Mat McNerney quotes:

I don't like bands who would play music like Code. I mean I hate most bands with emotional singing parts (I adore metal singing like Iron Maiden though!)

I think Nouveau Gloaming is a classic black metal record and I would hate to be a band that kept trying to recapture the same essence, but failing, for the rest of its days.

I have a lot of mental scars from being brought up Catholic and being sent to Catholic school for 13 years!

Bands are more willing to take risks and we don't need this big label over us anymore telling us what it means to sell records and get into magazines.

Before the 90s, black metal wasn't a selling tool [and didn't] have money behind it. Then it became a pop sensation. Now that the record industry has collapsed and started to rot, things are livening up a bit again.

Everyone's attention span these days is limited to how long it takes to flick the iPod wheel on to the next song.

I don't want people to feel like they'd overdosed on too much candy.

I like what's going on in Finland, with the rebirth of Beherit. I also like a band called Oranssi Pazuzu and a band called Spiderpact. There's a great scene there where they don't really care what's going on elsewhere and create music in their own vacuum.

I loathe most crossover music. Yet I like to think when it comes to Code it's something different.

I think there was a brief period where Norwegian bands were evolving and that was an interesting time where it seemed like a band like Darkthrone was stuck in the midst of a lot of change and seemed a bit redundant.

People are appreciating the old stuff again and there's no MTV-style scene police to try to make us all listen to Machine Head and Pantera *puke*!

Ultimately I want my metal in a bar and not an art gallery.

When you're trying to free yourself from a religion that has been ingrained in you since childhood, it's more like ripping out your veins and tendons.

Basically every song on modern metal albums follows a formula and you get that formula in between one to three tracks ...

I do try to pay attention to new bands and what's happening within the scene. I try to make sure I give everything a listen - even if I loathe it.

I don't bring any ideology or barriers with me into my music.

I don't think it's "true" to sit and play old school heavy metal just so that you can send it to Fenriz or get a pat on the back from the guys you admire and hang out with.

I don't think there's anything remotely "new" or "experimental" about any modern metal bands.

I think there's a certain limit to the number of times you can raise hairs on the back of peoples' heads before it gets kind of saccharin.

I think when you have a band that are so separate and isolated then you have to know each others styles and characters quite well.

Most every album - and especially metal albums these days - are made in a way that you can grow tired of them very easily: They're made to be dissected and played on radio, released as singles or stuck on at parties.

The religion and it's many barbed indoctrinating tendrils just start to become what makes you who you are, so you have to kind of destroy yourself to be able to rebuild yourself and make yourself whole again.

There are many ways to portray darkness and evil and it isn't all in being mean and tough.

You never leave a band like DHG. There's very few who are insane enough to be a part of something like that and you just can't take it out of you that easily!

In the past stories have been what tethers us to the world and they've made us who we are.