"All bands develop over time, and I'm definitely an old school Metallica fan. Those first three albums are about as good as it gets really. I really enjoyed the track 'One' on this record. It was a really complex piece of work. And that story of the guy who's come back from war and has lost his arms and legs and everything was just really dark and sombre. It was just a very strong political statement and that caught my imagination. I love those first three Metallica records, but I chose ...And Justice For All because of the overall complete experience of the album. This album shows the very first signs of Metallica being adventurous with their sound, and it has a great confidence to it. I've always admired them because they've always just been themselves, by themselves. They just do exactly what they want to do and I'm very excited to know exactly what this next one is going to sound like, even though Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] has dropped some hints that it won't sound like this record. But, y'know, everybody wants them to do Ride The Lightning again in the same way that everybody wants Priest to do Painkiller again. I don't think that some people understand that it's difficult to get things right for you as a band at the same time as trying to please your fans. I know from experience that you need to let your heart lead you, which is why I'm so interested to hear this new material."

"Super influential record for the new wave of British heavy metal. Super influential record for Megadeth and Metallica. That was one of those records that everyone should listen to but not a lot of people know about. I think the beauty of it is the simplicity of the British riffing and the general approach to the music. I'm sad to have seen the band fall apart from its classic line-up although I don't know that they were necessarily prepared for greatness, if I can put it that way without being offensive. They were heralded to be the next Led Zeppelin and I get it. But I think internal problems started around when Canterbury came out in 1983."

"My second favorite film, I would probably say my most favorite documentary of all time, is a film called Brother’s Keeper by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. Those are the same guys who did Paradise Lost and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Brother’s Keeper is this amazing film about a brother who was murdered, and it’s this omniscient journey as the murder gets uncovered and the investigation is happening. You know, they take one of the brothers to court, and the story just unfolds in front of you in a way that’s so twisted and bizarre and weird. This, for me, represents what a great documentary does. It just kind of unfolds in front of you in a way you can’t expect."

"This was the point where I did start to accept there were other kinds of music than the stuff I’d grown up with. Because I’d listened to so much hip hop and soul, I was very dismissive, even of Bowie. I never began to negotiate with that until I was much older. A real Velvet underground obsessive is less favourable to this album because it’s less pure in their eyes than the cold, earlier stuff, but it’s the first one that got me and drew me into that kind of music. It’s soulful as well. Lou Reed is brilliant. He’s a cunt, but he’s brilliant. I met him once, I did a TV show with him, Metallica and Lana Del Rey in France. It was the most awful panel of people I’d ever had to sit with. The only person that was nice was Lars from Metallica. They lined us all up and we had to stand and look as if we were all bonding. Lou Reed was like a melted mannequin, he had about four breaths left in him, while Lana Del Rey looked like someone had kidnapped everyone she knew. Lars had been to so many AA meetings he was all ‘Oh hey! So nice to meet you!’ Weirdly enough Lou and dad had a bit of a history, because dad’s only tour of America was with Lou Reed and they really hated each other. Lou hated everybody arbitrarily, and dad just hated America. I think that tour ended because dad knew Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood and they met them in LA. He complained about Lou Reed, so Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood went and de-tuned all of Lou Reed’s guitars."

"I think what’s cool about Slayer is no matter how old their albums are, it’s the one band to me that their sound is immortal. It never sounds corny to me. You can go back and listen to some Pantera and Metallica albums and you’re like, ‘OK, great music.’ But Slayer you go back and they always sound fresh and hard as hell. It’s always just a punch right to the face. I think that’s cool that their albums are almost undying. I like all different types of music. I don’t like going to any specifics. I switch with the seasons. I’ll get into an electronic kick and then I’ll get into rap. Listen to too much hip-hop you start to have some flavor for some guitar and next thing you know you’re listening to metal or hardcore"

"If you listen to the first Saxon album, you can hear where the band was at that time, and what we were talking about earlier, with Free and Yes. That album is split three ways: the songs we wrote together that were fast and aggressive; then the more proggy tracks, longer and more musical; then blues riffs. So if you listen that album you can see there were three things that could have happened - we could have been like Free or like Yes, or we could play a new, aggressive kind of music, singing about motorcycles, and those were the songs we wrote together. If you listen to that album you could see where our influences came from, and how it all came together to create ‘Wheels Of Steel’. If you listen to ‘Backs To The Wall’, that is where I was coming from – try to get away from where you're supposed to be and drag yourself out of that to become a musician. ‘Stallions of the Highway’ is maybe the forerunner of ‘Motorcycle Man’ and the songs that Metallica and Megadeth took from and then invented a new kind of music"

"I've always love that type of extreme music. I think that Slayer sort of condensed the music coming from the thrash scene - whether it was Exodus or Testament or even the early Metallica - and made it into this sick, almost evil type of menacing [thing], which really put them on top of their game in terms of that style. 'Angel Of Death' is one of my all-time favourite Slayer tracks. It's just a great roaring cacophony, but there are some really strong hooks and melodies in there, which is really difficult to do with that type of music. They do it so well and I'm a massive fan. Later in their career they covered one of our songs, 'Dissident Aggressor', which was a big surprise. We had a great release a while back where bands were all covering Priest tracks, and a lot of our friends in the rock & roll world were willing to take part. It'd be great to do something like that, though, I think it's always a cool thing to do to show your ability as musicians and step out of your comfort zone. It's quite a good idea actually, bringing in some of that speed. Maybe the next release will have a sort of Priest-do-Slayer vibe."