What are your influences as a musician? It can be other bands, people, occurrences, whatever.

Pink Floyd - Inspired me to write Progressive music with the intent of creating a central mood and using the progression to drive it in, like a hammer gradually pounding a nail.

Meshuggah and Textures - These two bands inspired me to start utilizing a more technical sense of music, but using advanced song-structures with polyrhythmic sections that are separate, but move like separate waves and intersect each other at certain lengths to cohese together. Also taught me to hold onto no specific tradition when it comes to writing Progressive, or just Metal in general.

Neurosis - Taught me that atmosphere can completely change the outcome of a song.

ISIS - Gave me the idea to use imagery in music without words. I can almost imagine "Celestial(The Tower)" to be the construction of a tower that becomes an architectural relic as the song ends. Of course, I could be completely wrong, but mistakes make us learn greatly.

Devin Townsend(Of course) - Inspired me as a person and as a musician. Mainly, it was to keep my individuality in music.

I only have a small clip of my actually playing guitar, which is about 6 months old though: solo2.wav

I would be interested in hearing some actual songs of yours

Ah well, for my band Sound Ogre, I would say (alphabetical order):

Arcturus - the magnificent vocals and general chaos
Dream Theater - time signature trickery
Emperor - fast & forwardgoing still with melody
Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects - the drumming especially, Morgan Ã…gren is a god.
Front Line Assembly - the electronics and the cold, harsh feeling
Meshuggah - time signature trickery and groove
Strapping Young Lad - chaos and speed
Unit: 187 - more electronics combined with hard guitars
Vader - fast and relentless going

This is not so much a "what inspires me" but a "what I like and why" thread, isn't it?
Because at the end of the day, it's really hard to say what ultimately inspires the music you make (if you don't plainly steal ideas from someone else, that is), and what drives your creative output.

To some extent that can be true - but when people are justifying the elements that they try to bring into their music as a result of these bands, I think there is an important difference. There is also a big difference between what inspires you and what influences you.

Care to elaborate on that "big difference"?

Hmm.. my biggest influence comes from Devin himself. Not only in playing guitar, his sounds, but also in his way with dealing with the music business, and not caring about the way people think of your stuff.
Other influences are Thordendal, Peter Svensson from The Cardigans, James Hetfield, Alain Holzward, Wes Borland, Tom Morrello, and even Oasis from when I started playing guitar.

Angus Young
Farin Urlaub
James Hetfield
Denner/Shermann
Mike Wead
Vader and Bolt Thrower

Igor Cavalera
Charlie Benante
Gene Hoglan
Dave Mc Clain
Tim Alexander
Devin Townsend
Trent Reznor
Mike Patton
And the "new entry" Ryan Van Poederooyen!!!

There are a lot of other drummers/artists that I like, but I can't consider them a big influence in my playing...

Mainly Steve Vai, although I don't listen much to him. A bit Devin as well. I can't really tell for sure, though, since I have to come over a problem with my songwriting first. I can't stand having something not being melodic, I never let two tones in a row be the same.

Pink Floyd - The message they deliver. Roger Waters is my favourite lyricist. My favourite band.

Dev - I love how he does what he wants. Punk, Prog, Metal, Insanity. He lets himself be free and unchained to any genre or classification.

RHCP - The funk. Flea is a hero of mine.

Mr. Bungle/FNM - Not because of Mike Patton either. Don't get me wrong but he's not the ONLY reason. I love the guy. I like these bands because they also just did what they wanted. I mean, FNM often stated that their mission as a band was to "confuse people". Trevor Dunn is awesome.

Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels - A lot of the wanky posy shit I do on stage is because I used to watch a fair bit of wrestling... it helped.

Stanley Kubrick - much like Pink Floyd, he always had a very strong message that was always delievered so well. He tackled real fucked up issues and simply wasn't afraid. He tackled his work very meticulously and took a lot of pride in it.

Misfits/Danzig - Misfits for the themes becaue I love horror. I won't lie, my band rips off Misfits real bad when it comes to song topics. So much killing. I also like Danzig because he did what he wanted to do. Whether you like it or not, he's been making music for nearly 30 years which has always changed.

The Doors - The music, amazing. Jim, rocknroll.

Kyuss - fat progressive stoner awesomeness.

Opeth - A shining example of metal in all its glory.

Janes Addiction - Funky but heavy. My favourite guitar comes out of this band.

Max and Sepultura - Max is a champion. He's like the good guy of metal. I love how he sings too, I think the fact that he had shitty english helped a lot with his writing because he chose his words VERY carefully and they all fit so fucking well. I like how they're very political and not scared to speak their minds.

RATM and Public Enemy - Opened my eyes A LOT.

Farin Urlaub

Aye, probably the most underrated German guitarist (and songwriter).

Care to elaborate on that "big difference"?

Well.....and inspiration to me is someone who, for want of a better word,
"motivates" you to create music and to create music better - they do not necessarily have to have any direct connection to your sound. On the other hand an influence will be someone who has more of a direct impact on the shaping of your personal sound.

For example, for me, Dev is more of an inspiration than an influence. I listen to any of Devin's music and just think to myself that I can make whatever I like, if it is valid to me, it is worth it and that I want to make music which very much has it's own sound.

For me, I think it's much harder to try and list your influences than it is your inspirations, as there can very often be influences to your sound that you might not even realise are there, but could well be obvious to someone else.

To put it a little more polemically then, an "inspiration" is just someone you enjoy and pushes you do your own thing, whereas an "influence" is someone you steal your ideas from...?
But yeah, I mostly agree with you. I also didn't read the initial posting carefully enough, because I indeed misread "influence" for "inspiration".

To put it a little more polemically then, an "inspiration" is just someone you enjoy and pushes you do your own thing, whereas an "influence" is someone you steal your ideas from...?

It would only really be stealing ideas if you directly use something that they have created. We are all exposed to a huge amount of music in our lifetimes, and that shapes what sounds good to us. To me, these are what I would class as influences....I might listen to a band and think it reminds me of lots of other bands....but it can still be shaped into something entirely original.

Just my take on things

I'd be very wary of giving the....erm...."honour"...or being labelled as one of my influences, not sure I'd want to insult anyone that much