You can only exist as far as your mind will allow you to exist, and I think chronic pain will stop time dead in its tracks. You feel like you're the only one, and how unfair it is, and a million different feel-sorry-for-yourself type feelings.
In my better sense of mind, I know that I'm far from alone and far from the worst, and the earth keeps spinning. Everything keeps moving, with or without me.
With this LP we were all very clear on the approach we wanted to take, which was to do something heavy, but also experiment with a lot of other things we really like.
We definitely have a hardcore following.
To me, I'm for a band whose forefront is the music.
This is the band I always wanted to be in.
There it is again. Image. Once again. I get really tired of it quick.
It seems like if you are not painted up special way or have some tailor made outfit to put on to go out on stage... I don't know... there's too much of it out there.
I wasn't that wild about that. I told them basically if they were really going to want to bring back heavy metal to a program on MTV, then they are really going to have to get in touch with what real heavy metal is.
I can easily say I've done everything I've wanted in music.
I tried to take heavy metal... and balled it up and chopped it in half and really tried to create a new form of energy. I really tried to re-shape extreme music as I see it through my eyes.
I guess I've never been introduced properly to Pink Floyd. I know they're great, don't get me wrong. Excellent, excellent musicians; great band; awesome harmony; great song writers; I just don't know anything besides, I guess, the popular songs on the radio.
I think music is a big, big wide world, and I am voyager on this particular ship in this sea of wild music, and I'm gonna dive in and find as many fish as I can and catch them all. I love music.
Music is there for us to explore. To intentionally limit yourself to one, two, or three genres is limitation at its worst. Music is huge; it's a gigantic history lesson, and if you are true music fan or a musician, you should explore it. It's all right there in front of us.
I love music. I love every kind of extreme sort of music, and many different genres, and if I were to have to dedicate myself to just one kind of genre, I would feel kind of gypped. I'd be like, man, I wish I could do this or that. And really all it takes is trying it out.
People are going to think and take things how they're going to take it, and I have no control over that, so it's kind of like biding time until you get your feedback. So, it's like, once the public can consume what you're putting out there, then you know. Then you know hit, miss, in between.
The lead guitar work is a bit repetitious, but when a song is under two minutes long, I don't have much room anyway. Thank goodness. But I've always contributed guitar parts to every band I've ever been in, so I'll always play the axe.
Singing and playing have always gone hand-in-hand with me. I love 'em both equally.
I think anyone who suffers from chronic pain can agree with this - you feel this great significance. What I wanted to capture was that significance, and as a matter of fact I think that's one of the lyrics on 'Conflict,' on the split. I touch on the significance, and really it's a selfish thing, in an offbeat way.
You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.
