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.

We sometimes feel like hamsters on a wheel, covering the same musical ground we did 20 or more years ago.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Generally there are always a few things that get left off for some reason or other, although the criteria for inclusion vary from project to project.