Quotes & Sayings About Heavy Metal

I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling into a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon's pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up, each one a willing receiver for the Thunder-God grooves. To my young ears, the sound of these amplified guitars was angelic (although, with hindsight, I don't suppose angels play Gibson guitars at ear-bleeding volume). A voice that suggested vocal chords of polished silver soared alongside razor-sharp overdriven riffs. I knew that I was hearing the future. — Mark Rice

I started playing heavy-metal guitar because that's what I liked. And then I got into classical guitar because it was so technically complicated. — Cory Arcangel

But that's what I love about punk music. It has a sense of humor about itself, doesn't pretend to be something it's not. It's kickass funk with a heavy-metal edge, but with a conscience. Good — Rachel Cohn

I lay in bed that night, a first-time drunkard at seven years of age, pondering the punishment I knew would arrive on callused palms. In the forest, as if sensing my plight, wolves howled nocturnal laments. The magnificent lunar lullabies of my lupine brethren wooed me into a deep and cleansing sleep. — Mark Rice

There's a saying, cited in popular song, that if you love someone you must set them free. Well, that's just nonsense. If you love someone, you bind them to you with heavy metal chains. — David Nicholls

I suppose we were worn down and shivering. Three a.m. is a mean spirited hour. I suppose we were drenched, with the cold hose water trickling in at our collars and settling down at the tail of our shirts. Without doubt the heavy brass couplings felt moulded from metal-ice. Probably the open roar of the pumps drowned the petulant buzz of the raiders above, and certainly the ubiquitous fire-glow made an orange stage-set of the streets. Black water would have puddled the city alleys and I suppose our hands and faces were black as the water. Black with hacking about among the burnt-up rafters. These things were an every-night nonentity. They happened and they were not forgotten because they were not even remembered. — William Sansom

No scientific or medical study is valid unless and until a heavy metal assay has been completed on the subject(s). — Richard Diaz

I like to put on hardcore when I have to clean my apartment, which I hate to do, but it's motivational. I like old heavy metal when I'm outside working on my car. Music has definite functions for me. — Peter Steele

I was aware that he was laughing at me, but I told myself I didn't care what other people thought and would dress how I liked. Of course, like many self-consciously wacky people, I was in fact paralyzed by fear of the opinions of others and made the effort to appear as the maddest of the mad headbangers just in case anyone had the slightest lingering doubt as to the depth of my devotion. In fact, I think my disguise felt so fragile I couldn't allow it a single crack. If I did it might fall to bits and leave the real me shrivelling under the evaluating gaze of my peer group. — Mark Barrowcliffe

Saxon, if you are unfamiliar, is a British heavy-metal band that has been around since the mid-'70s and was in no small part the inspiration for Spinal Tap. — Adam Schlesinger

RJD was pretty much heavy metal personified, a tiny 5-foot-4-inch sorcerer with a mangy mane, demonic eyes and sly grin, all coupled to a simply huge, operatic voice, a diminutive powerhouse who prowled the stage like a feline elf and who was, it turns out, also finely intelligent and well spoken, an actual gentleman in a genre known all too well for its bombastic, monosyllabic doltbuckets. A rare thing indeed. — Mark Morford

The same sensations that you get in heavy metal are in horror movies. Heavy metal sounds evil and horror movies are evil, ha ha! — Kirk Hammett

It was a free-for-all with music when I was growing up. My mother was a huge music fanatic so I was listening to everything from country to heavy metal to Indigo Girls to Elton John. I guess when I was really young I didn't like Willie Nelson, and she obviously loved him. Now I do too, I'm so thankful to her for playing his music nonstop. — Tig Notaro

They credited us with the birth of that sort of heavy metal thing. Well, if that's the case, there should be an immediate abortion. — Ginger Baker

The best indication is that I still love to ski on most anything, from skating gear to heavy metal. — Paul Parker

