[Blistering.com Special Report: Hellfest 2008 - June 20-22, Clisson, FR] Having two major name and highly-influential extreme metal reunions in the form of Carcass and At the Gates is surely enough to salivate the chops of anyone of even the slightest metal persuasion, let alone the fantastic amount and variety of bands on show at this year’s Hellfest, which featured a good selection of black metal (old and new), thrash (old and new) and death metal (old and new) as well as the (un)holy trinity of ultimate doom bands (My Dying Bride, Candlemass and Katatonia)

[Shai Hulud] "The overall mindframe what I’ve been saying to those that has asked is that we’ve wanted to maintain…we’re always going to maintain our melody. We’re a melody-driven band. There’s no way to consciously write more melodies because we do it naturally. We wanted to take the intricacies and the melody-driven aspects of That Within Blood Ill Tempered and give it a swift kick in the ass." - Matt Fox

[Daylight Dies] "We consider ourselves a death metal band in regards that we have death metal vocals. A lot of people are sensitive about the way that you use genre markings. Some people say we’re doom metal, some people say we’re not doom metal, some say we’re doom/death, gothic or whatever. I don’t care, I think we are just a metal band, but we want death metal vocals as our main vocal style." - Jesse Haff

[Keep of Kalessin] "We thought, 'Why, why all the sudden is it wrong that you can hear a human playing on an album?' Today, what separates the drummers of today is not how they are playing, but who the producer is. I think that is something to be aware of and we wanted to keep each individual marking of each instrument. We wanted to make it sound like a band was playing. We didn’t copy and paste and edit stuff. There are so many details in our production and adds more atmosphere. It has this organic feeling – humanity – this living, breathing album and each individual adds his characteristic to the instruments. I think it’s a very bold thing to do today." - Obsidian C.

[Disturbed] “I think that when you really listen to the album Indestructible, I think that’s the feeling you will get. I think people feel powerful when they listen to this music. I think they feel like they can climb any mountain, or break through a brick wall. That was the point we were trying to make. Over the years, we keep hearing from people that meet us backstage or on the street about how they would listen to our music before they engage in any kind of athletic sport. Or sometimes they hear our music before they go into battle, or combat. And those are powerful statements. People are using our music to make themselves the best that they can be." - John Moyer

[Warrel Dane] "I remember something so vivid: I was hanging out at the bar and was with this chick and we were hitting it off and she said, 'So, are you in a band? What kind of music do you play?' And I said, 'I play metal.' And she said, 'You can admit that?' That was the whole mentality of our city at the time and I just looked at her and said, 'Get the fuck out of my restaurant.'" - Warrel Dane

[Alchemist] “I think you could go as far as to say that it’s a lot more straight-forward sounding for us compared to some other releases, and that seems to be really striking a chord in a lot of people. There’s definitely a lot more aggression on this album than Austral Alien and that purely came out of us wanting to do something a little bit different once again." - Adam Agius

[Fate] "I would say anybody who can follow a main song structure and keep up the flow would be very influential. It doesn't have to be all over the place to be appealing and it took us time to realize that. But, now we are on our way to growing together as mature song writers. All I have to say is America is not ready for our sophomore release." - Devin Durrett

[Ihsahn] ”It’s a kind of no-win situation because if you repeat yourself, people will say you are repeating yourself. If you do something new, they complain about it not being the same thing they liked before. What I say is if you prefer that material, you always have those old albums. From my perspective it can be annoying to always be seen as my own little brother. Because I played in Emperor, everything I do will always be compared to Emperor.” - Ihsahn

[Pt II: Speak: Geoff Tate Recounts The Power Of TV, And Public Opinion, In Mindcrime’s Breakthrough] "All of a sudden we were kind of elevated in the public’s eye now as sort of this pop band, and these singles that were charting all over the place and we were doing award shows and everything was changing. We weren’t this experimental, sort of avant-garde band anymore to people’s eyes. And even ourselves. People were talking to us about creating action figure dolls and showing us prototypes, and we’re going, 'Wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute. This, this is stupid. This is ridiculous. This is not what Queensrÿche is about.'" - Geoff Tate

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