Bullet For My Valentine Interview

Bullet For My Valentine are quickly becoming one of the biggest UK metal bands around. Does this mean they get special treatment? Does it balls! Tie them up and make ‘em sweat! Gagging and bounding:HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE TAGGED IN VARIOUS PRESS AS 'THE NEW METALLICA'? PETE, message board
Michael 'Padge' Padget: “To be tagged that is cool, but I don’t think that it's true.”
Matt Tuck: “Of course we’re not, we've only done one album!”
Padge: “It’s most definitely a compliment though. Just as it would be to be compared to Iron Maiden or Judas Priest or any of those classic metal acts.”

DOES IT WORRY YOU THAT YOU GET ASKED A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR IMAGE RATHER THAN THE MUSIC YOU MAKE?
MARK, LONDON
Matt: “We don’t write the questions! It's the UK press that are asking us questions like that.”
Hammer: So what’s the most ridiculous question you have ever been asked?
Matt: “’Would you ever wank off a horse?’”
Jason ‘Jay’ James: “’How many times a day do you wank?’ That’s the most ridiculous question ever. Why would anyone want to ask that when there are so many other questions that you could ask.” Michael ‘Moose’ Thomas: “Yeah, like, ‘Would you ever wank off a cow?’”

WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND TO OTHER BANDS SO THEY CAN RISE TO THE POSITION YOU'RE AT NOW?
AKETCHON, DORETERNA
Jay: “Get ready to make some unbelievable sacrifices, ‘cos they have to happen if you want it.” Hammer: What’s the biggest sacrifice that you have had to make to be in this band?
Moose: “I missed the birth of my daughter ‘cos we were doing a photo shoot. That was a biggie. But it was all right though; I was home the next day. Then there’s the part where you lose friends and loved ones because people leave you as you are not around any more.”
Hammer: Are there friends that have stuck by you regardless?
Padge: “Yeah, the real friends.” Hammer: How many of them do you have left?
Padge: “You can count them on one hand.”
Moose: “On one finger!” Jay: “I have quite a few. As long as I go to see them when I come home, then they are like, ‘Hey what’s going on?’.”
Hammer: Do people mind you telling them about all the cool stuff you have been up to?
Jay: “If they are genuinely your friend, then they would be interested and they would be excited to hear about it all.”

WHAT’S THE MOST ROCK’N’ROLL THING YOU’VE BOUGHT WILL ALL YOUR MILLIONS? VANIA, BULGARIA.
Padge: “Millions? Ha ha! Millions of Yen perhaps! I bought a guitar. It’s a Gibson Flying V. It’s worth about £800 I think. I’ll be playing that tonight at our show.”
Hammer: How do your endorsees Jackson feel about that?
Padge: “Who?” Matt: “Jackson won’t endorse him now because they don’t like him. I am a Jackson boy though.”
Jay: “I haven’t bought anything. I am saving towards a house.”
Moose: “Well, I bought an iPod. It was only a 20Gb one though, ‘cos I was skint.”
Matt: “I bought a car, but it’s nothing special, it’s just my car. Then I bought my chopper in Denmark. We had to dismantle it and put it in the boot of the bus so that customs didn’t see it and charge me.”
Moose: “Yeah, the bus driver got really pissed off with us. So we told him to shut up.”
Matt: “We told him to shut his fucking mouth and do what he was fucking paid for. Shut up bitch!”

LET’S SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT: WHAT DO YOU REALLY THINK OF your fellow countrymen FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND AND THE LOSTPROPHETS?
BILLY, NORTHUMBERLAND.
Padge: “Personally I think that they are both great, and I especially like Funeral because they are cool as fuck.”
Jay: “I think that the Funeral boys are absolutely awesome, and they are all cool guys and we all get on, I like all their music and everything that they have brought out. As for the Lostprophets, I don’t know those people. I only know one of them but he’s not even in the band any more. Their music? I am not really into it, but it’s catchy stuff and it’s doing well.”
Moose: “I like Funeral and I like the Lostprophets.”
Matt: “Funeral are wicked boys, I love them to bits and I love their music as well. Lostprophets, I am just not a fan really.”
Hammer: Do you know what kind of direction the Lostprophets’ new material will go? Matt: “From what we have heard from certain people, it’s going to be like the Black Crowes, which could be really wicked I reckon.”
Hammer: Apparently they have a whole new look too. Any guesses as to what it’ll be? Moose: “It’s black PVC isn’t it?”
Padge: “Spandex and hairspray.”
Moose: “A bit of Zoolander ‘Blue Steel’ perhaps…”
WHAT ONE THING DO PEOPLE NEVER PRINT ABOUT bullet for my valentine? JIM, HACKNEY.
Moose: “That we are really nice guys.”
Padge: “We are just genuine, dopey Welsh people.”
Matt: “Everyone thinks that we are assholes, just because we are getting press. All those people are jealous and they can just go suck my cock! What you don’t hear is that it’s the press that come to us with this shit, we don’t go to them for it. Why are we going to say no, if it’s going to give us exposure?”
Jay: “We just answer the questions that we have been asked and try to answer them honestly.”
Hammer: Do you think that the majority of shit that you get is from people that are jealous?
Matt: “Yeah.”
Padge: “I mean, if it was offered to them on a plate, they would take it.”
Hammer: But it wasn’t just offered to you on a plate was it?
Matt: “No. People see Bullet For My Valentine as the last 18 months. We’ve seen Bullet For My Valentine, or Jeff Killed John, for the last nine fucking years man. We’re not a new fucking band, we’ve been round since we were fucking babies.”
Jay: “We have been trying for years and years and we’ve put everything we have into it.”
Matt: “We’ve paid our dues and we fucking deserve the success we are getting, so fuck you.”

