The last time I saw you guys, you were opening for Pigface. I guess we'll need to catch up from there...

We've done three albums since then, on three different record labels.

Three albums on three labels? What happened with that?

Well Manson's label went out of business. Reality Entertainment went out of business, as a record company. Cement Shoes went out of business. And here we are, we're on Driven Music. Hopefully they won't go out of business!

Have you thought about doing anything independently, on your own?

Yeah, we did an acoustic EP on our own. And that actually worked out pretty well for us. I toyed pretty heavily with the idea of trying to raise investors, but at the same time I didn't want to take too much time to have to do that. I thought I had it all lined up and, of course, at the last minute it all fell apart. Going with a more traditional label seemed like a better thing to do at the end of the day.

Yeah, you'd get a little bit of backing and support that way.

Yeah, if I couldn't get individuals to directly do that... At least going with a label that's headed up by an artist is a good situation. Artists would have that understanding of one another.

Did the labels fail because they weren't getting it done for the artists?

That's hard to say. For Cement Shoes Records, I'd say definitely. The label was... yeah. Y'know, I hate to say bad things about people, so it's probably better that I don't even get into that. We're really happy where we are now. Everything that happens to you happens for a reason. I think that those were all learning processes for where we're at now.

Are you pleased with the new label so far?

Yeah, absolutely.

Where did you record your album?

We recorded it at my studio. It's where we've done the last two albums. It's in North Hollywood.

Are you going to tour for this album?

Yeah, but we probably won't until January. Right now, there's talk of a label tour with Head and Crossbreed and Godhead. We're doing an LA show soon, we'll probably do some other shows, but as far as a full-on coast-to-coast tour, that's early next year.

Are you still using the same lineup?

Everyone except the drummer. We seem to go through drummers a lot. I don't know what it is. It's a Spinal Tap thing: one exploded, we had to fire one, another one found Jesus. Really it just blows your mind.

Are you writing most of the music on the creative end? Or...

It's really the three of us. Ullrich and Mike and I have been in this band together for twelve years now. I still write all the lyrics and the bulk of the melody lines and some of the riffs. And everyone else contributes in turn. We decided on this record to give ourselves each one-third of the songwriting credits, because that's our overall feeling on our contributions. We didn't want to nit-pick about who wrote this and who wrote what exactly, we'd just give ourselves a third across the board instead.

Around the time of the Pigface tour, we were talking about the internet explosion and the rise of mp3s, how has that affected your band since then?

Things like iTunes are ultimately helpful to the artist. Music is going completely digital as far as distribution is concerned. Our new album came out yesterday and gone are the days when there are a million copies on the shelf. Most outlets are only going to buy two or three copies per store and unless you're Metallica or Hanna Montana, they're not going to have that much room for you.

So you've done a digital release on your own?

Yeah, the acoustic album, we used TuneCore to put it on iTunes and Rhapsody. We also printed physical cds to sell through our website. For the unplugged cd we were also on tour with Jonathan Davis of Korn, an unplugged tour, and we ended up selling several thousand copies of that. It turned out well for us. Then when we signed with Driven, they bought the rights to the EP. Which was kind of nice, because next year we'll be releasing it as a concert DVD, which will also be available online. I think that in the future, we'll always print a limited number of physical cds, just so you have something to sell and sign on tour. Obviously, more and more people every year are just buying their music digitally. It’s kind of sad, because everyone likes that cool artwork and something physical to hold in their hand. But at the same time you're not wasting space, so what are you going to do?

Speaking of artwork, the cover for "At the Edge of the World" doesn't look much like typical Godhead, it looks more metal. What's the inspiration behind this?

That cover is total Iron Maiden! If you see the complete artwork, there's an eight-page foldout with art on both sides that just looks really beautiful. An artist friend of mine named Mr. Sam Shearon did this thing and it is completely amazing. The idea was, I told him that I wanted to have a tribute to the old maps where people thought the world was flat and you're just falling off the edge of the world; there’d be a ship falling off the edge with the warning "Don't go here. Here be monsters." The way he interpreted it was just amazing, he's an incredible artist and I hope you get to check out the whole thing.

What else do you have going? Are you working on music 100%?

No, no. Since moving to LA, I've really developed this second career as an actor. Mainly voice acting, but I've been in over thirty anime productions. I've been in eight movies...

Which movies?

There're two movies I've been in that play on cable all the time. The first is called "The Curse of El Charro," the second one is "Danny Roane: First Time Director," that one is always on Comedy Central. It was an Andy Dick Movie. I produced five songs for the movie and when he found out I was an actor, he put me in the movie too. Which was nice.

And you do anime voiceovers?

For anime and for original animation too. There's a show on Nickelodeon called "Avatar." I've done six episodes of that show. I mainly played the bad guys in an episode. I didn't play a recurring character, but I can change my voice quite a bit so I always ended up playing three different characters in an episode; like random thugs or guards. The creators of "Avatar" did have a little fun with me. In the second season there's an episode called "Avatar Day" and they made a character look just like me and had me do the voice for it. Avatar gets thrown into prison and in the prison there's a prisoner who gives him advice and stuff like that. First he's really scary and then he's really nice; it’s funny if you go back and look at if because it looks exactly like me.

I'll look for that on DVD....

But also, like tomorrow I'm working over at Warner Brothers on the Wonder Woman animated series. I'm playing some bad guys who (tough guy voice) "try to get Wonder Woman!" But it's been fun! I also coproduced and starred in a short called "Everyday Joe." We just won an award last weekend. We won the Audience Award at the Valley Film Festival. So... you're actually talking to an Award-winning filmmaker! (laughter) And we're going to put that on iTunes soon because there's a section on iTunes for award-winning shorts, and I think we qualify now.

Any other movies you have coming up that you'd like to mention?

There's one coming out on the Sci Fi Channel called "Battle Planet." That's a pretty cool sci-fi movie. Oh man, I did this one movie called, get this, "Fingerman: Dr. London and the Triangle Force." (laughter) I played Dr. Isosceles in that! I think that's available for rental. I'm like the Straight-to-DVD guy, I even had a small part in, it was for fun, I played a zombie in the "Day of the Dead" remake.

The one that went straight to DVD?

Yeah! I was like, "Oh cool, I finally get to be in a movie that actually appears on the big screen," and then "Straight to DVD!" Technically the short film I did is the only one that's been on screen. I’m still waiting to get in an actual movie that actually gets screened. Either way, I'm still getting paid, but I’m missing that sense of accomplishment. I had a couple of close calls! I was up for a part in "Death Race;" y'know, you get called in, you read for it, you get called in again and you think you're going to get it and you don't get it. I was also up for a recurring part in the show "Heroes" as a villain. So you know what? I'm getting closer and closer, I know one of these days I'm going to get something good. And the greatest thing is that I'm really doing it for fun. Taking that drive to be an entertainer to the next level. But it's really something that I'm just doing for fun on the side. Being a musician, that's in my blood, it's my main focus. But I just figured, "Hey, while I'm out here, there're so many facets of the entertainment business in LA, I might as well explore it."

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