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.

The simpler songs are just done when the lyric has been stated; the more complex or band-oriented stuff can go in a million directions.

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.

The touring thing is such a huge time commitment. I'm really feeling like I want to start writing and recording music again. But I have to leave for tour tomorrow. That's kind of frustrating; at the end of the day, you're plugging into this lifestyle. It's the "band lifestyle," and that's weird! I would like for touring to be creative in its own right.

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.

Sometimes I do get writer's block but it's more of a writer's doubt - I'll try and write but nothing goes anywhere because I start thinking everything sucks.

They even let me do the ads for the album. I definitely want it all to be presented right, but I don't want to be selling. I mean, people do deluxe editions, and I don't even really know how I feel about those yet.