressive. There's metal that's contemplative, there's metal that's sad, and there's metal that's exuberant. No genre is limited in what it can express.
All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?
All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?
I just want to be considered a heavy metal band, because metal has always been around and will always be around. We're just a heavier version of metal. Heavy metal will never go away. It's like a cockroach. It's the best title, because we play metal that's heavy.
There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.
I wore a 'Black Metal' Venom T-shirt once, in January 1993, to promote black metal, and I regret having done that ever since.
People sometimes tell me that I don't talk or act or look like a metal fan. Well, what does a metal fan look like? I've found people from all walks of life who love metal.
Starting in junior high school, through high school, I was very into metal or black metal and death metal specifically.
That's why I think it hurt us, whereas these other bands [I'm assuming he means the other Big 3 -Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica] they kept doing their thing, just METAL. METAL. METAL. METAL. We didn't do that, we took a little but of a turn.