I guess I've never been introduced properly to Pink Floyd. I know they're great, don't get me wrong. Excellent, excellent musicians; great band; awesome harmony; great song writers; I just don't know anything besides, I guess, the popular songs on the radio.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

To do an extreme metal record is something that is well within my capacity as a musician to write stuff out of the box, write stuff that's probably more extreme than the band I'm in at the present time, and it's something that needs to come out of me one way or another.

I don't care at all about the mainstream; I don't care about popularity contests; I don't care about who's got the biggest-selling album; and I don't care about glossy production.

We definitely have a hardcore following.

With this LP we were all very clear on the approach we wanted to take, which was to do something heavy, but also experiment with a lot of other things we really like.

We, PANTERA, had the greatest, the most intense, dedicated fans I've ever seen in my ******* life. And I really hope with all my heart that one day, people - especially our fans and my friends - can see clearly enough to think for themselves and really realize that I have nothing but love for them. I've just been going through personal hell since December. Once again, it's very hard to talk about, man. You know, my heart is in a thousand pieces a day.