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"I get the same stuff out of metal that I get out of other music," says Ryan Adams, adjusting the sleeves on his old-school, red Judas Priest jersey - totally at odds with the suited and booted clientele of Soho's Dean Street Townhouse.
You may associate him with folk, country or alt-rock, but as you can tell by the patches on his denim jacket, cut him open and he reads 'METAL HEAD' like a stick of rock.
His love of the harder stuff has never been a secret - it became most evident when he released Orion in 2010 - a "fully-realised sci-fi metal album".
With a penchant for punk as well the harder-shredding stuff, Adams eyes light up when discussing his harder-leaning listening habits.
"Lately I’ve just been listening to a lot of classic 80s stuff," says Adams. "I really like a new metal band called Power Trip from Texas, who are really fucking amazing – they're ones to watch. They remind me of South Of Heaven-era Slayer, they have great breakdowns, they’re really original."
But metal also offers something else for Adams - it was a key part of his recovery when overcoming writers' block, and the dark cloud that blocked his view of getting back to music and the stage.
"It was all about the songs, that’s how I got back," Adams tells Gigwise. "I did the hypnotherapy stuff and I just started to run. There’s a really, really big hill in Los Angeles near my house. It’s basically a small mountain. It’s about 2,100 elevation, 2,700 at the peak. There are running and hiking paths leading up to it.
"For two years, I got up every day and I fucking ran that. I walked it when I couldn’t run, sometimes I’d walk like halfway up and stand there, defeated. I did it listening to music every day, until I really started to know what kind of music I loved again.
"I started listening to stuff I didn’t know I really cared about. The whole aberration of music I was into happened: Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel Of Love happened! Then at the same time, I also started listening to Husker Du, and stuff like that in a different way than I had before – in a way I can’t explain. Like, I started listening to the bass player, the undermelodies. I listened to the entire AC/DC discography and I was kinda like ‘ OK – I get this’. I’ve always liked them but I realised that they’re making the same record every time in a different way and it’s always good.
"I started seeing elemental properties in music that I’d never saw before."
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