You want to think about certain styles of music as being reflective of a certain culture or a certain time or a point of view. You don't want it to be just an intellectual exercise.

Our day-to-day lives recording and touring aren't that different from those of Metallica, even though the perceived worldview is totally different. So that can be a difficult thing to reconcile sometimes.

I do read the records reviews but more out of curiosity than anything else, I feel like we know what we want to do next time regardless of how this one is received, good or bad, so it won't really make much of a difference, which wasn't the case on the first album, where both the positive and negative criticism or reactions did catch us off guard and inevitably colored the creation of this one.

We definitely classify things in order to get closer to what we believe in - so it serves a purpose to really think about one style of music, and to understand the shades of delineation between similar artists. But yeah, it's really nice to listen to something the way most people listen to music! Just to enjoy it, without having to put it in context.

You want to make music that reflects your ideals, but considering the isolating process of recording and the time and energy requirements of touring, there aren't a lot of opportunities to express those ideals anywhere but the music itself.

We're going out to play all the places where people might want to see us, because next time we might not just think about hitting every market or how we can make the most money.

You want to think about certain styles of music as being reflective of a certain culture or a certain time or a point of view. You don't want it to be just an intellectual exercise.