I think heavy metal is therapeutic - it's music that blows the tension away. I think that's why people who have had really bad childhoods are attracted to heavy metal. It allows people to release aggression and tension in a nonviolent way. Also, heavy metal seems to attract all sorts of scruffy, lost animals, strays no one wants.

So many different styles of music have influenced us individually and as a band. I think heavy metal is there. It’s not always the most predominant factor in Fall Out Boy, but it’s definitely there. Andy and I are huge metal heads.

The dark creates all kinds of things. The dark creates music, particular kinds of music. Horrible folk music you don't want to listen to. And heavy metal which they love in dark places. They love it in Scandinavia. They have all these metal bands, you know? And they're not like the English ones or American ones that have names like Metallica and Megadeth and so on. The names are... 'Cause English isn't their first language in Scandinavia even though they all speak it. So they call their bands things like Anus Hammer, Egg Smuggler, all that stuff. lt's a very interesting look, heavy metal, you know... You have everything down here. You've got jazz and ska and everything, you know. Whatever, folk music, too, probably. Folk music has its own look. lt has a... You know, people wear dungarees 'cause they say, "l'm a man or a woman of the people. This isn't my main thing, you know. l'm just like you really. My main job is harvesting turnips. Anyway, this next number is called Cross-eyed Mary of the Lowlands. l'd like to dedicate it to my wife." And then there's jazz, you know, where you get people in suits but they're non-conformist suits 'cause they're wearing a pink shirt with a green jacket and a blue tie and trousers too complex to describe. 'Cause they're saying, "Yes, l'm wearing a suit but l work for me. And my job is to play the electrified tractor horn till 5:00 in the morning, so fuck you." Heavy metal is a very interesting look. The look is a kind of an argument. lt's an argument against Darwinism. Because what the people who are involved are saying, is that attraction is not necessary for reproduction. That's why they shave all the hair off where it would naturally be and cultivate it in places it shouldn't be. And that's why the music is so angry. You know, if you shave all the hair off your arse and get into a pair of leather trousers, you're gonna sing an angry song. lt's not gonna be some wistful ballad about that crazy summer in Paris with Justine. lt's going to be much more, "Death in the morning, death for breakfast. Little pots of toasted death." Heavy metal is what happens when a group of people with competitively disgusting appearances come together to try to kill air. No, partly... Partly, that is probably age speaking. l just can’t tolerate certain things, you know.

My solos are speech-influenced rhythmically; and harmonically, they're either pentatonic, or poly-scale oriented. And there's the mixolydian mode that I also use a lot...But I'm more interested in melodic things I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.

I'm not a death metal singer that sings one style or one tone throughout an entire album or sings the same way on every album. I really take it song by song and I try to adjust my vocal approach to the nuances of the music and how it feels to me and what I want to accommodate to kind of offset those things that I hear in the music to make it more closer to what I feel its related to vocal tone wise. [...] The guttural thing started for me when I heard certain things in the riff. You know, the [syncopation]. [...] So I wanted to really bring my vocals into that. You know, so [they were] like melted together with [the music].

He likes having the ball, playing football, passes. It's like an orchestra. But it's a silent song. I like heavy metal.

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa — Who knows most, knows least.

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.

People who don’t know this music think it’s just a bunch of noise and it’s really easy to play. That’s totally untrue. You may not like it, but death metal is really complex. You have to have a really fine-tuned ear to appreciate it and a lot of the guys in these bands are incredible musicians.

I grew up as a teenager listening to a really lot of heavy stuff. I was definitely a Slayer kid and Testament and the harder metal. I was definitely not a glam rocker.

Music is at its best when it is pleasingly melancholic.

Start looking around, and then just learn how to play the melodies from songs you like. It can be traditional songs from your country, pop songs, modern, whatever — melodies from songs you like. Classical music, right? You can play exactly the same melody in so many different ways. That's what creates this emotion, mainly when you play instrumental music. But [also] in any music, of course, because the singer will do the same. In classical music, this is mandatory to develop that sense of how to interpret the melody. Because you're playing songs [where] you cannot change any note, but the only thing you can change is how you interpret those notes, right? So we can learn a lot from classical players.

The sound we created was a mix of what we liked [...] And the whole punk thing, but playing it fast, which really wasn’t what metal was about back then.

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?