It was a big year for Revolver — we completely relaunched the brand with a totally new editorial and aesthetic vision, and we talked to a who's who of heavy music, from Maynard James Keenan and Marilyn Manson to members of Slayer, Mastodon and Arch Enemy. Over the course of those interviews, covering diverse topics including drugs, religion, fighting, the meaning of life and the state of rock & roll, many of our subjects dropped words of wisdom, knowledge bombs, humorous anecdotes and snarky witticisms that seared themselves into our memories. Here are some of the finest, most compelling quotes from a year of conversations.
"I don't believe in God — I believe in Prince." — Kevin Iavaroni, Old Wounds
"I've done so much cocaine off of so many different straight edge tattoos." — Blake Midgette, Pageninetynine
"If you want to hate on me, that means you also hate cats — so, you know, you're a bad person!" — Marilyn Manson
"If we've been out drinking, and I don't want to get caught up in a Netflix series that I've been paying attention to — because if I've been out drinking, I'm not going to remember it — at that point in the night, I go to YouTube and just have rock & roll party night." — Kerry King, Slayer
"I think King Diamond should be taught in school." — Amalie Bruun, Myrkur
"Growing up and sucking it up is not the same thing. Growing up means owning your shit and if owning your shit means talking to someone, what's the problem? I think it's that tough-guy bullshit that people have bullshitted themselves into, which actually makes you weaker." — Corey Taylor, Slipknot, Stone Sour
"Women in metal get a feeling of emancipation and power because they can be feminine, but they can be strong and evil at the same time." — Larissa Stupar, Venom Prison
"I gotta stay intense!" — Brann Dailor, Mastodon
"One of the most common questions I've been asked over the years by both aspiring musicians and hack journalists is 'What advice can you give to a young band just starting out?' My immediate answer was (and is to this day) 'Don't do it. The odds are against you. Go to college or learn a trade so that you can get a job and actually pay your bills.' This pisses people off, but honestly, I'm not trying to be a jerk or discourage them from playing music at all — I'm merely laying some fiscal reality on them. I encourage everyone to play music — it's great fun and good for the soul — but I'm never going to lie and say your chances of actually making money from it are anything other than dismal. More appropriate questions to ask would be 'How do we become the best band we can?' 'How can we build a loyal audience?' Besides the obvious (practice, practice, practice; play anytime, anywhere, to anyone who will watch you; and always give it 110 percent), my answer would be this: 'Be different than everyone else.'" — Randy Blythe, Lamb of God
"It's so lame to be like, 'I had so much on my mind when I was 14 living in the suburbs.' But I really felt like I did." — Keith Buckley, Every Time I Die
"Every junkie has some sort of hustle they do to stay high. Some people break into cars, or they're involved in some sort of fraud. I've kept that hustler mentality for the band in a way, and it's good when your motives are positive and you're in the right headspace." — Chase Mason, Gatecreeper
"I read a magazine on the airplane telling me that Coldplay is the greatest rock band in the world. Is that what rock's become? Jesus fucking Christ." — Jus Oborn, Electric Wizard
"Once I started doing martial arts I started realizing human fragility. You start to realize you're not that much of a badass." — Gavin Van Vlack, Burn
"Some people may think that 28 minutes of this music is too much. It's all in the ears of the beholder." — Mike Patton, Dead Cross
"My son told his teacher that the two songs of ours he loves are 'God Damn' and 'Fucking Nightmare,' so I got a call from the school about that." — M. Shadows, Avenged Sevenfold
"The back cover shot of me [on the sleeve of Master of Puppets], where I'm giving a dirty look to the camera? That was because, I had just become a vegetarian back then, and we were at the Donnington Festival; someone threw a deviled ham sandwich from the audience, and it fucking smashed right on my brand new black Jackson Flying V. And I was so fucking pissed! [Laughs] I looked over to the side, and I saw my guitar tech laughing, and I saw [photographer] Ross Halfin laughing, and I just gave them a dirty look, and then Ross took the shot. And that's the shot that's on the back of Master of Puppets!" — Kirk Hammett, Metallica
"You can sing about the Grim Reaper and you can sing about the Devil and whatever, but, like, if you actually hang out with a bro that actually loves them some Devil — they're fucked up, dude, they're actually fucked up. It's not fun to hang out with a dude that's actually Satanic, 'cause they're weird." — Chris Cole, pro skater
"Momma's little baby likes shortnin' shortnin', Momma's little baby likes shortnin' bread ... Cori-Bell, those weeds are growing faster than you pulling them. Mary-Bell, your daddy watching the way you planting that and it don't look straight ... Lilly-Bell, that plow is not gonna plow without a little elbow grease. Momma's little baby likes shortnin' shortnin', Momma's little baby likes shortnin' bread." — Trey Azagthoth, Morbid Angel
"I'm not going to fight against my own femininity. I'm going to redefine what femininity is." — Alissa White-Gluz, Arch Enemy
"I'm probably just as picky about my pop music as I am about the kind of metal that I listen to. I feel like 95 percent of it is uninteresting to me and there's just a few artists for whatever reason that appeal to my particular sensibilities. So yeah, I can still be an artsy asshole even about my choices in pop music, I guess." — Aaron Turner, Sumac
"When you're young, you don't recognize the kind of influence you have on other young people. Being at a show, I would run into someone every night that would say, 'If you play this, I'm gonna fucking kill somebody. I'm gonna fuck this whole place up!' I really don't want to see that. I really just don't want to see some small, younger person get spin-kicked in the nose." — Justice Tripp, Trapped Under Ice
"Bad presidents make for great music!" — Tom Morello, Prophets of Rage
"Not all skinheads are bad, you know? There's boneheads and there's skinheads — and there's a big difference. The boneheads are the racist fucking idiots." — Lee Dorian, With the Dead
"I had zero knowledge of industrial music [in eighth grade]. All I knew was that this guy Trent Reznor wore fishnets on his arms, and that there was a lot of leather, and chains, and eyeliner, and black clothing, and chicks that looked like they could beat my ass in an alley and look hot doing it before going home and conducting rituals." — Greg Puciato, Dillinger Escape Plan
"I could fall asleep listening to certain kinds of metal. Black metal just puts me in a total Zen state." — Saskia Thode, founder and instructor Metal Yoga Bones
"The organism that birthed us is Iron Maiden, and we've actually grown into each other's company over the years. We weren't joined at the hip — despite what press releases would have you believe." — Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden
"Be happy with what your decisions are. You are on your own, you don't owe anybody anything. But if you're doing your job and you're doing it accurately enough, and you're expressing from your heart, from the core, from your experiences and your intuition, other people are going to resonate with that. It's going to resonate with them. They're going to get something out of it. Their day might go better because of your true honest approach to what you're doing — you're going to help other people. You're going to help yourself. You're going to help your family. But just understand at the end of the day, nobody owes you, as an artist, any kind of accolades. You don't owe them anything, they don't owe you anything. You're just doing." — Maynard James Keenan, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer
