Nightwish’s leader on the kings of thrash’s game-changing album.

When I was a kid I was mainly into classical music and Finnish pop. I didn’t listen to metal or rock at all. But when I was fifteen I spent a year in the US as an exchange student, and my host family took me to see Metallica and Guns N’ Roses in Kansas City on September 25, 1992. That was the day that changed everything for me. Metallica became my favourite band in the world, and the following week I bought all their albums on cassette and became a metalhead.

The Black Album is the album that did it for me. I’d never heard anything that big and punchy, like the riff on Sad But True, it just blew my brains out. I don’t think there’s a bad moment on that album, every single song is brilliant. It was the sound, the heaviness of it, the melodies, the compositions and also the lyrics that grabbed me – I think Metallica’s lyrics are the most underrated thing in the world. But it was funny that the first time I got into that band was at a live concert. I didn’t really know anything about them before that. After the concert I just had to get my hands on everything: Ozzy Osbourne, Dream Theater, Megadeath, Pantera…

Music had always been more of a hobby to me, so if my hosts hadn’t taken me to that concert I would probably be a marine biology researcher now.

Nightwish’s Human. :II Nature is out now via Nuclear Blast