"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."

""I chose this one because it has 'War Pigs'. It's quintessentially Sabbath even now. They have to play those songs because they are the ones that say everything about that band. Tony [Iommi, guitarist] has said that they were in and out in a few hours when they were making those first records, and this was a pretty quick follow-up. He's a riff master. It's just riffs. It's the essence and the purity of Sabbath that I love, and on this record they really nail it. If somebody were to ask me about Sabbath, what they represent and what they've done, I'd tell them to just go and listen to this record because it encapsulates them so well. They were a Birmingham band too and I think it just shows that a lot of bands from that Midlands region were very prolific. There was a lot of activity going on in and around the Birmingham area. I've always said that the Beatles were responsible for breaking the wall around London down, because before them there was this idea that you had to be from London to be successful. But them being from Liverpool and then later bands like Sabbath from Birmingham sent a message that it wasn't the case and I think that's great. The way that the scene was in Birmingham at that time, we had a fabulous club called Mothers where everybody played. I saw everyone play there: Cream, Sabbath, Pink Floyd. It made Birmingham a real hotbed outside of London for that style of music. We were friends with Sabbath, and I've always considered them to be the inventors of the heavy metal sound. We knew each other and for them to suddenly have this massive impact with this record and be on the radio and in the NME was thrilling. It was before the internet so it took time to get the word out but that made it more exciting to watch for me. When they went to America we were in awe of them because everyone wanted to go to America. Of course we did a few years later, but that was only because of this heavy metal sound that they were responsible for."