It took me twenty years to get Steven Parrino's work. From the time I first saw his art, in the mid-eighties, I almost always dismissed it as mannered, Romantic, formulaic, conceptualist-formalist heavy-metal boy-art abstraction. — Jerry Saltz

I don't listen to hard rock or heavy metal. I suppose I've always been influenced by folk music, I'm a big Bob Dylan fan. — Roger Glover

When people say, 'Your music was the music of the Seventies,' I say, 'So was discoteque.' The Seventies was also the highest peak of heavy metal. Pick a genre - they were all alive. — Gerry Beckley

As long as there are kids who are pissed off and have no real way in venting out that anger, heavy metal will live on. — Ozzy Osbourne

I've read in the National Geographic about deepsea diving and why you have to wear a thick metal suit or the invisible pressure of the heavy undersea water will crush you like mud in a fist, until you implode. This is the word: implode. It has a dull final sound to it, like a lead door closing. — Margaret Atwood

It's lifestyle music. It's not like some secretary who likes some pop song, but can't name who the band is; whereas a heavy metal fan is into every aspect of it. We'll see if rap holds up to that. Run-DMC seemed to be the Led Zeppelin of rap. — Rob Zombie

She's the quiet type who's into heavy metal. — Billy Joel

He's reading a book called Great Warlocks of the 18th Century, and to get this ball rolling before Dean Devlin shows up and rains on our private parade, I snort and ask, "Good book?"
I forget I'm pretending to be sitting behind my two-thousand-ninety-eight-page Highlights of Modern Chemistry book, so he snorts back. "Better than yours. — Rusty Fischer

Hopefully people can look at our band and see that we're a heavy rock band. We're definitely not a metal band, but we're a band that focuses on meaningful lyrics and melody. — Adam Rich

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away. — Peter Tork

It's really an orchestral piece featuring a group and it was quite revolutionary at the time and it in fact, it kicked Deep Purple off as a name in Great Britain because it made all the newspapers. Everyone was writing about us. And there was some confusion as to what kind of band we were after that, which is why Deep Purple in Rock is such a hard unbending album of really furious hard heavy rock. Heavy metal hadn't been invented at that point. — Roger Glover

A silver statue of a bird that seemed to be twitching. "Poor little thing," he said, petting it with his large hands. "Someone tried to change it into a real bird, but it got stuck in between. It thinks it's alive, but it's much too heavy to fly." The metal bird cheeped feebly, a dry, clicking noise like an empty pistol. Fogg sighed and put it away in a drawer. "It's always launching itself out of windows and landing in the hedges. — Lev Grossman

I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs ... I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet. — Corey Taylor

We've always said we're a HEAVY METAL band. We've kinda branched out here and there - we've done a rap thing, we've done a rap-rock thing, we've done something with Angelo Belmonte, who's the primary composer of Twin Peaks. In fact, most of David Lynch's movies is Angelo. He did something with us and that was great. We've also acted, we've done an episode in Married with Children, which was awesome - so we're always looking to do things which you wouldn't expect. — Charlie Benante

Heavy Metal fans are buying Heavy Metal records, taking the records home, listening to the records and then blowing their heads off with shotguns? Where's the problem? That's an unemployment solution right there, folks! It's called natural selection. — Denis Leary

Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health. — Ma Jun

All I've got on my iPod is every single Queen song and every single Judas Priest song. Queen were an incredible heavy metal band. I saw them on their first ever tour, at Birmingham Town Hall. They just blew me away. — Rob Halford

I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly 'Frankenstein' had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there's one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues. — Edgar Winter

Years ago, I was performing, and people kept calling out for 'Puppy Love' and I just didn't want to. Then I thought I'd have some fun, so we did this insane heavy metal version of it. The applause was polite. — Donny Osmond

Take a ride on heavy metal, it's the only way that you can travel down that road. — Don Felder

Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult. — Al Stewart

Heavy metal is a universal energy
it's the sound of a volcano. It's rock, it's earth shattering. Somewhere in our primal being we understand. — Billy Corgan

