The first 'Charlemagne' album is metal, of course, but what I sang was more symphonic.
I'm just as much into Emperor as I am Alice Cooper.
Heavy music is really getting its due. With nu-metal fallen by the wayside, real metal has started to surface.
I love heavy metal, Metallica. I'm into Jefferson Starship and acid rock.
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.
I was looking for something a lot heavier, yet melodic at the same time. Something different from heavy metal, a different attitude.
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.
Metal never dies. Sometimes it's not on the radio and sometimes it's not at the forefront, but heavy rock or metal, or whatever the hell you want to call it, has always been around and will always be around.
In a lot of ways, Metallica is like a fusion band. It's not necessarily jazz or any of that, but the music is grooving.
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.
I like thrash metal and black metal, stuff like that.
The history of Pantera speaks for itself.
I love doing clean singing, which is one of the main things that drives me back to Kamelot all the time.
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.
We love not just Judas Priest music, but we love heavy metal and we love to get out on that stage every night and perform. It's a joy to be able to do it.
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.
Saxon, if you are unfamiliar, is a British heavy-metal band that has been around since the mid-'70s and was in no small part the inspiration for Spinal Tap.
A band like Avenged Sevenfold I've praised quite a bit publicly, because it's a band that has moved into that arena-size thing for a hard rock band.
Metal is easily my favorite thing - Exodus and Anthrax and Megadeth - so it just kind of organically came through in the standup act.
I've often talked about metal being the underdog in rock n' roll music.
Actually, I consider both Nightwish and Revamp equal.
