I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, the Doors, Elton John, Sabbath, Metallica, GN'R, Megadeth - just classic rock, classic metal stuff.
The reality is you either step into the future, or you become a dinosaur.
I went to this vocal coach, Ron Anderson, who has worked with Axl Rose and Chris Cornell, to train my voice and learn a whole new way of singing.
We are ever evolving and never repeat ourselves.
We have this yearning to know the answers to the big questions about space and why we're here; we can't evolve fast enough to figure these answers out on our own, but we can do it through artificial intelligence. But there's also some very scary downsides that could come if we don't put the right safety precautions in there.
A lot of times, people just want to be more extreme than the next band or the next person, and that's all they focus on. That's kind of lost on me.
We go out there and kill it every night, and you can see what this means to people.
I'm kind of a geek when it comes to talking about chord structures or melody, so I always loved in-depth conversations with musicians about things. I also enjoy when a fan can just put something on, and they really know nothing about music other than they like it and it touches them in some way.
We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.
I think one of the biggest sleepers that people are going to be able to dig into later is 'Fermi Paradox,' it's the song before 'Exist.' To me it's got the coolest, it's just so bizarre because it's got one of the most melodic vocal melodies, but we put it over a black metal blast beats.
I used to get a huge kick out of walking into a record store and finding something I didn't know was out.
The song 'Paradigm' talks about nanobots - and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself?
Musically, I just like when people are knowledgeable about music and they can talk to you about it.
What made 'Dark Side Of The Moon' so great is some of the mystique and where it was coming from and just the authenticity of it.
Sometimes, I feel like my lyrics meander a little bit, and our songs are so big I need to write more words than are necessary.
If there's something I really like or a chord progression, I write a note in my Blackberry, and maybe a year later, I'll revisit it and ask, 'What did I like about that?' I really don't try to think too much about it. I like to be fresh.
A lot of the metal bands that were around when Metallica put out 'The Black Album,' now they're playing clubs, and Metallica is playing stadiums.
Those who are not very good at understanding mental health issues are not going to know what other people are going through in depression. You have to kind of put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
We're really excited to be even talked about in the same breath as Foo Fighters or Metallica.
The first Maiden record I ever got was 'Piece of Mind,' and I only got it because I thought the artwork was cool, and everyone talked about Iron Maiden. But they weren't necessarily the most popular metal band in America for a 12-year-old kid when I discovered them.