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF A FAN FILED A PATERNITY SUIT? SHANAH, LONDON.
Matt: “What if I genuinely didn’t know that I had fucked her? I know who I fuck.”

IF YOU COULD BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A ROCK STAR, WHAT WOULD YOU BE? JAMES, BATH.
Jay: “A porn star. I’m not sure that I would be any good, but I would give it a go.”
Padge: “I would be a hotel owner, with a chain of hotels. I’d be fucking loaded man.”
Jay: “Scratch that. I think that I would run a pub.”
Padge: “You’d drink all your profit!”
Jay: “I’d just be in the cellars with a straw man! Drink up! Ding ding! Carry on!”
Moose: “I don’t know what I would do.”
Jay: “You’ve told me before that you would want to work digging graves.”
Moose: “Oh yeah. Or a butcher. Or cut up dead bodies. You’d get to touch dead people!”
Matt: “I would like to be some sort of mad archaeologist like Indiana Jones. Just go around digging stuff up and dodging crazy shit.”
Padge: “I would like to be an assassin. Yeah man, with a high-powered riffle.”

HOW DO you FEEL ABOUT THE FACT THAT PEOPLE THAT HAVE NEVER MET YOU before THINK THAT YOU ARE total BASTARDS?
CHRIS, LONDON.
Moose: “I am a bastard.”
Matt: “It’s just ignorance man. If you think I’m a bastard, I don’t give a fuck, you are a cunt too. If you met us, you would see that we are alright.”
Jay: “Why judge people? I don’t judge people I don’t know. How can you call someone something if you don’t know them? I wouldn’t just call someone a prick for nothing.”
Hammer: Do you give people the opportunity to meet you and see that you aren’t bastards?
Matt: “We go out of our way to meet people, and especially at our shows.”
Jay: “Every show, you will always see me outside, chatting to the crowd.”
Matt: “It’s not an ego thing. I used to go see shows when I was a teenager and the best thing in the world was when a member of the band would come out and shake your hand and say, ‘What’s up man, thanks for fucking coming tonight’.”

DO YOU GENUINELY THINK THAT YOUR MUSIC AND YOUR RIFFS WILL BE AROUND IN 10 YEARS TIME? THUNDER, HERTS.
Moose: “Yeah.”
Matt: “Of course they will be, they’re on CD.”
Hammer: But is your music the sort of thing that will be celebrated as having been part of a great era? Matt: “I think that it will. There is no other British band at the moment that is having the kind of success based on how much they have done, than us. It’s definitely something to remember. It’s still early days for us man. People have read a lot about us recently, in the last 12 months, but we have only ever had one album out.”
Hammer: How many songs have you actually put out?
Matt: “Only about 16 songs. And that goes to prove that it’s all quality and not quantity.”
WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE ON THE NAME? WHAT’S WRONG WITH GRENADE FOR MY EASTER? HOW ABOUT PENCIL FOR MY HALLOWEEN?
BOBBY G.
Matt: “Because they’re fucking shit! Pencil For My Halloween? How about Fist For Your Arse, cunt?” Moose: “How about, Up Your Mother?”
Hammer: Come on lads, how did you really come up with your band name?
Matt: “We had a brainstorming session.”
Hammer: What were the names that didn’t make the grade? Matt: “Flight Of The Neon Dragon.”
Padge: “When Fingers Become Thumbs.” Jay: “The Elixir Of Mountain Dew. There was the Bridgend Boys.”

HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELVES FITTING IN TO THE LARGER CONTEXT AND HISTORY OF HEAVY METAL? FELIX, PADSTOW.
Padge: “Snugly.”
Hammer: So in 10 years time, will you be in the Who’s Who Of Heavy Metal book? Moose: “Matt will probably be on the front cover!”
Hammer: Do you mind that Matt gets more attention than the rest of you? Moose: “No, ‘cos he has to do more work.”
Matt: “I do mind sometimes though. There are days when I look at the schedule, and all it says is, ‘Matt do this, Matt do that’.”

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE BOTTOM PART OF YOUR TROUSERS?
Bobby g, HERTS
Matt: “They were never trousers in the first place, they’re shorts, dumbfuck.”
Moose: “I have always worn shorts, since I was 14, and now I am starting to lose all of the hair on the back of my legs!”
Moose: “Padge is losing his body hair!”
Hammer: Are you really going bald Padge? Padge: “No, I just have a very wide double crown!”