We've always said that our band is pretty much an open system and there's no rules governing anything... so who knows what the future will hold?

It's hard to say how time factors into your work, because sometimes things will come to you very quickly, but it will take years for the ideas to be gestating in your mind.

My parents left Iran in 1979 and moved to France and then moved to the U.S. My brother was born in France and I was born in New York. I think my parents left France because they felt their kids would never be accepted by French culture. Here they thought we could feel American - that we could feel safe in that way - which was important to them, given what their experiences were in Iran. They used to joke about how I could be president because I was the only one born in America.

I think summer, at least as I've experienced it, can be joyous but it can also be tough emotionally. Physically, it can be hot to the point of being unbearable and I think you want to capture that frustration, but also the release.

We thought there was also something that was humorous but at the same time powerful and deep about naming the album, 'Modern Vampires Of The City'.

One of the things that we talked about was this idea of 'Memento Mori' - like the reminder of our own mortality - and so we were sort of trying to express that in our press photos. And it's one of the themes of the album [Modern Vampires of the City] as well.

At some point I decided I didn't want to learn any more guitar technique. I was at that level where the next mountain there was to climb was Van Halen and I didn't really like Van Halen.