[U.D.O. - The Rev-Raptor Lives On] “There are a lot of good bands around and I would love to coach them. Teach them how they can make it. There are a lot of younger bands around and now the record companies are not really pushing the bands as much anymore. They will drop bands if they don’t sell well after the first or second albums. It’s a hard business at the moment, coming and going. I would love to show them how they can make it.” – Udo Dirkschneider

[Winterus – Blind Carbon Copies] “Well for one, we don't put on corpse paint like every dumbass band that thinks they are grim as fuck putting make-up on in the parking lot. That shit makes me take newer bands as a joke at first; it's disrespectful to all the statements and meaning behind the true BM movement. We just don't find a cheap BM riff and buzz on it until we've made something that sounds grim and frosty. We like to find an atmosphere to place people in. I think that helps the maturity aspect of just simply playing our music.” - Christopher Erich Neu

[Amorphis - Better Reborn] “When our first successful album Tales from the Thousand Lakes came out, we were very unprepared to work professionally when it came for touring and stuff. We were also very young [at] that time. So now we have learned from our mistakes, and now when we have kinda new ‘up-going’ period, we can really appreciate that and can work professionally. This is a full-time job for all of us, and we are taking this serious and want to offer our best when it comes [to] live shows and albums. Also, it took like 15 years to learn not to trust wrong people and so on, now everything is under our control.” - Tomi Koivusaari

[Rise To Remain – Rising to the Challenge] “Well, I mean I just don’t understand how people can say that and look at the wealth of metal bands much bigger than us who don’t have money because the music industry doesn’t have the money it used to have. I don’t get how bands can look at bands like that and think that we’ve somehow had our way paid for us. There’s not crazy money. A band like us, whether we wanted to be little bastards about it or not and come cry to daddy when we had a bad show; even if we wanted to do that and even if we were like that we wouldn’t be able to simply because that is the way things are these days.” – Austin Dickenson

[Scar Symmetry - Still Symmetric In Every Way] “I was facing that kind of situation about ten years ago. I had to quit playing guitar. I suffered repetitive strain injuries in both my arms from practicing too much. So, I started studying engineering physics instead, which I did for a while until my arms healed and I could play again – at which point I quit school and went for a career in metal instead, ha-ha. If I would have followed through and got my degree, I would probably be making lots of money right now, but making music is much more fun, so…” – Per Nilsson

[Before the Dawn - First (North American) Doom] “For me, each album is a picture of its own time. The previous album, Soundscape of Silence, the whole title of the album is the way I feel music, the way I write music and lyrics. For me, each song and lyric is like one still picture of a movie. It’s a part of my life that I want to happen or didn’t want to happen, but nothing is that simple, ever. It’s like looking at a photograph of my life. That’s the way I see the music and lyrics as a whole, and that’s why it’s easy for me to write the lyrics because it’s so personal.” - Tuomas Saukkonen

[Altar of Plagues - Killed By Death ] “Mammal is concerned with death. My death, and that of those important to me. It questions its significance and seeks a meaning. I have been struggling somewhat to articulate this motivation in interviews as it was just a very personal and natural thing. I also don’t expect something that is my own interpretation to make clear sense to anyone else. This was the first time that we took such a personal approach to the lyrics. I find female artists to be inspirational in this regard, as there is less of a tendency to shy away from the personal. The work of Emily Dickinson was extremely inspiring during this time. She has such a unique insight on death, capturing the despair but also the beauty.” - James Kelly

[Stilllife - Blood Brothers + 1 ] “People really love or hate that old-school metal sound...not much in between! Being independent really grants us the freedom to be a little selfish in our writing. To the uninitiated, there's always a looming idea that bands are making a living off what they do, and especially in metal, that's NOT the case. Not having to cater to a sound or genre definitely keeps the music from feeling like a chore.” - Joe Melin

[Feed the Rhino - Feeding the Masses] “I think for one thing, when you’re sitting at home and you’re listening to an album you have control over it. If you come and see us live you have no fucking control over anything we do. And that’s one of the things exciting about watching us. If you come to see us, prepare yourself because that’s what we set ourselves out to do.” - James Colley

[Forgotten Tomb – Existence: Rejection] “But you know, for some people improving those aspects mean ‘not being black metal anymore,’ ha-ha. We didn't really ‘change style’ we evolved our style towards a perfectioned version of it. Of course we are getting older and bored of the black metal standards, and that's surely one of the reasons why we keep on evolving our sound. Black metal has lost all his appeal over the years, nowadays is a damn joke. I still listen to the old albums, I'm not interested in the current black metal scene. What's strange with some FT fans is that we actually turned heavier than before, so they should like it instead of saying that we are sellouts.” – Herr Morbid

[E-mail Us] Do you have anything relevant to say about music, business, politics, or life? Our readers want the story - hit us with your angle.