105 Quotes by M. Shadows

We kind of reached this point in life where we don't really want to put out anything just to put something out. We really don't want it to be like, 'Two years are up. You've had your break; now do another record and get it out there.'

I feel like our whole discography up through 'Hail to the King' was young, fun, and exciting. It was aggressively driven. 'The Stage' was the first step in the band becoming a more mature musical entity.

When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.

We really like having songs where we think the arrangement is just as important as the melodies, even though they're typically not.

'This Means War' is up there with 'Hail to the King' in terms of crowd reaction and kids chanting for it.

Honestly, I never thought we'd get a nomination for a Grammy, period. To be honest, we felt that if we were ever going to get one, we thought we had 'City of Evil' and 'Nightmare' and 'Hail to the King,' and those were all big records, and they never even sniffed at us.

I think Kanye West is brilliant at what he does: he's got a different live show, different merch for every tour, different vibes, and he just puts out great records.

To me, a lot people really get wrapped up in the technical side of metal and what's metal and what's not and more double-kick and more blast beats and more technicality, but for me, I'm a song person. So I think you can write good songs in any type of style of rock and any type of style of metal, and that's kind of what I'm a fan of.

I've had friends who've had depression or been on medication because their pituitary glands aren't giving out enough hormones - so I've been around a lot of people who've had problems like that. I've always been open to talk about that.