Garage Inc

Here is what James and Lars think about Garage Inc. Courtesy of Elektra.

Free Speech For The Dumb - Discharge

James: "I think we've slowed it down a little bit and tuned it down to get more 'chug' out of the riff. I like to think that they were the first crossover band, even before us, as in combining aggression and good riffs."

It's Electric - Diamond head

James: "That's where the shit came from that's what spurred us on."

Sabbra Cadabra - Black Sabbath

James: "You sit and listen to the Sabbath stuff and think 'wow that's great' and then you go to sing it, and you think 'wow I can't sing that high, we'll have to tune the song down a bit to get in that range'."

Turn The Page - Bob Seger

James: "I heard a song on the radio singing about the road life, a kind of somber, gruff, honest lyric in there. I kinda felt it could be Bob Seger, but the lyric and song itself was great. So it's all to do with that song rather than Bob Seger itself. The lyrics are us. We've been road dogs since day 1."

Die Die My Darling - The Misfits

James: "Awesome, ugly shit. I always liked their poppy modulations combined with singing about death."

Loverman - Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds

James: "He's got the nice mellow stuff and goes straight into chaotic hell. He builds these things into giant ugliness. That's the kind of stuff we were doing with 'Fade To Black' acoustic to heavy, one extreme to the other, and I saw a lot of that in Nick Cave. That's what this Loverman is really all about."

A Mercyful Fate Medley (featuring Evil, Curse Of The Pharoahs, Satan's Fall, A Corpse Without Soul and Into The Coven) - Mercyful Fate

Lars: "I think it's dear to all of us, we realize 15 years later how tremendously influential they were and what a motherfucker it was to execute. Just realizing how those guys were such brilliant musicians and have such a great thing going was very cool."

Astronomy - Blue Oyster Cult

James: "That song's always been pretty epic to me. Listening to the song, we thought whether we should even fuck with it because it's so sacred. We tried it and it came out pretty well."

Whiskey In A Jar - Thin Lizzy

James: "It's extremely catchy and the fact it isn't really their song is weird, it's some Irish drinking song. I liked the fact the Phil Lynott could go anywhere and write any style, from some completely sappy love ballad to some total quick-rocker to goofing around with the cowboy song, to different shuffle beats."

Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd

James: "This is the only one with guests (Gary Rossington, Jerry Cantrell, Les Claypool, Jim Martin, Sean Kinney and John Popper). It was live from the radio show we did last year and so there's all these people singing out of key. We gave Randy (Staub) the tapes of it and said 'here, mix this' and he was like 'holy shit'. There's 20 guys on it, and it had a great vibe."

The More I See - Discharge

James: "They had the riffs. Bones came up with some metal riffs, and Cal would just scream. It was fun doing those songs, there were no lyrics there just three lines with 'repeat repeat.' Very cool doing that stuff."