“When I first started listening to music and when I first got my own CDs, it would have been during the first big wave of grunge. It’s a blur of going into record stores and them telling me I couldn’t buy the record, because it had a Parental Advisory sticker on it. I remember having to go back into the food court at the mall and get my dad to walk over with me and he was like, ‘Just sell him the record, it’s fine!’

“I was really into Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. I think Soundgarden was my favourite out of all those bands, and the one I probably still listen to the most. I think that's because of the guitar playing but it's also a lot of things, because they fucking rule. Especially in a song like “Rusty Cage”, I was really obsessed with it. This was at a time when I had just got a guitar and I could barely play it, it still felt very awkward in my hands. I wore that record out and I feel like Soundgarden, the record Badmotorfinger, and of course that song specifically, is me first finding music that I thought was very cool and a little different as a young person.

“One of the most incredible things about music is when it doesn't get pinned down, and especially when it doesn't say specifically what the song is about, because everyone hears it differently and applies their own experience. Maybe you can relate to the writer and the specifics of what they're talking about, you can say ‘I'm really feeling that line and maybe I can feel the pain or the joy in it’ but everyone has a tendency to put their own experience to that, and that's what they think about when they listen to it.

“I mean, I obviously can't imagine the ‘Johnny Cash covering your song’ version of that - that's intense as it gets - but that's what's so fucking cool. It’s another artist who you know has a lot of mainstream notoriety, but always did things very left to centre.”

“This song is very much a further step of aggression in music. All of these bands are huge bands at this point, and it was like I hadn’t really become too aware of things that were too deep - I hadn’t discovered punk yet. These are all mainstream bands, but they are about as crazy as is being shown to people.

“This song in particular really spoke to just how fucked up I felt at the time. My home life, and my childhood, were very fucked up. I was young enough that I wasn’t really understanding that and not having a basis of reference. I was feeling like a raw nerve and I didn’t have the language or emotional capacity to do anything with that.

“It was truly pivotal to find something like this and it actually helping. It was a real outlet of emotion and anger, but in the sense that people who find heavy music understand that it is a real positive thing and not something that's violent or dark - it's something that brings the feeling of relief; of finally. Because this is so aggressive, it finally feels as though it's taking some of the weight off. Whatever I've been carrying around on my shoulders, this helps. I still love that band and I still have those records.”

“Every band wanted to be Refused! I’d been going to punk shows for a couple years at this point, I became aware of the old school stuff and I was starting to listen to hardcore. A lot of the hardcore punk of this era in the ‘90s was kind of knuckle dragger, and so I became aware of Refused and thought that it was heavier than so many things I've ever heard. It's super stylised, it's incredibly intelligent, it's political in a very direct and educated way, and not just a ‘fuck the system’ kind of way. It blew me away. The Shape of Punk to Come was truly the shape of punk to come. It’s definitely the fucking boldest record title, but it’s aged so well.

“What become even more interesting is that they broke up before I had a chance to see them. There was a show in Buffalo that they played with The Murder City Devils that I could have gone to, which was pretty close to me. So many bands became a blueprint of what to try and aim for, and how to be more experimental and say more. I'd say that the instrumentation was the first thing that grabbed me for sure, but it’s very much an entire package. Aesthetically, lyrically, musically… everything is just the chef’s kiss.

“There’s a Joe Strummer quote where he says something to the effect of ‘If they're really going to listen to what you have to say, you have to make them dance’. I think those two different things exist simultaneously. You're wanting to write something that rips and is emotional and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but then also it's important to actually say something.

“Those two things kind of get married, but at the same time feel quite apart from one another. Maybe because of how it sounds sonically. I think a lot of people check out on that kind of stuff. All of the best music is very emotional, just because it's loud doesn't mean it can't be just as sincere.”

“As much as this has been about heavy music, I’ve always listened to a lot of different music. Especially around this time, I was at a point we were playing over 300 shows a year for quite a few years, which felt like an incredible thing to be doing - none of us wanted to do anything else - but we were so inundated and surrounded by heavy music, and I think in all of my time away from being at shows, being at home, driving and even being in the van on tour, we started listening to a ton of Dub and Lovers Rock.

“Sonically, for me at that time, I was thinking that this is the furthest fucking thing away from me being at a Legion Hall, listening to Between the Buried and Me, A Life Once Lost, and Underoath, I’m going to go into the van and listen to Tappa Zukie. It was a real calming moment and a nice step away from the chaotic music that was all around me.

"I love music so much that I wasn’t going to just not listen to music! I was travelling so much that myself and our singer George [Pettit, Alexisonfire] - who is a huge reggae fan too - we would go record shopping every day, so I think my interest in Rocksteady and Dub and Lovers Rock and all of that music grew bigger and bigger.

“I really love his voice. Sonically, it sounds so cool. It’s incredibly well written, it could be a doowop song or an R&B song, but it sounds so fucking cool with the out of tune, upright piano. Listening to all of that stuff was a step away from the music that was around me all the time and it felt more like it was Wade time.”

“This is my favourite Grateful Dead song. A few years ago, when I began writing the Doom’s Children record, I started listening to more ‘60s folk stuff and cosier, softer music as a result of where my mental health was at. It felt like it was helping a little bit in terms of softening things up and [allowing me to] move away from things that are so heavy and bleak in a bit of a survival way.

“A large part of that was becoming more familiar with Grateful Dead. As a music fan, coming across something like that where there's a huge wealth of music - 40 years of music - is always so exciting, because you get to dive through this huge thing. They were a band that I became increasingly obsessed with over the last few years, and a bit of a motivational push to do Doom’s Children and to do something a little softer and differently than I ever had.

“This is the song that I still listen to the most and I think it really drew me into the band, because it's a hard band to get into. Everyone thinks they know what Grateful Dead sound like, and I maybe assumed it sounded like Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii because it was just like drug music in my mind. It's not that at all, it’s very nice Americana; kind of country, kind of folk, kind of jazz.

“So when you listen to it at first, you’re almost like ‘What the fuck is this?’ as it can be off-putting, but this song is an incredibly well-written folk song and that’s the thing that drew me into the band. I think about this at a time when my life felt very tumultuous, and I ended up writing about a lot of things that happened during this period of time on the Doom’s Children record. We covered this for that record and it’s so cool to have something that I feel so connected to.

“One of the things that came up earlier, when we're talking about Johnny Cash and Chris Cornell and the interpretations of the song… This is a song I've heard so many times, but I know there was a point I heard it when I felt like I was really fucking hurting. I was drinking and using a lot, and I heard the line “If I get home before daylight / I just might get some sleep tonight” and it felt different than any other time I'd heard it. I got rid of all the drugs that I had on me and I felt like I needed to get home and try to pull it together. That memory is etched in my mind when I think of this song. My relationship to it continues to change, and that's incredible.”

Dooms Children is out now via Dine Alone Records,