For me, Gothic is something from my youth, when I had a heavy metal phase. — Ann Demeulemeester

JUNE 14TH HEAVY METAL MANIA!! JUDAS PRIEST IRON MAIDEN BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE OR AT ANY TICKETRON OUTLET — Stephen King

Headbangers' are people who like heavy-metal music, which is performed by skinny men with huge hair who stomp around the stage, striking their instruments and shrieking angrily, apparently because somebody has stolen all their shirts. — Dave Barry

I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that. — Billy Corgan

Being on Ozzfest has been a great way for us to break out and show metal fans that we have a heavy side. — Adam Rich

He doth, indeed, especially love heavy-metal; into the recording sessions whereof he does, indeed, sneak, that he may insert backward messages into songs; for he believeth retrograde gibberish laid inaudibly under ear-shattering grindcore, to be the most effective way to promote his views. 19 And he doth, indeed, visit people in their time of need; and offer to grant them mortal happiness in exchange for their immortal soul; and if they agree, he doth, indeed, have them sign a contract; for though he is the amoral Prince of All Lies, he hath for some reason an unshakable respect for tort law. — David Javerbaum

You can put your TV in the garage, avoid movies altogether, and use earplugs to spare your hearing from the sounds of hip-hop or heavy metal, but these forms of entertainment will still change your life through their influence on everyone else in society. Though you may struggle to protect your own kids from music that encourages violence or drugs or irresponsible sex, you can't possibly protect them from all the other kids in your community who have received full exposure. — Michael Medved

I didn't kiss him back even as my body went wild internally, blood being police escorted to certain extremities, endorphins diving out of my pituitary gland like they were in a Busby Berkeley musical, my heart going all heavy metal. — Eli Easton

It tore us up emotionally hearing someone say to the judge and the cameras that this is a band that creates music that kills young people. We accept that some people don't like heavy metal, but we can't let them convince us that it's negative and destructive. Heavy metal is a friend that gives people great pleasure and enjoyment and helps them through hard times.
Whether there's any 'subliminal effect' from the court, I don't know, but we certainly couldn't let it interfere with our creativity. — Rob Halford

The Devil has all the best tunes? My arse! Metalville just got a new sheriff. — Mark Rice

I let that swim around in my aching head for a few minutes - "the arsenal of megadeath ... the arsenal of megadeath" - and then, for some reason I can't quite explain, I began to write. Using a borrowed pencil and a cupcake wrapper, I wrote the first lyrics of my post-Metallica life. This song was called "Megadeth" (I dropped the second "a"), and though it would never find its way onto an album, it did serve as the basis for the song "Set the World Afire." It hadn't occured to me then that Megadeth-as used by Senator Cranston, megadeath referred to the loss of one million lives as a result of nuclear holocaust-might be a perfectly awesome name for a thrash metal band. — Dave Mustaine

There are three versions of the hook. There's one that's solid metal and it's really heavy. It's sharp. It's not super sharp but it has a point, and because of the weight you could do some serious damage with it. And then there's an aluminium one which is a bit lighter, and then there's a rubber one for if you're to do stunts or there's any danger of cutting someone. Although sometimes I like to switch it out! It's the perfect coffee cup holder - it's literally the exact size. And if you've only got one hand and you're holding some food, it's great to put it on. — Colin O'Donoghue

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music. — Reggie Watts

The best pay off in the world is when someone comes up to you and says, 'your music has helped me with some pretty rough times through life. I don't know if I would still be here if it was for your music whether it be country music or heavy metal has done for me.' That's ultimately the biggest payoff for me. I hear it from young kids to military guys and military women to older folks. — Hank Williams III

Usually when I'm mad, I'd rather listen to angry music than soothing music - more heavy metal, some Metallica or something. — Matt Kenseth

A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made. — Francis Bacon

A typical day in the life of a heavy metal musician consists of a round of golf and an AA meeting. — Billy Joel

