Everybody is afraid to touch the topic of religion, especially with the extreme muslims. It's such a touchy subject. You can attack any other religion and nothing bad will come about.

Basically you're doing the best you possibly could do and until it's out there and until people are hearing good feedback, I guess that's how you know you've done something good. We're so close to it that it's hard to look outside because we're inside of it, so it's really nice when you hear good feedback on the outside.

In the long-run I think we lost some of our audience because of noise. I don't think people were ready for it, OK? And after we did it nothing really happened, but then 4-5 years later when there was a rap-rock emergence, we were already over it. We could have made Bring the Noise part 2, Bring the Noise part 3 - but like I said we're a METAL band, we didn't want to do that.

If something inspires you, try and hold on to that inspiration because if you lose that inspiration, what do you have left? If music is your inspiration and it brings you together with friends, family or loved ones and that's the core of it, then always have it. Always draw from it.

We've always said we're a HEAVY METAL band. We've kinda branched out here and there - we've done a rap thing, we've done a rap-rock thing, we've done something with Angelo Belmonte, who's the primary composer of Twin Peaks. In fact, most of David Lynch's movies is Angelo. He did something with us and that was great. We've also acted, we've done an episode in Married with Children, which was awesome - so we're always looking to do things which you wouldn't expect.

I couldn't deal with anything. I wasn't enjoying what I was doing because of the situation. My Paiste rep, a symbol company, referred me to this doctor in LA. I went there and had a consultation done. So, he examined exactly what the problem was and I went for the operation and it was a success.

Mostly every shirt and cover you see has come from my mind.