SW: Seeing that you live in the US and all your band-mates live in Europe, it must be difficult when it comes to rehearsing for an upcoming tour or record.
DC: It's all about coordination and making sure everything is timed right. The guys are actually already rehearsing for our next concert tour which we start in Athens, Greece on March 1st. I rehearse with playback, and everyone just needs to know their parts. And when I get together with them I walk into the rehearsal room and we run through the songs, and then we can work on melodies and vocal backgrounds and all that. It's great that everyone is very professional, so I only have to worry about myself, which is always very reassuring. We just got to keep that line of communication open.

SW: Many people, especially Americans, don't realize the impact metal music has worldwide, especially in places like Brazil, Japan and eastern Europe where classic metal music still dominates. Does it differ playing in territories like Greece and Brazil from the western European countries?
DC: It varies from each country, You can definitely sense there's different emotions amongst the crowd, but in general, the people who come to see us, really want to see us. It's very rare you run into a mundane crowd, and that usually happens in Germany. There's a ton of, what we call "music police" in Germany...the guys who stand there with their arms crossed and nose in the air and they have this look on their face like "show me something new!" And, truthfully, we're really not doing anything new. We're just trying to reinvent what we know how to do. To me, I believe that every melody has been sung, every guitar lick has been played and every drum beat has been drummed...it's all basically the interpretation of the musicians and how they put it across. You may hear a ton of different influences, from Priest to Queensryche to Maiden, but it's how we use those influences and how we put it together. And I'm really hoping that this combination with this team of musicians will put us in the forefront. I never quit, and that's why I left the US in the first place - when I saw bands like Nirvana and Green Day taking over is when I left to go overseas.

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