Top 60 Matt Skiba Quotes

The Church of Satan was something, aesthetically, that we were always really fascinated with and wanted to emulate. I think it’s a good look.

My attraction to the Church of Satan… is the same thing that initially attracted me to punk rock. It was something that wasn’t very entirely popular, and it was sort of like the adversary to mainstream culture and beliefs.

The very first show I ever saw was The Judds, and that influenced me to not play country music.

I love being in Blink!

I don’t think we’re any more preoccupied by life and death or heaven and hell than anyone else, but it’s fun to write about the inevitable – you’re alive, and you’re going to die.

We definitely like to write songs about darker things, but we like to think of it as a celebration of the evil ideas that run through everybody’s head.

My parents have always been very supportive. But now that I play in Blink, all of my parents’ friends are so jazzed that it makes my folks excited.

Fear is sort of like jealousy. It’s an unnecessary emotion.

Long before punk entered my life, I loved scary films and stories.

Rock n’ roll is the Devil’s music.

They’re great players. I’m not a Blues Traveler fan, though. I get it, but it’s not for me.

We were fans of Green Day and Nirvana or whatever, but the bands we really loved were Chicago bands that didn’t really sound anything like Alkaline Trio.

I think I’m a man about the things I need to be a man about, but I get paid to play, pretty much. I do what I love for a living, and I also get to build BMX bikes in my spare time.

Meditation has really done wonders for me personally and artistically.

In this day and age, though, no matter how many people you play for, if you’re playing with a band like Blink, millions of people will see it thanks to YouTube and everything recording it.

For me, it’s about eating a bunch of fruit and exercising, which opens up the creativity, makes it easier to give ideas a chance and bubble to the surface. I’m no angel, but it helps me, as does hiking, heading to the ocean to catch some waves – for me, sweating it out is definitely good for the creative process.

I see kids in Cradle of Filth shirts at our shows, which is awesome.

The feeling that you want the listener to get, you should get yourself when you first hit that chord, and that melody comes to mind.

We’ve had kids come to our shows and ask us why we hate Jesus. It’s like, ‘Well, we don’t hate Jesus at all. We just think religion is silly, and it’s a really popular thing, but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with it.’

I went through some pretty rough patches in my life, and I’ve come out of them a stronger, more inspired, and energetic person.

To worship the devil, you have to believe in it first.

When George W. Bush was up for re-election, we took part in Rock Against Bush.

I really like a lot of the old 2-tone ska. I definitely went through a phase where I was into The Specials and The Busters. But a lot of the ska revival – I never really have had an interest in that.

To be in touch with death, and the darker side of life, makes the lighter side more enjoyable.

There is sort of an unspoken ‘no skateboarding’ clause on tour that I break pretty often.

I grew up on Edgar Allen Poe, and I loved Alfred Hitchcock’s movies.

All of my HH Jags have Ducati stickers on ’em.

They are one of my favorite bands and one of my first musical loves: Devo.

We certainly are proud of our punk-rock heritage, but when people who like other kinds of music are into your band, it’s flattering.

I’m a bookworm, so I read about a book a month.

I’ve written songs about love or about a relationship, but never just, ‘I love you.’

The really smart conspiracies are the ones that explain, ‘This is why this is plausible,’ not, ‘This is what happened.’ If it makes sense and if it’s possible, I’d investigate it.

I love working with my band-mates in Alkaline Trio, but to make a rock record that was just mine was something that I wanted to do.

The Sekrets record is very much me, and Dan’s Emergency Room is very much him. And then Alkaline Trio is very much ours.

When you’re 20, you think you know a lot more than you do.

Everyone who signed us to Epic, all of the people we trusted there, were let go.

I was always a punk rock skate kid from a very young age.

We have this song called ‘Radio,’ and I wrote that song when we needed one more song for a record. So I went back into the other room and wrote it in 20 minutes.

I loved anything spooky, mysterious, or frightening.

There are things about this country that are horrible; there’s things about this country that are beautiful. I’ve been almost everywhere, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather live.

A cousin of mine was a graphic designer, and he took me as a kid to see Flesh for Lulu and Social Distortion in 1988 in Chicago.

I’m really thankful for the time that I grew up in that we didn’t have cell phones, and we made a lot of our own fun.

Glasgow is one of my favourite cities.

I don’t personally feel that I’ve lost my fire.

There was some real bad alternative – ‘alternative’ – stuff that came out in the ’90s that’s completely cringe-worthy.

I haven’t eaten an animal in over twenty years!

I want recording to be fun.

I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet before the band became a career, and I’ve just always been a cyclist – I BMX’d, and then I got really into – through messengering – I got really into road bikes and fixed gears, which I still have.

I honestly couldn’t have asked for or expected the amount of love and support I’ve received from a large majority of Blink’s fans.

Jesus was not born on December 25th. There’s carbon evidence of it. That freaks people out.

I think for us – and for a lot of people in the Church of Satan – we definitely like ruffling people’s feathers and poking fun at organized religion a little bit.

Death isn’t something that should necessarily be glorified, but I also don’t think it’s something that people need to be afraid of. It’s just the way it is. There’s nothing we can do about it.

Creating a record on my own and deciding who plays and how the songs were structured, it was fun to do.

Touring with Blink helped introduce people to Alkaline Trio who otherwise wouldn’t have ever heard of us.

Orange County encompasses a large area that has a lot of Alkaline Trio fans.

I’ve been to the Bahamas before, and it’s so crass. You land in Nassau, and the whole island is replete with beauty and culture, but there’s a lot of poverty. It is a largely black population; then they build these places like Atlantis and The Cove that are walled off.

For Alkaline Trio, Chicago is our hometown. The band started there. Even though we all live in different cities now, we still call Chicago home, and it’s always really exciting to come back and play for our best crowd.

As far as, like, the moon landing… did we go there? I believe so. Is it everything that we’re told? I don’t think so.

I think that the more that you play and the more instruments you play and the better you get at them, then you will be better off for it as a guitarist.

With every inch of my energy, I wanted Fyre not to happen. I put all the electricity and energy in my body against that thing happening.