It's important to know the ins and outs of the music business, but you can also dive too deeply into it and forget that you're really here to make music.

Every once in a while, we can touch somebody's life in a way just by writing a melody or writing some music, which is always really special.

When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.

When you think of rock and roll and metal, a lot of it is based around the riff. If you can sing over the riff and what the arrangements are going to be like, you have to leave space for what most people consider one of the most key essential parts, which is the vocalist.

I think Kanye West is brilliant at what he does: he's got a different live show, different merch for every tour, different vibes, and he just puts out great records.

I go online, and I love watching heavy metal bands and guitar players play heavy metal versions of the 'Zelda' theme, and people do all the 'Zelda' music, which is one of my favorite soundtracks.

Usually, when you're putting out a record, you have reviews from people a week before, and you have a vibe 'cause everyone's heard it - you've heard feedback from everyone, and they've listened to your single for a couple of months. Radio's playing it.

Honestly, I never thought we'd get a nomination for a Grammy, period. To be honest, we felt that if we were ever going to get one, we thought we had 'City of Evil' and 'Nightmare' and 'Hail to the King,' and those were all big records, and they never even sniffed at us.

To me, a lot people really get wrapped up in the technical side of metal and what's metal and what's not and more double-kick and more blast beats and more technicality, but for me, I'm a song person. So I think you can write good songs in any type of style of rock and any type of style of metal, and that's kind of what I'm a fan of.

We love the idea of putting out music in a non-conventional way.

A lot of times, people just want to be more extreme than the next band or the next person, and that's all they focus on. That's kind of lost on me.

If I was to play any song for anybody asking, 'What is metal about?' I'd just play 'Master of Puppets.' The progressions and the bridge are brilliant.

If there's something I really like or a chord progression, I write a note in my Blackberry, and maybe a year later, I'll revisit it and ask, 'What did I like about that?' I really don't try to think too much about it. I like to be fresh.

I think the cool thing about being alive in 2017 is that you can literally put out music as soon and as frequently as you want to because of streaming services.

'This Means War' is up there with 'Hail to the King' in terms of crowd reaction and kids chanting for it.

What made 'Dark Side Of The Moon' so great is some of the mystique and where it was coming from and just the authenticity of it.

If we can inspire a kid to pick up a guitar - and less and less kids are doing so these days - it'd be really cool because I know how it felt growing up and how special that was for me.

Sometimes, I feel like my lyrics meander a little bit, and our songs are so big I need to write more words than are necessary.

Always from day one, we were the band on Warped Tour with a fog machine, and our backdrop had to be up - everyone thought we were the biggest idiots for that, total posers. But for us, we wanted to be over the top.

It really does help everyone when there are some big bands leading the charge.

The more kids that we can meet or kids that are terminally ill, we try to do it because it's really important, and you can see the hope in their eyes and in their families and their parents.

I've never made a comment on a message board in my life.

We don't want to become like country artists where there's a formula.

I just think that a metal band covering a bunch of metal songs is so boring, so 'done before.'

For me, a band like Gojira brings something really cool and new to the table.

The idea of turning an album into a living piece of art and adding new installations is really intriguing. It expands the journey.

I think one of the biggest sleepers that people are going to be able to dig into later is 'Fermi Paradox,' it's the song before 'Exist.' To me it's got the coolest, it's just so bizarre because it's got one of the most melodic vocal melodies, but we put it over a black metal blast beats.

The thing about covers is that the first thing you're going to notice is the vocals, because it's not the same person.

When I was very young, it was Guns N' Roses and Metallica. I'd play air guitar on my bed. They've been the thread throughout my life.

We write music because we have to; it's a part of our very being.

Unless someone physically tries to attack me, I don't care what anyone does.

I used to get a huge kick out of walking into a record store and finding something I didn't know was out.

Metal needs to be exposed to more people, so it's good for rock if there's bigger bands.

Someone sent me an article on AI that was written by Tim Urban on the website Wait but Why - that was kind of where I stuck my toes in the puddle, and I said, 'OK, I've gotta learn about this!' I felt like this is one of those things that our generation is going to have to answer for, eventually, and I just wanted to educate myself on it.

When I'm by myself asking the questions that many of us do at some point in our lives, I look to the stars knowing that the answers are somewhere out there waiting to be discovered.

Musically, I just like when people are knowledgeable about music and they can talk to you about it.

People want things now. People in the rock world seem to not want to give it to them - they want to keep doing things the old way - and one thing that has always bummed me out is when we get a single three months out, and then you have to keep getting fed with bread crumbs.

The first Maiden record I ever got was 'Piece of Mind,' and I only got it because I thought the artwork was cool, and everyone talked about Iron Maiden. But they weren't necessarily the most popular metal band in America for a 12-year-old kid when I discovered them.

The Brexit thing to me just looks like a difference of opinion. I know things were lied about, but that should be a wake-up call to get all the information before you vote about something. Educate yourself.

I was talking to my dad about the stuff he grew up listening to, and 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a record that he had always talked about around the house. He always talked about it as the 'greatest concept album of all time.' One day, I started listening to it, and it just hit me. I was like, 'These songs are all hits. They're all huge songs.'

We always want to do covers, but we found it kind of boring to do covers of bands in our genre, and we were always asked to do those.

I wanna write a classic metal record, a classic rock record, in 2013.

If I ran the Grammys, it would probably go bankrupt.

A lot of the metal bands that were around when Metallica put out 'The Black Album,' now they're playing clubs, and Metallica is playing stadiums.

If people respect us as artists, they know we'll give them something different every time; they know we're pushing ourselves.

As we develop, I just see us following our heart on this musical journey.

I feel like our whole discography up through 'Hail to the King' was young, fun, and exciting. It was aggressively driven. 'The Stage' was the first step in the band becoming a more mature musical entity.

People think this is a competition between bands, when the reality is the more successful bands the better.

I'm glad that we can add something new to the fold that Metallica's not going to bring to the table, and they're going to do what they do.

For me, 'Far Beyond Driven' just had an oomph that kicked it over the edge and just pure aggression. And I always appreciated that.