Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

It's nice to have a band that can adapt to whatever show we're in, so we can play on a big stage or a house show.

I've always written songs with a visual counterpart in my mind that no one else can see.

It's a beautiful idea to focus on how everything is temporary and always in flux. It may feel bad now, but it will feel good later, and vice versa. To write about those things brings this satisfying feeling as a creative person. There's a lot of music out there that's like, "I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black," and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

I think that I probably inevitably fetishize nature, although I try not to, because it's kind of embarrassing, repulsive behavior. I think it's just an extension of me being old-fashioned.

When someone close to you dies, the line is shifted really drastically about what is meaningful and what isn't.

I didn't want to do a double album. I just felt like the last two records I made were like that, and a lot of records I was buying were like that, and it started to feel like it was too much music to digest at once.