In the beginning of my career, I didn't have any female singer in metal to ask for advice, nor have I ever had a role model or a metal singer that could inspire me, because the way I sang was operatic.
If you are a soul singer, you are a soul singer. If you are a heavy metal singer, then you are a heavy metal singer. What's color got to do with it? I don't go around thinking, 'I sing soul music and I'm white.' I just sing the way I feel.
I've always been very respected as a female singer in metal, or in general as a female singer.
As a female in metal, I'm going to get ostracized one way or another. So, if I'm going to have people hating me because I'm a female in metal, I might as well get people loving me because I'm a female in metal, too.
I did not have any role model. I could not learn anything from the female voice that male poets used, a voice which is more "feminine" than female. Nor could I learn anything from ancient female poetry that only sang about love, the feeling of farewell and longing for others.
I never wanted to model myself on a female singer, which tells you a lot about my character. I didn't have a female role model. There just wasn't anybody around. I played with the boys and beat them at their own game.
I've said the Grammys messed up metal because it's not on TV. What I'm saying is when you're in a metal category, it's not televised, and it doesn't move the needle forward for metal artists, and I wish they had more respect for the genre.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes metal music tends to be very masculine, but because our version of metal is a fusion of dance and heavy metal, all the mixing will create a very different type of music and the female aspect of it will help to create more uniqueness to it.
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.
In 1994, we had the first record by a true heavy metal band to ever hit the Billboard top No. 1 slot. We paved the way. And we always waved the heavy metal flag.
We're just a metal band. Whenever people ask me what kind of music we play, I always say metal.
I never thought in my whole life of becoming a heavy metal singer, but it just happened because I took the challenge.
I owe my whole acting career to the fact that I'm a singer. I went out to Los Angeles and auditioned for a TV show called 'Fame L.A.' The original role was for a comedian, but they said I wasn't very funny, so they asked me, 'What else can you do?' So I played a singer.
The only reason I became the singer in the band is because I sang the best. It wasn't out of some desire to be a star or be a famous singer. It's not like I love interviews.