With 'Elect the Dead,' I learned how to make a rock record without a rock band and make the rock record I've always wanted to make.

Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.

You listen to Bob Dylan and you can't help but think of the 60s, it's very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn't come from them, it comes from the universe and it's to be shared. At best, we're skilled presenters, and I say that at best.

In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

My personal relationship with music is an imperfect harmony because I never studied music, but here I am not just writing for bands but full orchestral sections and doing all this composition, and I never learned the right way of doing things so I have a lot of dissonant sounds and things that are brought to my attention, and generally I leave them that way because I like those imperfections.

Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.