I was young, but to me that was underground music. I had never heard anything like Venom or any of that stuff growing up in Louisville. That was sort of the only weird records I could find. All that stuff would be in the import section. And sometimes there would be some sort of goth type of stuff. But that was the stuff I was attracted to.

When I was really young, I was really into Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden and those kinds of bands.

I'm still in the Midwest, but I'm in Columbus, Ohio, so I'm three and a half hours away from everybody. That's one of the reasons we're not as active as we'd like to be - it's an expensive chore for me to go down there just to talk or something.

My kids don't really like when I sing for some reason...but they like when I play guitar. So I started writing songs just playing guitar for them.

There are five of us. We've all played in various bands together, in different combinations. I know that Todd [Cook] and Tony [Bailey] are my favorite rhythm section - they're just like a unit. I guess we've all just played together in various capacities, so when the band was coming together, it was sort of like we just chose members because they had similar sensibilities and also because they're just cool. We all got along real well.

You can go to any small town in America, there's going to be a metal fan there. You can't say that about post-rock.

I'm looking for anything interesting in the guitar playing, songwriting, artwork, and production. If you look at the stack of CDs on my desk and in my car, you'll find a very wide range of music under the umbrella of metal.