The first 'Charlemagne' album is metal, of course, but what I sang was more symphonic.
Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.
When I was a very young kid, the first music that really turned me on was a new wave of British heavy metal - big, dumb rock music. There was a band called Diamond Head - they were basically the band that inspired Metallica. But I also liked bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden.
The power, the complexity, the aggression - there's so many things that would attract anyone to Metallica. I think that they are the prime example of a metal band.
Slayer just goes from generation to generation to generation, because it's just so great.
There is one Metallica. We have many styles, it's called Metallica.
To some people heavy metal is Motorhead and to others it's Judas Priest.
I was always searching for something bigger, faster and better, and Slayer came up with that.
Venom was a band that strongly influenced the image and the idea behind Slayer.
The 'Black Album' was my real first introduction to Metallica. I was, like, 12 or 13 at the time. We were just getting into music, and I liked that album a lot, but it didn't necessarily change my life. But when I started picking up all the other Metallica records, 'Master of Puppets' was the one to me that stuck out with its songwriting.
I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.
During our first year, we were playing Priest and Maiden cover tunes all the time while we figured out what we wanted to do as a band. At the time I was getting out of metal and into punk. That's how Slayer's sound came together - it's the speed of punk combined with the big riffs of metal.
I'm completely open about the fact that I don't love every genre of metal. I like what I like. It's got to have some vocal quality and some semblance of melody.
In the 70s, what thrash was there? Punk came on, and that was cool. But there was no thrash. There were dinosaur big bands, and that was great. Those were my influences.
I hope everyone can appreciate the wonderful aspects of metal music.
I like thrash metal and black metal, stuff like that.
Hellhammer is the best drummer ever, and Euronymous is a musical genius.
Even when metal was on the radio, it was always the watered down stuff. There were only a couple real metal bands - Metallica is one - that broke through.
Starting in junior high school, through high school, I was very into metal or black metal and death metal specifically.
A lot of power-pop comes out of LA, a lot of speed metal comes out of New York.
When we play 'Angel of Death', it's actually a 2 and half minutes sing 'til our party starts. That song is pretty much been played traditionally in the end.
When we first started out, we had no idea what metal music was all about. But now we listen to everything from cute songs to all sorts of metal music.
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.
Growing up, I was listening to a lot of Metallica, a lot of instrumental guitar music because I started out as a guitar player.
My favorite Extreme records were the last two. I can't listen to the first one.
