Oh God, I'm a boring person. You don't want to know.

You don't look boring.

I've just basically done music my whole life and started the band in '96. We just basically saved our money and put out a few albums and then we got signed to a European label. Then we got signed to Century Media. For the past 10 years I've just been doing music nonstop basically. I started playing when I was 13 so I've been playing for 17 years on guitar. I've finally made it to this stage now.

Somebody was asking me the other day why some people get into dark and dreary music so I decided to ask you why you decided to go on the dark side and basically writing music about it.

For me it's more of a release. If you have a bad day at work or whatever, the easiest thing for me to do is just come home and lay down some words about. Even though personally I hate writing lyrics. That's the un-fun part about music. I just want to create music and do what I want to do. For me it's just a release instead of slicing your throat. It's easier just to write words about it. Generally we're all happy people so some people may paint or whatever, but for us we write dark music.

That's what my friend was wondering about. I'm a real happy, upbeat person but I love black metal and death metal. I was asked how I can listen to that dreary, depressing stuff. I said it sounds cool as shit. The gorier the lyrics are, the cooler they are.

Yeah, you bet. It's no fun to listen to happy music all the time, that's for sure.

Indeed. You guys are putting out a new record called The Scattering Of Ashes.

Another happy title.

Tell me a little bit about the record.

Well, basically we got off the road in November and we were on the road for 200 days. We finished our last tour with Opeth and Nevermore in November, came home in December, and then took two weeks off and just started writing. I think the songs have that high energy feel because we had just gotten off touring. We're still in that mode of trying to kick butt every night so that was what we were going for. We wanted every song to be high energy and lots of solos and high vocals and death vocals and the off time signatures. We just did that basically we wanted to do. There were no rules when we did this album. A lot of it too was done by feel. Whatever we were feeling at the time and we just went for it and came up with this.

One of the things I love about a lot of bands is that they do the melodic vocals and the growling shit and manage to intertwine that really well. How hard is that on the voice?

Well, the voice is basically a muscle so of course you want to sing all the time and whatnot but the actual transition between death vocals and clean vocals, Stu does it perfectly and yet I do it as well. For us it just seems like a natural thing. That seems like a trend for all bands to have clean and death vocals but 10 years ago when we were trying to get signed, no one would sign us because we had two different sets of vocals and different types of music stuff too. Everyone said that if you just pick one style then we'll sign you and we said no, want to stick with this. So for us it's just a natural thing. It's easy.

That's no fucking fun. There are a lot of bands out there that do the clean vocals and there are a lot of bands out there that do the growling. Why not mix it up a bit?

Yeah, that's the way I see it. I don't see what the problem is for a record company, like they want to be able to market a band a specific way so if you're just a death metal band then they can market you perfectly to all the death metal crowd and you can have the skull covers and sing about corpses and that's no problem. But when you're doing something a little different, it's harder to sell.

Yeah, but how many people, at least nowadays are into just one thing and that's all they listen to?

Yeah, that happens for sure. There are some really open-minded fans too that will like everything but some people maybe don't. For me our band is for the artistic creativity. For me this is the music that I want to hear so this is what we write.

One thing I noticed is that you guys mix up the death metal with progressive metal. I thought that was pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of progressive metal but we also tour with death metal bands and you can't touch those death metal bands for energy when they come on stage and the head spinning and the brutal blast beats. I always like the power of death metal but still at the end of the day you want to have a chorus maybe to sing along to and then that's where our melodic side comes in.

How long did it take to do the record?

It all started in December writing and then we went into the studio in May. We had five months to get it going. Luckily we did. We're on the road so much that the record label actually let us stay home and make this album. Originally they wanted us to do one more tour in January and February but that would have delayed it even more but we just decided to stop touring and just say no and do an album.

You have to get some new shit out there.

Yeah, people get bored otherwise.

What three songs on the record do you feel represents where the band is at right now?

I really like a song called "Nothing" on the album. It's the third track and it's got basically all of the elements of our band. Like the arpeggios that we play and the fast solo and Stu’s high Rob Halford vocals. All the death vocals and some off time riffing. It’s got basically everything that we do in one song. I would say the track “Nothing” on the album.

One of the things I like is a lot of bands do that off time signature thing. It sounds really weird but it sounds really neat as well.

