[Helloween] “You can bury yourself if you don’t change and move with the times. We don’t want to do that. But you can’t force change either. It has to come naturally. Sometimes all you need is one new and young guitarist to achieve that change. It’s easier to fulfill those expectations than if you had two old grandpa guitarists like me in the band! (laughs) I’m always running after the sessions to try and play something that’s going to live up to those expectations and compete with the rest of the band members contributions, and that helps push our sound forward." - Michael Weikath

[Sinamore] "The feeling when all the little pieces are together and we are sitting at our rehearsal place thinking, "Wow...what the fuck just happened?" In every single Sinamore song we try to surprise ourselves. The more weird the feeling is, the better the song is." - Tommi Mulhi

[Warbringer] "We’ve got a wide range of listening from metal to ‘80s synth music new wave-type shit. I think it’s good to have a wide range of influences. That keeps you interested in what you’re doing and keeps your mind going and changing. You can tell when a band is just trying to copy another band’s style – trying to put their own spin on something." - Ryan Bates

[Isole] It’s good for the genre in general that there are many doom bands coming and it seems that it is popular using growls for vocals, but there are doom bands rising with clean vocals as well. But I think it’s our sound as a whole that will set us apart, there aren’t that many doom bands sounding like Isole… at least I don’t think so." - Crister Olsson

[Skindred] "Some people have called it nu-metal, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. For me personally, when we set out to write songs we don’t try and set out to do something drastically different, we’re just doing what’s in our hearts. We all listen to a lot of different styles of music like Helmet and Botch, then I’m listening to Denis Brown or if you take off Arya’s headphones he’s listening to some flippin’ obscure Swedish metal band. " - Benji

[Havoc Unit] "This is a step-by-step operation of manipulating the model world. Babies have to learn to swallow before they can spit. Our intention on releasing falsified and encrypted information was just to mislead the media into confusion. Propaganda can serve to rally people behind a cause, but often at the cost of exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying about the issues in order to gain that support." - Havoc Unit

[Gamma Ray] "The one thing I’ve found out through the years is that character is the one thing that makes a great singer. It’s not about the notes you hit – it’s really about the character and when you look at guys like Bon Scott or Ozzy, neither of them were fantastic singers in a technical sense, but they had their own personality and that’s what made them great." - Kai Hansen

[The Ocean Part II] "The writing, for me, is something that just happens naturally and it’s the most fun process of the whole recording. If I could only write music and make other people record it and play it that would be very satisfying for me (laughs) because I really enjoy that part of the process." Robin Staps

[The Ocean Part I] "There’s a lot of room for interpretation and for certain details, but I want to leave that up for people who want to investigate a little bit and find out about the whole period and the whole subject matter. We get some real interesting e-mails from people telling us about their own interpretations and it’s very cool to see how people actually pick up on it and try to look into it deeper. " - Robin Staps

[Himsa] "There’s always a humorous side to us. We’re always making fun of each other, fuckin’ off and whatnot, making fun of the other guys and that’s just our personalities. If you take yourself too seriously you won’t have any fun at this. That’s what’s most important to us is to keep it fun and keep us sane, and that’s part of it, being corny." - John Pettibone

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