One answer to why public interest in men's tennis has been on the wane in recent years is an essential and unpretty thugishness about the power-baseline style that's become dominant on the tour. Watch Agassi closely sometime ... he's amazingly absent of finesse, with movements that look more like a heavy-metal musician's than an athlete's ... what a top PBer really resembles is film of the old Soviet Union putting down a rebellion. It's awesome, but brutally so, with a grinding, faceless quality about its power that renders that power curiously dull and empty. — David Foster Wallace

The thing about heavy-metal bars is that there are heavy-metal guys in every corner. — Jay Crownover

I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal. — Rachel Miner

Black Sabbath invented heavy metal, in my opinion. — Eddie Trunk

My mom always encouraged me, it was never weird. She'd look at 'Heavy Metal' and go 'Woo-hoo!' — Zack Snyder

Anything that anybody wants to give me is great! I've had folk songs, heavy metal songs, jewellery ... I would never call anything any fan gives me weird, as it's how people express what they like about the books, what it means to them, and that's a wonderful thing. — Patrick Ness

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count. — Neil Davies

A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade. — S.J Perelman

She'd heard of black American Express cards before, because famous people had them, and now she was holding one with her name on it. The card was cool against her skin, like it was made out of metal instead of plastic, and it was thick and heavy, so it didn't bend like a normal credit card. Would it even slide through a swipe machine? She hit it against her palm, surprised by the echo of the metal. Rock-solid, it felt indestructible. — Michelle Madow

Anthrax, it's something that gets you sick, it's horrible, strong. It's a heavy-metal band name if there ever was one. — Scott Ian

Raucous heavy metal of punk guitars screeching like robots put to the rack ... — Elizabeth George

There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste. — Ridley Scott

Whether or not punk is the flavor of the month is not important for us. Bad Religion has been popular through many different climates. When heavy metal was popular, when new wave was popular, Bad Religion was still there underneath the mainstream selling more and more records. — Greg Graffin

On April 16, 2010, 34 Chinese environmental organizations, including Friends of Nature, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Green Beagle, questioned heavy metal pollution in a letter sent to CEO Steve Jobs. — Ma Jun

I like playing heavy metal music and pretending I'm a vampire in front of the mirror. — Luke Mably

I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me. — Emil Cioran

A test known as a heavy metal screen (several types are available) can determine whether heavy metal toxicity is a factor in your autoimmune disease. — Sarah Ballantyne

Heavy Metal would not exist without Led Zeppelin, and if it did, it would suck. — Dave Grohl

Gentle reader, the Fountain of Youth is radioactive, and those who imbibe its poisonous heavy waters will suffer the hideous fate of decaying metal. Yet almost without exception, the wretched idiot inhabitants of our benighted planet would gulp down this radioactive excrement if it were offered. — William S. Burroughs

Pantera revolutionized the sound and the approach to heavy metal. It's been regurgitated. Once you up the production on a product and not just the playing but the actual production, then it's going to up the ante. — Phil Anselmo

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense ... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. — Alan Dean Foster

I have tons of friends in the heavy-metal music world, and just going to see them inspires me. — Kerry King

We can't believe how many gays there are in heavy metal, people like ... — Biff Byford

That's what it is. That's what my morning was like: all these real physical heavy positive vibrations, the soul of this tape. The fuzzy groove. The meaning of it all, if it has one: All love, all the time. Peace and happiness in every day. Peace and happiness with cow blood dripping from your hands, bright blood staining your fingerprints because you didn't glove up since you don't normally do prep work. Peace and happiness when you're making a list of everything that's wrong with the world and squinting your eyes tight trying to imagine your way out of it. Peace, peace, peace, happiness, happiness, happiness. — John Darnielle

We were totally high and we had Quiet Riot play at our after-show party at the Dragonfly. I think we reunited them, just like we did W.A.S.P. We take sole responsibility for the return of retro heavy metal, and I'm ashamed. But — Marilyn Manson

