3 Inches of Blood's Cam Pipes Raised on Classical Music

Long before 3 Inches of Blood's lead screamer Cam Pipes was crashing around onstage, letting loose on riled-up headbangers crazy for his ferocious Rob Halford-esque howls, the heavy-metal hero was at home listening to Mozart with his mom and dad.

"Growing up, I listened to a lot of classical music," Pipes tells Spinner from the road during their ongoing North American tour. "My parents were always listening to it on the radio."

The Vancouver-based metaller may have been raised on a steady diet of highfalutin compositions from centuries past, but it didn't take long for Pipes to discover he had a hankering for something more aggressive. "People I grew up with exposed me to Iron Maiden and Twisted Sister and that's how I first got into metal," he explains.

But though it seems like a sonic leap, Pipes insists his transition to metal freak was pretty seamless.

"Metal is a direct descendant of classical music in the same way that blues music spawned rock 'n' roll," he says. "When you listen to a lot of European power metal, or even Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, you can hear the influence of composers like Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner."

Maybe so, but the snarly venom that Pipes spews on 3 Inches of Blood's latest record, 'Here Waits Thy Doom,' is a far cry from the dignified symphonies cooked up by the original Moz. So what do the singer's folks think about their metal warrior son, especially after catching Pipes' brutal falsetto shrieks on standout tracks like the thrash-based 'Call of The Hammer' or riff-heavy 'Battles and Brotherhood'?

"Certainly my parents aren't exactly metal-heads, but they've always been supportive of my music," the bearded musician explains. "I think my parents can see the relationship metal has with classical music. They can appreciate the melodies and harmonies that our music has and appreciate it for that, if nothing else."