Elias Soriano: So far so good. Unfortunately the singer for Black Maria got a little bit ill, so we're hoping that he's feeling better tonight. Attendance has been great, the crowds have been real responsive, so another one under the belt.

PM: How's the crowd response been to the new material?

ES: Oh really good, really good. They're requesting a lot of new material. It's been going over real well. I think we're having a lot of fun playing the new stuff too, so it kind of translates over to the crowd.

PM: I noticed the setlist for the tour was more of a mix of new material versus old. Are you just getting tired of playing the old stuff?

ES: We've been touring so many years, people have seen that show so many times already. Now that we've got the new record, now's the best time to play all that new stuff.

PM: You played a benefit show in Ft. Myers for hurricane victims.

ES: It was awesome, it was sold out. I think we donated 600 or 700 CD's. We actually ran out of CD's, we weren't expecting so many people to show up, but it was really good. Something for all the people down south, the hurricanes hit really hard, so it's good.

PM: Favorite track to play live?

ES: I'm having a lot of fun with "The Wreckoning" and I like "Skin." A lot of the new stuff I'm really digging..."Alive and Kicking," "Skin," "The Wreckoning" those three are my favorites on the set.

PM: Robb seems like a such a calm guy off stage, but when he gets behind the kit he seems to go insane.

ES: Robb's a stick of dynamite, no doubt. Ready to go off at any time. He's the quiet...he's like that tiger, it strolls quiet because he knows if anybody pokes him he's going to completely destroy them. He's an animal that kid.

PM: The past two albums have been really kind of fast paced, more double kicks and such.

ES: Well, yeah, we've been enjoying our live show, and our live show is fueled on those moving tracks, so those are the ones that we like to write, now more so than ever. I think people have enough easy-going stuff to listen to, they need to get hit in the face a little.

PM: How's the new album sold so far?

ES: So far so good. It's only been out a week, but it's selling.

PM: What are some of the lyrical themes on the album?

ES: Pretty much the same...a lot of it is current events, to personal problems. I mainly write what's in front of me at the time that the music is written or I write something down and the guys jump all over it. The subject on this record has been aggression, more so than anything.

PM: Is it just me or have the past two albums been more political in tone?

ES: I think that politics now is a bigger subject socially. So it does take stage when I write lately, more so than ever. Also, I'm getting older, and you become more involved in politics when you get older. I never thought I would, but you eventually start noticing that there are ways of changing people's opinion and changing the way things are run by saying something or doing something.

PM: Is the album title "To The Pain" from the movie "The Princess Bride?"

ES: We get that question quite a bit.

PM: Oh, dammit, I thought I was the first to notice that. I suck.

ES: That movie made the phrase popular, but it's more about...we've been doing this for a long time, and we move a bit around on stage and we go pretty hard. People constantly ask us, how do we do it night after night. Sometimes you just do it til it hurts, regardless knowing whether it's going to hurt or not. So we take it to the pain every night.

PM: Is it a conscious decision to have a Spanish language song on the albums? Except for "Development?"

ES: If the music is written for it, the lyrics come out in Spanish. This time there are two tracks, maybe three that have Spanish lyrics or elements...I know "To The Pain" does, I know "Buscadome" does, I think another song does too. But it depends on how we're feeling. We don't sit down and consciously do anything you know. If Robb starts writing a Latin beat, then Latin lyrics just seem right for it. We do what's right for the music.

PM: Favorite track off the new album?

ES: I like "Shortest Ending," the last song on the record. That one was a lot of fun to write lyrics for, I really enjoyed writing the lyrics for that song.

PM: What's that song about?

ES: It's about how you wait so long to die and then it happens so quickly. That anticipation is your whole life, and at the very end it's just like [snaps fingers] so gone so quick. I lost some friends, some friends lost some friends this year, so for some reason death was a subject that kept coming up into my head. Between everything going on at labels and with rock music, it just seemed like a good subject to write about.

PM: With sites like MySpace, do you think it's important for bands to have a strong web presence with music downloading and all that?

ES: I think fans need to be more active. I think they've gotten very lazy to be honest. It's real easy to get music, and it's easy to pass up a show. To call yourself a fan of something means that you're supportive and you care enough about the music to support it. A lot of people saying they're fans of it aren't being supportive, especially when they're turning around and downloading music off of the Net for free. Bands do what they can, there's only so much we can do, playing 300 some odd shows a year, coming out to the merch table, we're constantly away from our homes and our families, and our lives to entertain people. It's up to the fans to keep us going.

PM: Do you think music downloading serves a purpose at all?

ES: Downloading only serves the purpose of stealing music. You are stealing music. If it was anything else that you'd worked a year and spent close to a million dollars recording...it's not like we just have that million dollars to play with, all that stuff has to get paid back. Bands don't eat until that stuff gets paid back. Just running online and grabbing it for free and saying you are a fan of the music is...you're not a fan of the music, you just like a song. If you're a fan of the band and you're a fan of the music then you'll be supportive of the band.

PM: Any bands you're digging right now?

ES: I like lots of bands, Head Automatica is a great band and should be blowing up, and isn't as well as I really think they should. Thrice is amazing, they should millions and millions deep. It's that demographic that downloads, and they have the most access. Ages 14-20, suburban, college, they're all downloading, everybody downloads, and that's the fan-base that supports this genre of music. Even in hip-hop, Mariah Carey just came off of 10 million records and this record she hasn't even broken two? She's got what, three hits on the Top Ten and they're saying downloading isn't hurting music? It's ridiculous. 50 Cent sold 11 million records and how many has he sold? Four? And he's the biggest artist in the world, and downloading isn't hurting music? That's bullshit, it's crap, it's a lie that all these Internet companies are saying that it isn't hurting music. There's no doubt...there used to be 10 major record labels and now there's three? And music hasn't changed in the last five years? That's garbage, and for anyone to see otherwise is just naive and stupid.

PM: Some of your main influences that you bring to the band?

ES: None.

PM: None?

ES: Don't bring any influences to the band. That's how we sound like us. That's the rule, #1 rule.

PM: Was that the general consensus when forming?

ES: I don't want to write anyone else's song, and I would hope that the guys wouldn't want to either. When we're sitting around writing we're consciously trying not to sound like other people.

PM: Any advice for upcoming musicians?

ES: Set the bar high. There's a lot of real stiff competition out there, so set your bar high.