7. MetallicaMaster Of Puppets

JA: Master Of Puppets is one of the first records I tried to play along to. I bought the tablature book but looked at it and thought: I can’t play that. I used to sit down at about twelve years of age and try and work out the stuff. But you see how incredible and exceptional Cliff Burton was. Metallica probably haven’t had any bearing on Palehorse but they’ve certainly had a bearing on me, in terms of them being the first really heavy band I heard. If I hadn’t listened to Metallica there’s a high chance I wouldn’t have gotten into heavy music at all. I didn’t listen to grunge or anything like that.

JB: But as a result you’ve gotten me into the heavy hardcore bands you were listening to at the time. He switches me on to stuff that I can’t believe I missed. John’s a Refused geek. There’s a gig they have on DVD where a guy gets knocked in the face and has to go to hospital. Nowadays about 500,000 people claim to have been at that show but you watch the DVD, and John’s in it! You can see him before this guy gets knocked in the face and starts bleeding from the head.

JA: I thought about going to see Refused when they re-formed and played at Kentish Town but I don’t think there’s any credibility in re-forming and playing old songs. If you write new tunes and put some effort in, I’ll go to watch. But turning up and playing something from ten years ago? What’s the point?

JB: But we have a lot of Metallica jokes in Palehorse. We like taking the piss out of Metallica with our song names. I really want every song on the new Palehorse album to have joke Metallica titles, like ‘Rode The Lightning’.