Issue 096
December 2012
The former Bellator welterweight champion reveals his heavy side
What type of music do you enjoy listening to?
“I like a lot of rock music; I’m really into metal. I grew up on a lot of rock music because of my mom, she was kind of like a hippy back in the day and definitely introduced me to that sort of music when I was younger. Then when I grew up, I got more into the hardcore stuff.”
What is it about that genre that you like?
“It’s the type of music I seem to constantly find myself reacting to the most – especially when it comes to training. I’m always listening to heavy metal. It’s the type of stuff that really gets me going.”
Has your music taste changed as you’ve got older, or has it stayed the same?
“I think that it’s extended slightly, simply because the circumstance I’m in means I’m exposed to a lot more music. For example, I could listen to some jazz music and really appreciate that, or I could listen to a certain type of hip-hop. I used to be a huge fan of old-school hip-hop. Not so much the stuff that’s coming out nowadays, but I was definitely a fan of Biggie and 2Pac. It felt like the music was more real and raw.”
Do you have any favorite artists right now?
“Right now I’m really into Chimaira, who are a great metal band. Killswitch Engage are fantastic, so are As I Lay Dying. August Burns Red are a cool band too. They’re all just really, really good bands.”
What do you do for walkout songs?
“I’ve always been slightly superstitious about my walkout song. I’ve probably changed it twice. I think the first walkout song that I used was Pure Hatred by Chimaira, and the one after that was Empire by Chimaira. I used Empire because it just had this sound that was synonymous with a storm that was about to come in, like something bad was about to happen. It just gave me the chills and made me think, ‘We’re ready to go to war.’”
SHUFFLE
HIT SHUFFLE AND NAME THE FIRST FIVE SONGS THAT COME UP. NO CHEATING
AUGUST BURNS RED, WHITEWASHED
“Anybody who is really into guitars, and really appreciates the technical aspect of the crafting of music, would really fall in love with that intro. The riffs are fantastic, and when the drums kick in, they sync in fantastically.”
CHIMAIRA, CLOCKWORK
“There’s a drumbeat to this that has a really panic-prone tone to it. It gives you that feeling of, ‘We’ve got to go. We’ve got to move fast.’ That’s usually the song I’ll listen to when I’m a little down or tired after training. I listen to it and it feels like the rhythm of a heartbeat.”
DISTURBED, THE NIGHT
“I just really enjoy the singer’s (David Draiman) voice. It has a really cool guitar riff in the beginning that has a good rhythm to it too.”
AS I LAY DYING, PARALYZED
“I think the singer (Tim Lambesis) has awesome screaming vocals, and I also really like the lyrics. They give me the feeling that nothing can really overpower us, this is how we were meant to feel, and even though we feel paralyzed, we can empower ourselves.”
SLIPKNOT, WAIT AND BLEED
“I’ve had an infatuation with Corey Taylor’s voice for years. It’s like a sonic assault. The song itself, it really depends how you listen to it. You can either get into it lyrically, as Taylor describes his recurring dream of waking up in a blood-filled bathtub, or you can say f**k the lyrics and just listen to the song. It’s a bad-ass song.”
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