The critics and hardcore music fans, those are the people you have to get to first, so we're really happy about it.

My style of lyric-writing is very specific and has a lot of details, and I think people react most to that.

Sometimes people come up and say, "You have this line in this song and it meant a lot to me." You don't always remember that line as the one. You're putting part of your human being on the page so people are going to have different responses - the other humans are going to connect with different parts.

The Catholic influence just comes from being raised Catholic, going to church every Sunday, being confirmed, going to church on holy days. So it's coming from where I am. It serves the purpose of having people who have a base or foundation where they know what's right.

I remember I was really into this British band, The Vapors, with that song "Turning Japanese." I thought that they were really next level genius cryptic weirdos. And then I realized when I got older they are just using a lot of British words, and I didn't know what they meant. But I thought, Oh, they are making up their own language.

I guess the drinking and the drugs are interesting to me because the way we use them and our society uses them, we kind of manufacture highs and lows.

Words and music together create powerful, powerful things.