People ask me all the time what or who my influences are. To be honest, it would take a decent set of encyclopedias to get them all down. I am here today to let the world know my greatest influence, my secret ingredient, really. What inspires me? That's simple: COFFEE.

I'm a very lucky guy. I get to write music that I love, and lo and behold, people seem to really like it. I know how fortunate I am.

When I'm working on a Slipknot song, it's like a switch flips in my head. I can go there easily - it doesn't take a lot of soul searching - and it's a dark, almost sinister place. Stone Sour is more the way I've always written. It's a different tone.

But I always kind of knew in the back of my head that I could come back and do Stone Sour.

I want karma to drive stakes into the dark hearts that keep me bitter.

A song is only as strong as its foundation, and when it comes so naturally in any setting, those are the songs that will hopefully outlive you, maybe even outlive the next generation of You.

People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it.