It was massive, same goes for Download. My voice was totally fucked but it was still awesome. I believe there were around 70.000 people so we made sure we took some pictures and video. The bad thing was that my voice is fucked up so mentally I was out of the game because I was worried about that. In between songs I couldn’t talk to people, my voice just kept cracking and it made me feel like a retard. When it was over I was so glad that I ‘survived’ and that my voice was better then I thought it was going to be..but it still wasn’t good. So basically, Download was a bit of a mixed feeling for me but it was awesome to play on the main stage.

 

 

Steve told me that but I really don’t want to watch it.

 

 

Yes. It’s way better than it was but it’s still not great, I really did damage something. I talked to the doctor at Download and he gave me a shot in my ass and a shot in my arm and that got me through. The thing that really messed me up are my allergies; I’m really allergic to stuff like pollen and it was really bad at Download and it was bad at Rock am Ring..

-Crowd Cheers- Another goal? I think its 2-0..Holland just scored again!

 

 

Definitly! How do you pronounce this? Dommelschhhh?

 

 

Probably my all time favourite movie is Slapshot.

 

 

It’s a movie from the 70s with Paul Newman and its about a hockey team. My other two favourite movies are ‘Young Blood’ and ‘Miracle’, and that last one is a Disney movie that came out a few years ago and its about the American Olympic team in 1980 who won the gold medal.

 

Oh I like all kinds of things. I loved ‘House of Thousand Corpses’ and ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ by Rob Zombie, and I love a lot of old horror movies in general. And of course, action movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. I saw this crazy movie last night; called ‘The Machinist’ with Christian Bale…

 

 

Did you know what he did? He ate like, an apple, can of tuna and a cup of black coffee for almost a month. And he looks horrible, when he bends over you see every vertebrae, and his chest is like. Well, I need to go on that plan.

 

 

Well he looks awesome in that. Tom Hanks did the same thing in ‘Castaway’, he was really thin at a certain point. Same for Adrien Brody in ‘The Pianist’, which is a great movie by the way.

 

 

To me Only Living Witness was the first band I knew of which had that post-hardcore label, Because these bands were coming out after bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Judge and all these otherhardcore bands. And then CIV, those guys turned into Quicksand and that was the other band at that time which was called post-hardcore. I never really knew what post-hardcore really meant. Was it like “We are not hardcore anymore” ? It has always been a weird thing to me. But for me, Only Living Witness was a rock band. Like Kyuss was in the vein of stoner-rock, but not with the extreme fuzzy guitars.

 

 

Definitely, and they were around at that time. I believe ‘Prone Mortal Form’ came out in 93 so grunge was still pretty much in the picture then. Soundgarden’s ‘Badmotorfinger’ came out in 92, Alice in Chains’ ‘Dirt’ is from 92 as well, and I believe that Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ is from 91 so grunge was still alive at that time. But in generally I don’t think that many people knew Only Living Witness. They only put out two records and then they were gone. I talked to Jonah and I believe he said that they came to the west coast once, and that’s no kind of touring. I think nobody gave them their due. Jonah also told me that they had another record ready but it got shelved because the record company didn’t want to support it. I still have to track that down because I would love to hear it.

 

 

Yeah, when I was doing press in Germany there were some people which said that they thought it was great that Jonah was on the new record because most people never heard of him and his band.

 

 

Usually we have; I watched Bullet for my Valentine, Cradle of Filth and I think I saw Soulfly, which was amazing, they had the entire place jumping. And after our show I watched Atreyu and Taking Back Sunday. I really wanted to see Angels & Airwaves but we had to leave, we were on three shows with them but I never saw them. Their record is great in my opinion, a more serious Blink 182, which I prefer.

 

 

Those have always been my favourite. I always wished they played more songs like that and I thought that Boxcar Racer was already a good change. You want to know a thing about Tom Delonge? I walked by him and he is way taller than me! He is a giant.

 

 

Same goes for Sebastian Bach, he is a tall guy.

 

 

I watched two songs and it sounded great. But all the shit between it just ruined it. He took 15 minutes after the second song and just did nothing and they had the guitar players just play some stuff. And they kept doing that. But the thing is that they are such a legendary band, and ‘Appetite for Destruction’ really set the course for others. But after all the issues he is finally making a comeback, and you would guess that he would just go up there and kick ass. If you look at Velvet Revolver; that is an actual super-group who are doing something. Of course people talk about Scott Weiland all the time, but it seems to me that just Axel is already a part of the show.

 

 

I heard about that! I was in the shower at that time but that is just crazy. We do some silly stuff like spitting on each other but nothing like that. Fortunately. In Amsterdam, Thomas said ‘Brock, come here, I gotta tell you something’ so I walked over and got totally caught off guard. It was nasty. But in Liverpool I got the crowd spitting on him. That was great. All the guys in the front row were doing it, and one of them did a great job. Thomas was standing up and saying ‘yeah do it!’ and his mouth was open, and one of them landed perfectly. Afterwards he was pretty bummed about it.

 

 

The crowds were great to them, and that was awesome because they aren’t really a heavy band. They did create some great atmosphere and moods. They have a “heavy Radiohead” thing going on and their singer is just great. He sings with the microphone all the way back, he really has a great voice. You know, sometimes you get tired of hanging out with metal dudes all the time, and it was cool because we aren’t really a ‘metal band’ so we hoped everything would go alright for them as well. They are really good guys. And they got a hot chick in the band too.

 

Probably because they are European. They really have the atmospheric thing going on with a rock attitude do it. You just don’t see American bands trying this kind of things, which is a shame.

 

 

I think my favourite book must be the story about Lance Armstrong, ‘It’s not about the bike’. I talk about that all the time because it really changed my life. In 2002 we were touring our first tours and I had been writing the same thing and doing everything the same way for quite some time. And then I read that book, and it inspired me so much because he conquered his fear of dying, and he just has this amazing will to live. I started thinking because the book made you want to get off the couch and do something, there is no time to waste. That’s why my lyrics have become more positive, because the book floored me. I think I’ve read it three times. And every time one asks “who do you want to get a beer with” I say Lance Armstrong, even though I heard that he is quite an asshole in real (but I don’t know why nor do I care). So read it.

 

 

Personally, I’m not a big fan of those big books. My fiancée gave me a book once, ‘Fountainhead’ but I just couldn’t get through it. I think I let her down on that one. I prefer 200 or 300 pages I think.

 

 

Well it’s crazy, because we’ll be on tour until a week before the wedding. We’ll play a show in Anchorage on the 29^th. Thomas will get married on the 30^th. My bachelor party starts on Monday, and that goes on until Thursday, and then I’ll get married on the 5^th of August. So it will be really busy. We’ll stay for a week in Anchorage to be with our family and then it’s off to Mexico for week. And when I come back we’ll be going back to Europe for the tour with Atreyu.

 

 

To be honest I’m glad that I stuck to my old ‘rule’. I used to say in high school: “I’m not getting married until I’m in my 30s” and looking back I’m glad I didn’t. The amount of mistakes I made in my 20s and the lessons I’ve learned made me more mature and less reckless. If I would have married in my early 20s I would probably be more of a wreck than I already was. Sometimes I wonder how we actually survived, but I do think that you really have to live your life because there is so much to do, and get that experience. And still do things from time to time to keep things interesting and feel alive.