A Quote by Mick Barr

I don't have much contact at all with other black metal bands. — © Mick Barr
I don't have much contact at all with other black metal bands.
When I first got involved in the underground metal scene in '82, '83, there were only about five or six major Death or Black Metal bands around. There were so many other bands that were inspirational, that really helped.
I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.
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.
Arch Enemy is a female-fronted metal band, but so is Delain. They don't sound alike at all. The only thing they both are are metal bands, but the style within metal is so massively different that it doesn't really say much whether there's a girl singing or not. So it's really not so important.
There are a good number of people creating black metal and black metal inspired music in the northwest. Much of this music is radically noncommercial and exists only on a very local, private level.
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 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 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.
My main problem with Norwegian Black Metal is that almost all the bands from 1992-1993 are made up of rats, who ratted each other out and blamed me for everything that went wrong in the scene. I really don't want to be associated with them in any way.
It was awesome growing up in New Orleans because there were great metal bands, there were great hardcore bands, there were great thrash metal bands in the middle '80s and what-not. But then, take me out of New Orleans, and I moved to Fort Worth in 1987, and there's a scene there, too. And Texas absolutely has a different sound.
In the 80s there weren't so many bands around and nowadays there are a lot more bands around. I think sometimes there are too many bands. But there are a lot of interesting young bands around. They are not really playing the classic metal stuff, that's up to the old bands.
I like Iron Maiden and a few other bands, but by and large I don't like metal music. Most of it simply put reeks. This meant that it was no great loss for me to drop the metal music altogether.
I wore a 'Black Metal' Venom T-shirt once, in January 1993, to promote black metal, and I regret having done that ever since.
I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.
There's very few rock & roll bands. There's rock bands, there's sort of metal bands, there's whatever, but there's no rock & roll bands - there's the Stones and us.
I think there are plenty of good bands out there, but the great bands aren't affected by what's going on around them, trends and all that and competing with other bands and wanting to be the biggest, we find that happens a lot. Bands look at other bands and think: that's what I want, you know? I think that remaining.
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