When you've been at it for as long as we have, you go through fallow periods and blooming ones, and you know when you're on a roll and you learn how to keep it rolling for as long as you can.

We've known each other [in Motorpsycho ] since 1985 or '86, are really different as personalities, and yet have actually never disagreed to any degree. We are really complimentary as musicians and songwriters too, and come from two total opposites in our approaches.

When you've been at it for as long as we have, you go through fallow periods and blooming ones, and you know when you're on a roll and you learn how to keep it rolling for as long as you can.

A lot of ideas get re-used and made part of new songs if the first version didn't cut the mustard, and the stuff that gets left off usually contained the germ of something good but failed to reach a satisfactory state by the recording stage.

We've gotten better at shooting down routine material or stuff we feel like we've done better in the past. Getting different people in the band for periods also keeps it from going stale.

Where Snah [Hans Magnus Ryan] is a melody and texture man, I am more of a riff, rhythm and concept guy. I am much better than him in certain fields, and he surely wipes the floor with me in others, and we both know it's like that.

You find your preferred resolutions and harmonic intervals and what-have-yous, and then you either keep writing the same thing until everybody is as bored with your songs as you are, or you try with all your might to get out of those patterns. This is what a lot of the work is all about.