I got into one Metallica record. That was about it. I never got into AC/DC or Black Sabbath or any of that. I was interested in the side of heavy metal that had interesting guitar ideas, but that was a very short-lived thing. — M. Ward

I have them a few minutes to absorb everything while I teased Ubie, who only had to recover from his near-death experience. I was so glad Reyes hadn't ripped him to shreds. I liked him much better un-shredded. Unlike, say, my preference for lettuce or heavy metal guitar solos. — Darynda Jones

Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole. — Kirk Hammett

I was listening to music to kind of pump myself up and get psyched up, like I was listening to Iron Maiden and Misfits and Dead Kennedys, and it was like my '80s Massachusetts parking-lot heavy metal and Guns N' Roses. — Eli Roth

I don't only like rock music. There are other forms of music that I find interesting. I would want to do everything, every kind of music. I wouldn't want to be limited to like playing heavy metal or whatever. — Mick Jagger

Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you — Sam Dunn

The hairstyles of most Heavy Metal bands are pretty horrendous. — Fred Schneider

The United States military is now using the music of Metallica and other heavy metal bands to break the will of Saddam Hussein supporters to get them to talk. Theyre blaring heavy metal music at them. That should make the artist feel pretty good, huh? Put your heart and soul into your last CD and the Army is using it to torture people. — Jay Leno

Why would heavy metal ever go away? — Scott Ian

I went to a heavy metal concert. The singer yelled out, "How many of you people feel like human beings tonight?" And then he said, "How many of you feel like animals?" The thing is, everyone cheered after the animals part, but I cheered after the human beings part because I did not know there was a second part to the question. — Mitch Hedberg

The vampire changed the music from some heavy metal thing to Sarah Mc-Lachlan's "Good Enough," which is slow, but with a beat. — Charlaine Harris

Guns are heavy metal machines, and, at least in my case, it's surprising how many hours it takes before it looks like you know what you're doing. Releasing and re-loading magazines is difficult when you're asked to do it quickly and efficiently. — Trieste Kelly Dunn

What I think of when I think of nu-metal: structured, heavy music that has a point. It's angry just like all the other music, but the bigger parts are bigger and the powerful parts are more powerful and the slow parts slower. — Austin Carlile

One thing people would be surprised about is that although hard rock and heavy metal are without question 90% of what I listen to and my passion, there are other things I enjoy. My first ever favorite band in my life before KISS was a power-pop band called The Raspberries. — Eddie Trunk

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. — Rivers Cuomo

I've always seen this overlap between medieval warfare and heavy metal. You see heavy metal singers and they'll have like a brace around their arm and they'll be singing about Orcs. So let's just make a world where that all happens. That all gets put together, the heavy metal, and the rock, and the battling, actually does happen. Let's not flirt around with this let's just do it. — Tim Schafer

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the Seventies sounds nothing like the stuff from the Eighties, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the Nineties. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music? — Ozzy Osbourne

At 15, I started listening to hard rock and heavy metal, but I would say it was more hard rock because I liked Kiss, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and eventually AC/DC. — Rick Rubin

I'm only interested in heavy metal when it's me who's playing it. I suppose it's a bit like smelling your own farts. — John Entwistle

As I rock down the hall I am flung from my path- snatched and grabbed. Before I can even utter a word, a large palm is covering my mouth. In less than five seconds I am inside a pitch black room, pushed face first into a cold metal door, and I hear the lock snick into place. A heavy weight presses at my back. I didn't even have time to panic. It was a well-timed attack.
My mind flashes to another time and place, another hand on my mouth. I breathe though the panic that tries to overcome me.
I allow my senses to put me at ease. He's just softly breathing near my ear. His body is relaxed. The way he holds me feels more playful than threatening.
"Let me guess ... the Boss," I say to the heavy weight at my back. My tone is a mix of amused annoyance. — Erica Chilson

I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death. — Rufus Wainwright