By Martin Popoff
"I don't know. You know, the whole record was written from the point of view of thinking back to what happened in the Gulf War; all the guys, especially in the armored divisions, they were writing us letters telling us what was happening. The guys in the tanks have these bullhorn speakers and they project sound from the tanks up to two miles. They've got 1000 watt amps in them, and these guys were telling us that they blast metal music before they go into battle. They play F**k Like A Beast and Widowmaker in one, and the tank next him will have Run To The Hills blasting from it. They said the Iraqis would hear this stuff coming and they would freak, because they knew death was on its way. And they said the music really drove them crazy and I thought, well, after I went through the initial phase of kind of mourning if you like, which is what inspired Hallowed Ground, a couple weeks goes by, and then the anger sets in and I started thinking, all right, what's this all mean? You know why, which you said yourself, which is what you just asked, what's this all about? Is there any conclusion to this?
And the conclusion I came up with is that this whole situation over there is going to have to be dealt with, this being the Middle East. The first Bush had the opportunity to address the issue, 10, 11 years ago and didn't. And we're going to have to deal with it now. And quite honestly, it's really a situation where, and I don't know if you have the liner notes to the record, but one of the comments I made, is that basically what I wrote is an album to go kill people by. This situation is eventually going to have to be dealt with and it's not if, it's when. And I thought all right, for the next group of guys to have to go to war with this, I'm going to make them a fresh batch of songs to go kill people with. And I know that's a really, really harsh statement to make. I thought long and hard about it. Because, you know as controversial as the band has been and all that stuff, there's never been anything in my life or in my career, where I felt like I did about this one. Because the possibility of it being taken out of context and all that stuff, I thought to myself, do you really want to make this statement, is this what you want to say? And every time I would try to steer myself away from it, my raw emotion kept coming back to this. And there's a line I came up with in the notes; the conclusion that I came up with was 'f**k political correctness. That went down with the Trade Centers.' So I really thought long and hard about it. It's a really disturbing comment to make. Music to kill people with. That is the single most outrageous statement I've made in my career."
