At the time of starting this band I was listening to tons of death metal. However, the bands that made me want to be in a band to begin with were groups like Korn, Deftones, Slayer, Sepultura... everything that my dad would buy and bring home to me and my brother saying 'Hey, listen to this'.

Everything I write means a lot to me because it is my head on paper.

This time, we went up to Big Bear for 3-4 weeks and sequestered ourselves writing this album [ "The Black Crown"].

I just want to be considered a heavy metal band, because metal has always been around and will always be around. We're just a heavier version of metal. Heavy metal will never go away. It's like a cockroach. It's the best title, because we play metal that's heavy.

You only live once, for a very short time. So make every second divine.

We all just meet up and someone's house or the studio and we'll just jam and we'll lock into something that sounds cool. I'll go home with tracks of cool parts and work on words. Everyone in the band has a job to do and everyone knows their job and we all do it really well. So, when we're writing, we can just look at one another and say, 'OK, go write this part'. It's not just one person writing or producing everything - everyone's working to product what we have.

It was really different this time, because we did everything in the studio and thought out the writing and song structures. Before this album ["The Black Crown"], we used to just write riff after riff and then worry about the rest of it later.