I can tell when something's real, or when something's put together. I can just feel it.

Coming from heavy music too, it's really hard to have heavy music not sound too butthead-ish or jock-ish, and there's a fine line between Limp Bizkit and Nirvana - there's a fine line there, and it's terrifying.

My point is, I don't see the need to eat animals. I love animals; besides the horrible stuff that's put in meat, I actually love cuddling with animals and petting them and stuff.

I would say it's always been in me to want to have victorious songs. I sort of want my songs to have a feeling of victory, but through a lot of pain. Like, you're 75 percent to the top of the mountain and sometimes you fall back to the bottom, but hopefully by the end of the record you'll feel like there's no mountain at all.

I never wanted to do music to get girls, right, to get popular, or anything like that. I really love music and I want to make it better the best I can. I can tell when something's real, or when something's put together. I can just feel it. So I'm my own worst critic and harshest critic and I just want to put honest music out there.

Videos are tricky because stuff sounds amazing on paper and it seems like it's going to be this mystical experience and you're going to look back and go, "Wow, that was magic." But more times than not, it doesn't end up that way, so I never know what I'm going to get.

In fact, on a side note, after the success of the first record, I got asked to write for some pop artists, as everybody does, and I did a couple songs for some of these massive stars and the review that I got back was, "This artist likes the song but it's too POP-y for them." I was like, "What do you mean, I thought I was writing for a pop star."