"The other record I got into listening to at my friend's house. A lot of the records on the list were discovered around a two to three year window, at a time when I was really turned on to music. I was actively hungry, and reaching out, digesting what bands people turned me on to. I think the first Black Sabbath album I heard was actually Vol. 4. I always discover things way late, after the fact. But that's fine, I guess I like the fact of being kinda late to the party. But when it got to me, it really stuck. It's another record that I find very close to perfect. There's a heaviness and a darkness to Sabbath which I often cite as a direct influence to our sound. You can trace the bloodline, and I think you could say that of a lot of Seattle bands. Sabbath are also a very visual band, but in a different way, a lot more visceral. I've read interviews where Ozzy was saying they were trying to make horror film soundtracks, and that makes sense to me. Cause the themes were always pretty dark and pretty bleak, and they pulled their punches thematically and lyrically. Tony Iommi is also one of my favourite guitarists and very influential to me."

"You can't fail today to be mesmerised by 'Whole Lotta Love'. That was the song that did it for me. A lot of these choices that I've made are either the first or second release from these bands. I always thought that those were great times, because there was never any pressure around artists. You don't have all of the extras that come with being successful. The band is in a very pure place at that point. I always remember playing with them, but it was quite a while after this album came out. We'd just completed a very, very long and gruelling American tour. We were about to fly back to the UK and we had a call from Robert Plant saying, ""I heard you guys are still over in the States, would you like to come and hang out and open for Zeppelin on the Green ['Day On the Green' concert] in Oakland?"" So we got a really cheap, unglamorous motel by the side of the freeway. It was so poor that the walls were basically green, covered with algae. We were there for a week and just waiting and waiting and waiting for the chance to open up for Zeppelin. That was a very important show for Priest, because that was what broke us on the west coast of America."

"Just a preface: All of these are movies that I can’t escape. You know, there’s ones that you’re interested in, in the moment, because they’re inspiring you in certain ways. But these are ones that I’ve always kind of revisited and can always get something out of it. So Nashville is one of them. It’s such a world that I didn’t know about, and you have all of these insane concerts in real time with all of these people. All of these emotions and ideas all happening within the performances, and everything is happening almost at the same time. And I just kept sitting there, like, how did he do this? And it just kept happening, scene after scene. There’s this one scene that’s unbelievable, when Keith Carradine’s singing the “I’m Easy” song, and you literally see the same song affecting three different people in the audience, totally differently, at the same time. It’s literally one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had. And just going in to listen to these performances and then to recall these emotions that I never had before, but I feel like they’re mine, is incredible. And the sound in that movie is an achievement that I don’t even understand how they did it with the actual performances, the audience, whatever. Incredible."