"This is another record that I think Chris Bear might have found when we were twenty-one, twenty-two maybe, right before the band became Grizzly Bear. It’s a seven-minute, classic metal song with an almost Bowie-esque vocal delivery, it’s raging guitar music basically and I still love that kind of stuff. I had a deep metal phase as a kid, I loved Metallica and that kind of thing, but this is more in the Black Sabbath realm of heavy. “I’ve got a really strong memory of listening to this with Chris Bear and Chris Taylor. We had this phase between nineteen and twenty-two where we kept trying to be a band but it never really worked out. It didn’t happen until they’d started Grizzly Bear, I was the last guy to join, but when we were bonding over music around then it started to make sense we’d play together eventually. “We loved this song, it’s so classically heavy and cool and maybe it’s that, learning to appreciate music for what it is and not thinking about what it means, or if it’s moving you. It’s not cheesy or over the top, there’s a subtlety to it, it’s tasteful without trying or overthinking it. “We saw Danava play a few times in tiny clubs and they were incredible We saw lots of super-heavy music between 2004 and 2006 and being around New York was amazing for that, even Animal Collective were like that then, you’d see these crazy, heavy shows that were super-energetic and vibrant. “There’s not much documentation about this, but on our first couple of tours there was more of a heavier energy, musically it was much more improvised, frenetic and busy, closer to jazz. Our early live incarnation was somewhere between this and Elvin Jones, trying to channel this heavy energy. “It’s another one of those touchstones we talked about a lot when we were younger, not that it really made its way into our music very much, we never really made full on metal, but there’s occasional moments where that energy creeps in."

"When I think about why I love Queen my head just fills with every single Queen song that I know by heart. It's just like a box of Quality Street. Everything is amazing. The reason that I've chosen the second album is because the song 'Ogre Battle' is on there, which is one of my favourite tracks. It's rare that you struggle to label a band. If you're a heavy metal band you're meant to look and sound like a heavy metal band but you can't really call Queen anything. They could be a pop band one day or the band that wrote 'Bicycle Race' the next and a full-blown metal band the next. In terms of the depth of the musical landscape that they covered, it was very similar to some extent to the Beatles. I mean 'Helter Skelter' was a pretty heavy track, and 'Yellow Submarine' really wasn't. I think Queen have a lot of similar ingredients. Everybody was writing the songs as well, so Freddie was writing differently to John Deacon, and then John was writing differently to Roger [Taylor, drummer]. They were all accepting each other though, and nobody was sat there saying that they couldn't do something because it didn't sound like Queen. If it was a good song they'd record it, and this album is nothing but good songs. It's a style that we've tried to adopt into Judas Priest. A good song is a good song at the end of the day, and there's no point in wasting time arguing about whether Priest are supposed to sound like the British Steel record or the Painkiller record or whatever. I felt such a sense of loss when Freddie died, but he fucking loved his life. He partied like a maniac. I've lost a lot of friends to AIDS and it's such a terrible thing to have to suffer through. Such a cruel condition to be taken by. From what I've seen and heard there's a horrible sense of loss in those early days. There was a lot of rejection and almost pariah-like status heaped upon you by people. And it's still around today, which is so sad and unfair. It's interesting though, because I don't know if Freddie would still have been doing what he did now. Would he still be going out on the road with Brian and Roger, who, by the way, I love? Especially Adam [Lambert]. But Freddie would have been 70-something I think, and I get a feeling that at some point, he would have just said, "I've had enough now darling." We lost him, but he left behind such an incredible legacy and canon of work. I listen to Queen almost every day still."

"I think it's a bit different compared to Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk and the others. It's Ihsahn's [guitarist and vocalist] expertise at this kind of music that I love. This album is quite progressive compared to some of the earlier stuff. I've not made it a secret that I love that sound and that type of music. Ihsahn is just a great guitar player, and as singer he was always doing things a little bit different to other bands in that genre. It's a real showcase of his ability to write and perform this type of sound. I'm a fan of everything he's done, especially that first solo album [The Adversary from 2006], but I'm a much bigger fan of Emperor. I found out about Emperor by doing what I think a lot more people should do, which is take the time to look around and search for new and exciting bands. That's how I've always found music from day one, just by asking around. Discovering a band by yourself is great and a very DIY way to do things. Making an extreme metal record with him is still on the bucket list. I just wish I had more time. We're still in contact and I talk to him once or twice a year and hopefully I'll see him when we go over to do these shows in Sweden."