You can't give up in life. You just can't do it, no matter what it is that is going on.
'My Swan Song' - that song is so depressing but uplifting at the same time, you know what I mean?
I don't use a Beatmap; I don't use any click track. Any time I count off, it's just in my heart. Sometimes I'll go off the feel of a crowd, like if they way they're bouncing is a little quicker than the song, I might kick up the tempo a little bit. I see where the crowd is at. It's nothing drastic, but all the tempos are from my internal clock.
How I found out is, I landed in Des Moines from a plane ride back from the Rob Zombie tour. I was, like, 'Okay, cool, I'm home. I can finally get some rest.' Once I landed, I turned my phone on, and my manager rang, and I'm, like, 'Oh, what?' He said, 'Paul Gray just died.'
Playing drums is how I communicate. It's how I speak to people. That's my God-given gift.
I love listening to old records. Stuff from the '70s, even disco and funk records and a lot of early rock albums - what's great about those recordings is that you can actually hear the true tones of the drums themselves.
People lump us into the nu-metal category, and there might be a hint of that stuff, but if you really listen to a nu-metal band and then listen to Slipknot, it's so apples and oranges that it's retarded.
Every day is a good day above ground, and especially being able to play metal and being able to your craft and everything. You've gotta respect that, because it's something that can be taken away from you really quick.
The simplest beats, on what rock music or any music has been formed on, can be the toughest beats to execute and perform, because it's really easy to not respect a simple 4/4 beat, because people always want to play fast.
My advice always is to start very simple and master your timing and master the most simple beats that you can, and you just keep elevating from that. Trying to go right into playing fast is not necessarily the best way to go about it, because if you don't have your foundation locked in, it's hard to progress.