"Black and gold, the metal guru in full force. This is what we want a rock cover to look like."

"I kind of think of this as the quintissential metal record. It’s intense, vicious, atmospheric and technical. They never topped it, in my opinion."

"When all that Eighthies hair metal was getting overproduced, NIRVANA came along with this thrashy garage sound and a huge hook. It was what music needed."

"I really love heavy metal. I’m very open, so I don’t really care about genres and often with heavy metal I just like it. I was a huge fan of many heavy metal bands when I was a kid, the first concert I went to was Gojira and then Mastodon and then Slayer. I was eleven and I really loved it. “None of my friends liked the music and so I remember feeling at home at the shows, because I met people who understood it. It’s so angry without being hostile if you really listen to it, but it can sound hostile to people who don’t understand it. “This is quite a calm song by Mastodon. It’s a childhood memory, but a song that allowed me to discover Mastodon with a more melodic song than most heavy metal bands I knew. I saw them play two times actually. “I try and turn what I love about heavy metal into something that more people can understand, like in songs like “Under The Water” and “The Seed”, the single I just released, is more heavy. I like the weight"