Yeah, we try and write off time and I don't basically go in trying to write off time riffs. Sometimes they happen by feel and sometimes I actually go in and try to do it. The key is to try to try to blend it all together so that you get the illusion that it's not on time at times to because some people can't understand when things go a bit too crazy. We try and mesh it all together so it sounds natural.

How difficult is it to mesh all that stuff together and make it sound natural?

It's just basically trial and error. We'll put riffs back to back and then sometimes you can instantly tell "okay, that riff is never going to go into that chorus" or "out of that chorus we need another riff and that's got to go in there." It's trial and error. At the end of the day there are no rules for songwriting anyway. I may think it sounds great but you might hate the way we did it.

You guys have been chosen to be on Megadeth's Gigantour.

We're real happy to be a part of that.

How did you guys get hooked up with that?

I think it was a bit of luck too. Shawn Drover from Megadeth had to come up with a list 15 bands that he liked and we were one of those 15 bands. He gave us to Megadeth's management and our record company called Dave Mustaine's management and said that we were interested. They listened to our tracks and said yeah, fine. They liked the band but really it all has to go through Dave Mustaine so they gave Dave our links to our webpage and My Space and Dave listened to our songs. They said if Dave hates the band then you guys aren't doing this but he liked it and he gave us the okay so really we have to thank Dave Mustaine for getting us on that tour.

That must be really nice to know that he loved your stuff.

Yeah, he listens to everything and he actually has to okay it because it's his tour so that's the way it works.

I think it's so cool that he started doing that. It used to be that you only had Ozzfest which I love Ozzfest but I think it's cool that somebody else picked up on that and doing their own version of it.

Yeah, you bet. This will be a smaller version and with different types of bands. There will be metalcore and that type of thing on this tour. I think it will be a really different package for the U.S. actually.

What else are you guys doing besides Gigantour?

In between of those Gigantour shows we've got press to do and we're also doing our off dates as well so we're busy every single day. Then of course traveling so we'll do all that and then we'll be on tour for five weeks. Then we'll come home and take a break and then we're looking at the rest of the year. We're looking at the other tours actually right now. We should stay busy right after this tour. We'll also be shooting a video too on September 11th when we get to L.A. for "Severe Emotional Distress" so on one of our off dates we're doing that.

What's the theme of the video going to be?

I wrote "Severe Emotional Distress" about kids that cut themselves. I was watching a program and this doctor said it's a sign of severe emotional distress so I saw that on TV and I thought wow, this is a great topic for a song. I know the video director got our lyrics and he's going to make the theme somewhere around there. Of course you can't show knives or anything like that but it should be cool.

I've heard about people doing that. I can't understand why in the hell you would want to inflict that kind of pain on yourself.

I don't know. It's a cry out for help or something I guess.

When you write lyrics is it usually from stuff you see on TV or you read?

Yeah, that's exactly it. It's both reading or you have a bad year so you come home and write some lyrics or you're playing a video game and a line comes up that you think is cool. It's really at our discretion whatever we think is cool even like personal experiences and stuff. We just don't write around wizards and dragons and stuff. We don't write fantasy. It's all about reality in our band.

That's what the power metal bands are for.

Yeah, that's exactly it.

I'm not much of a fantasy person when it comes to books but I like that kind of music too. I like all types of shit.

Me too. I'm a total fan of all types of metal for sure.

What I thought was cool was these people had done a review of your record and they said it bridged the gap between Dream Theater and Death.

Oh my God. Those are two big bands. I don't know.

I thought that was pretty neat. I know a lot of death metal bands don't want anything but blast beats and brutality.

Yeah, it's cool. I love that stuff too but I don't want blast beats for three minutes for a three minute song. Maybe clips of it here and there and then move on to something else is the way I think. I have a low attention span when it comes to music so I need music to keep moving all the time. That's how we write our songs.

Yeah, I know what you mean. If something goes on for a long period of time and sounds the same, pretty soon you get bored with it.

We wouldn't stick on one riff for 1:03. There's no way that would ever happen. We're always bouncing around.

Any other thoughts or comments?

Thanks a lot for the interview. I really appreciate that. Everyone can check out our website at www.intoeternity.net and we've got the My Space link on there. People can talk to us on there. We'll see everyone on the road.

I think My Space is the coolest thing ever. You can be more personal and familiar with your fans.