Question and Answer

One of the standout tracks on the new album, "The Roots of Coincidence," features some pretty twisted harmonic movement, starting out centering on Cm, then going down a half-step to Bm, then up to Ebm, then venturing through F, Dbmaj7, Bb, Gbmaj7, and so on. How did that sequence come about?

All the stuff you mentioned came very quickly, about five minutes. I just heard it. And I was a little afraid to play it for Lyle [laughs], but he immediately said, "That's exactly what this record is." We HAVE entered a different kind of harmonic vocabulary now through bands like Nirvana. The guitar players are still basically playing in fifths [power chords], but a lot of them have gotten tired of predictable I-IV-V things, so they're using different intervals and unusual rhythmic movements--like on the new Foo Fighters record, there's some real cool stuff like that. I would have to say that's an influence, but being the guys that we are, we can't resist some voice-leading [laughs], so it's a weird hybrid of those fifthy kind of things with something like a IV chord with the third in the bass, which sort of blows our cover immediately.

>Soundwise, it at times suggests complete techno-industrial mayhem, along the lines of Prodigy or Nine Inch Nails. Did you hear it that way right from the start?

Absolutely. I go through life with my antenna up. I love music. I became a musician because I'm such a fan. To not play the music that I love seems weird to me. I know a bunch of guys that dig all kinds of stuff, and without them saying it, I know that they feel like, "Well, I couldn't really play that, it might mess up my career--what would Stanley Crouch say?" That is a problem, because that's not our job. Our job is to reflect what we love.