If you're not changing what you're doing and exploring different parts of your musical output, I think you're slowly dying.
Music is progressive, you get out, you experiment with new people and you grow.
You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.
All the big artists I talk to say that they are trapped in a formula and they are looking for the music of tomorrow.
Hip hop started in NY so it's important that New Yorkers realise that to talk about NY music and its sound should not be a small-minded conversation. Music is supposed to evolve. It's supposed to be going through changes, it's not supposed to sound exactly the same as what it did when it started. NY hip hop has to be allowed to move on and grow and expand.
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.
I hate it when bands keep making the same record over and over, so we're pushing ourselves to try new things and experiment in our writing approach.
A lot of bands have managed to borrow parts of our style for their music. That's fine with me, because we've borrowed from people like the Stones. But we don't want to sound like we're copying anyone, including ourselves, so we're moving on.
I think every album you have to stretch further and further, give people another piece of you. But then I always try to deviate from the norm.
I'm going to make music that reflects me and my life now. So I think people who like my music and who listen to me should appreciate change as well, because I've definitely evolved, and that's a great thing, to celebrate that is what music is all about.
The element of change has been the thing, really. We put out the first one, then the second... then a third LP totally different from them. It's the reason we were able to keep it together.
We were very proud of everything that we accomplished with 'Hail To The King,' but when it was time to write a new record, it was like, 'Well, we accomplished that. Let's see what else we can do,' and took it to the next level.
On my first album some of the songs were written when I was 14 or 15 so your life experience means you change, but my style is similar.
Each day I record I'm always doing something different that I've never done. So I feel like I'm a new artist every time I go to the studio.
I think there's a lot more freedom in doing the solo thing. It's almost like switching bands every time I do an album. Once this fourth one is out, I think it's going to be apparent that every record is not going to be the same.
I don't want people to expect the hard tracks to continue my whole career. When I started making music, I wasn't making music like that.
The expectation is this low, gravelly voice for John, but I went through his early recordings and there were songs in there where the voice was so different, I wasn't even sure if it was him singing, ... So it was interesting to me that we would see him develop the Man in Black sound. I thought it was really important that his voice change as his persona slowly solidified. The music was really the doorway into the character.
There are definitely confines within the style of Disturbed that we needed to stay true to, but we've always pushed that envelope. We always continued to develop with each successive record.
You continue to evolve with each album that goes by and, as an artist, you continue to expand with every recording project.
I would much rather hear a song that's written from a fresh perspective, using ideas that have existed in rock & roll for 50 years, than something that is incredibly abrasive to my ears but is new.
With 'The Theory of Everything,' it seems that people really like the voice I've found with the music, which is great. But I may not do that again. Every project is different.
