I believe very firmly that indigenous populations had a really good, intuitive understanding of why we're here. And we're trying to gain that same understanding through psychology and intellect in modern civilization.

When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.

I'm a huge Beatles fan, but I've only really gotten into them as an adult.

People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.

People always ask me 'do you think there should be more bands doing political music?' and I say 'absolutely not.'

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

I don't want to spend all my time working as an activist. I don't get satisfaction out of it. I'd rather be doing something else. I'm a musician.