[Corrosion of Conformity - Discarding the Albatross] “The generic answer is that Pepper [Keenan] mentioned he had some offers from people to get back together and play a couple of festivals in Europe. It sounded like a good idea. It was exciting to get him and Reed back together and it would be a fun thing to do, but then it turned it out we wouldn’t be able to do it because of Down’s schedule. At that point, we thought, ‘Why don’t we do a three-piece?’ We could write some new songs so it won’t be a completely nostalgia-based appeal and we could play some shows, and probably, we could do an album if there was some interest.” – Mike Dean

[Ram - Battering Away] “When we started playing, 80's-influenced heavy metal was more or less a joke to people, we would enter the stage dressed in leather and spikes and people would laugh…that just made us harder and more extreme, which drove us to take the whole thing a step further. Since we have always experienced this alienation to the metal scene and the music industry in general, we never felt the pressure to compromise with our sound or lyrical content this is our strength today.” - Oscar Carlquist

[Alcest - Dreaming the Inverse] “I am growing up, so of course I am changing as a person. That’s why each album is a different side of this concept. What I will do on the next one, maybe I will do things in different way. It always changes with me, but at the core, it’s the same. I always take direction from the same source. I have this inside me; it’s always here. I just have to go inside myself and make it. Of course, it’s not easy. The more I grow up, the less it is for me. It’s something I had when I was young; now it’s a bit blurry.” - Neige

[Majestic Downfall - The Dance of the Dead] “The most important thing that you need to have when putting an album by yourself is discipline. You have to have continuity when it comes to the creating and recording process, otherwise it can take forever and all the magic is gone. When I write an album, I wake up every day at 5.15 am and go to my little home studio and start throwing ideas. I spend two hours a day without any kind of contact and focus purely on the music and what I want to achieve with it. At the same time, I have to start visualizing what art can go with the music, as well as vocals and all in between.” - Jacobo Córdova

[Shear - Breaking From the Melodic Metal Mold] “You don’t need massive orchestrations to make a big and melodic soundscape. Actually, I think many bands try to hide their lack of originality with big orchestrations. There are already too many bands that try to mimic bands such as Nightwish, and we are definitely not one of them. Many bands seem to think that having a female vocalist would force them to play a specific type of music. This makes the majority of the bands very boring and repetitious.” - Lari Sorvo

[Wolvhammer – Writhing Into the Bliss] “We're definitely a bastard child of the genre in my opinion. Regarding the mixed bag of American black metal, that's neither here nor there to me. There are bands I like, and there are bands I don't like plain and simple, whether it is for their concepts or their music. Yeah, I have to admit, there have been some things that have come around that leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but I have no illusions that there are probably some people that feel the same way about what we do, in all fairness.” – Heath Rave

[Veil of Maya – Still Not Safe To Swim] "I try to think that we’re better live and more impactful than what you hear on the album. We’ve had a lot of fans tell us that. We just try to make the live show real intense and more in-your-face than when listening to the album. We want to make it exciting and make people want to come back as opposed to people saying, ‘Oh, they were good but I’d rather listen to the album.’ We always try to bring certain aspects to the live show that aren’t there on the album.” – Brandon Butler

[Cannibal Corpse – Pedigrees in Butchery] “Death metal is metal. We’re definitely a death metal band, and that’s our scene, but the good death metal bands like us, Suffocation, Dying Fetus…we’re capable of standing alongside and playing the same stages as the best metal bands in any genre. I’m not saying we’re better than any of them, but there’s a lot of great death metal bands that are capable of hanging in there with any form of metal.” – Alex Webster

[Archaios – New Third World Posse] “We have struggled in every way you can possibly imagine. We have struggled against the conservative media, against the church labeling us as Satanists and against the general perception in Dominican society that everything that is outside of what they consider acceptable, is somewhat hazardous and negative. We have also economic and geographical limitations and zero support from the outside world. These are some amongst the countless other bullshit we have had to put up with. So, after all these things, being able to start having some recognition in the international scene is the first sign that despite all the harshness, everything we’ve had to endure was worth the sacrifices.” – Eric Cruz

[Daylight Dies Studio Report] “Most would find the new album more dynamic, quite aggressive at times, with our traditional sound in new rhythmic and textural contexts. We've tuned slightly lower than on previous albums, creating some of our heaviest and most dramatic moments to date. There are very delicate moments as well. Charley [Shackelford] and I have really gone for the throat with some of the guitar solos. Overall, we've expanded our sound again. I believe this is our most exciting album to date.” – Barre Gambling

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