I love Seattle, but I am definitely excited to be in a new place. Growing up there and then living in an apartment in the city for seven years, I just felt stagnant.

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.

Every time you pick up an instrument, it's not always out of necessity - for a certain kind of person, it's a choice.

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.

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.

As far as the music being inspired by Seattle, I think it's in some of the songs. Seattle is a really beautiful place in the right light, it's perched on a pretty unique geographic setting.

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.