Quotes from Danny Carey

We toured for close to three years after 'Undertow' came out, so by the time we started to work on 'AEnima,' we had matured as functional musicians, and that changes your sound completely. Once you have that kind of freedom, an idea will come into your head and you can do it justice.

Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo - those guys are a good, heavy influence.

Before 'AEnima,' we were just following our gut. There was a lot of anger in the air and we never tried to control that. But just as we mature as humans, with 'AEnima' we tried to be fueled more by spiritual ideas or more of a conscious mode of aiming things in the right place or trying to take more responsibility for our art.

The sincerity of delivery is what always strikes me when I hear a good band. It's artist-expression driven, as opposed to being record-producer driven. There's a huge difference. One's motivation is impure, while the other is the highest form of expression, so that's what you aim for.

You can equate our music to childbirth. It's brutal and harsh, but there's still a beautiful thing occurring.

It's pretty weird to me that our music is as popular as it is.

The thing is, the way we write is all jams and bits and pieces that get pieced together and sometimes things are written with intentions of being a song, and then all of a sudden the main riff of this song, six months later turns into a verse or a chorus of another song.

It takes us long for a reason, but the end result is: we all completely believe in, not just every verse, every chorus, every bar is scrutinized, and that's the result of what you'll hear on this record.

No one can be their best every night.

Our fans are loyal as can be, that's for sure.