One of the great things about wrestling is how it interrogates this silly idea that you have one authentic self.
Most of my interests in terms of writing are dark, so it's discordant how much I try to lock into the vibe of wherever I'm at. Inhabiting the life of the imagination is the nature of survival strategy - you build yourself little worlds to enjoy.
If I go see a band, and they play, like, zero from any of their old albums, I'm very happy about that. I do not want to see the bands of my youth playing the songs of my youth. I hate that.
Metal has its own code of cool, but it's not really trying to be cool. And that was very refreshing to me, that metal is very much about expressing something that seems awesome to you even if, at the time, much of the world was going to mock and reject it.
I wrote 'Lakeside View Apartment Suites' with Roman in my arms. He was about a month old. I was playing left-handed and finally handed him over. On the demo of it, you can hear him crying in the next room.
Wrestling's a form of expression, and it expresses vastness.
My strongest hope is for a cameo as a band playing in a club visited by the detectives on 'Law & Order: SVU' during the course of an investigation, maybe during sound check, or something, so they can force us to stop playing while they question the sound guy.
At 23, you can completely, literally reinvent yourself if you want to.
Touring is just not normal for me. My personality is to never ever talk to people if I can help it.
I think, taking too long to work on a record, you sort of lose some of the feeling, so I write as fast as I can; it's just this manic phase where I'm by myself and or on tour, and I write, and I write.
I used to break three or four strings a night, and the show would be over because I didn't know how to change the strings.
The more established you are, the less likely you are to do something ridiculous, which is one reason I'm proud to put out a wrestling album. If you stop and you go, 'Well, what if people don't like it?,' if you're already established in what you do, that'll strike fear into your heart.
If you show up to work five days in a row, nobody's going to pat you on the back - everyone does that. Well, do that with your writing. Just show up. Be there for it. When you get an idea, write it down somewhere and then be a steward of that idea.
Sometimes I do 'So Desperate' solo in the middle of the set. I really love to sing that song.
I got a promo of 'Nichts Muss' in what would have been 2002 or 2003 and fell totally in love with it after listening to it on an airplane that took me to Australia via Taipei and Kuala Lumpur.
It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs.
Once you start talking to people, you find out there's a lot more wrestling fans than you think there are.
I think any real one-sheet for an album would say, 'Well, here's what I've been doing.' And that would be it.
A band's first album's usually not great. When you made the first album, you had a day job and you were still trying to be serious about it.
It usually happens that I have multiple different projects going on at once, and one can be referencing the other.
