I seem to get the best work when I’m angry and depressed and alienated.
I’m sort of a cavedweller: I miss my house, my yard, my kitchen, my wife. The trees. When I get home, I like to get down into my office neighborhood as soon as I can.
I am at a place in my life where the more like a cave I can make my surroundings, the happier I am.
I just started going to shows. I don’t know how submerged I am: I feel guilty that I don’t get out more, but I really like being inside the house.
I’m kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won’t submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway.
I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.
It’s hard always to say what it is one likes about a place, for me. I feel it.
Anger is preverbal, so, by the time you’re using words to express an angry feeling, you’re already imposing loads of structure on that primal experience.
I think it’s a misconception that metal’s about anger, obviously.
I think listening to a lot of Lou Reed when I was a teenager is what encouraged me to just sing however felt good to me.
In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It’s a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.
I really love Durham more than any place I’ve ever been; some small towns can be really provincial and strangling, but Durham is the best city in the world.
I get nostalgic about having lived in Ames, Iowa, even though being a vegetarian in Iowa is not fun.
I still get really excited looking at stuff that I’ve seen every day for 20 years.
Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.
You always feel like your 18-year-old self in some sense. And that’s what walking through New York on a June evening feels like – you feel like it’s Friday and you’re 17 years old.
When all my friends insisted that they were feeling jaded, it struck me as an affected pose. To me, everything is always new.
People involved in my personal life make fun of me a lot for not being jaded.
I always worry that I’m a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don’t have exhaustive knowledge of much.
I couldn’t name more than a couple of good drum’n’bass acts, and I have no idea what’s big in the dance world right now.