MTV: Can we talk about the song "Death Day"? I was a little creeped out when you started talking about killing your girlfriend. Maybe you should put it out there, what the song is about, so nobody gets the wrong idea?

Mitchell [jokingly]: No! Go kill your girlfriend! Please.

Cosgrove: You wanted to make a girlfriend coat, right?

Mitchell: Yeah. I thought, you know, with fashion being as it is — always changing, ever-changing — I thought a nice girl jacket would be cool.

MTV: Was she the inspiration for the song?

Mitchell: I remember playing the guitar and singing these goofy lyrics and the phrase came out ... I was thinking of James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" ... and I just thought, maybe Papa's got a new body bag instead, and then we just started messing around, me and Terry in my backyard.

Corso: I think it's kinda like when you get in an argument with a loved one or a boyfriend or girlfriend and at that moment, when you're just totally not coming together and you're just yelling at each other, at that moment you want to kill someone.

Mitchell: Like, "Man, I wish this person ..." You obviously wouldn't want anyone to die —

Cosgrove: Except your girlfriend.

Mitchell: I mean, it's totally tongue-in-cheek. But it kind of rides that line of whether it might be too much or not. It's cool; if we get any kind of notoriety for it or any kind of controversy from it, then that's awesome. That's what it's supposed to do.

Corso: People can make up their own ideas [about it].

Mitchell: There are artists going way further than that, and we're definitely not trying to be cool.

Cosgrove: We could have cussed.

Mitchell: Yeah, we could have cussed. There's not one cuss word on our whole record.

MTV: Did you avoid cursing on purpose?

Corso: We didn't want the little sticker.

Cosgrove: We did it for the environment. ... We hate those little stickers.

Zamora: We didn't want anyone messing with our music.

Mitchell: Cussing ... it's kind of boring.

Corso: Everybody does it. We're not everybody. We don't want to be like anyone else.

Zamora: The last thing we want is one of those shuu or beep or anything like that in our songs; we didn't write it that way.

Cosgrove: And all of our songs are going straight to radio.

MTV: You're on the road with Linkin Park and —

All: Taproot.

Cosgrove: Tap Rizzy.

Corso: Taproot keeps coming on our bus and stealing our beer.

Zamora: Actually, we've been stealing theirs.

Cosgrove: We only get a little bit of beer and they've got a lot more beer, so we go and help them.

Mitchell: Linkin Park really digs it when I get naked in front of their bus, and our crew throws fireworks at me when I'm naked.

Zamora: He does a little thing called the Metronome. You can figure it out. You know what a metronome is?

MTV: Yes, I do.

Cosgrove: It's totally in time, too.

MTV: Aren't you guys on the Vans Warped Tour as well?

Mitchell: We'll be with Papa Roach for like three months before that, though.

Zamora: Raid the Nation Tour.

Mitchell: Ants and Roaches.

Zamora: Ants always come first.

MTV: It helps that when Papa Roach first started to hit, [singer] Coby [Dick] would run his mouth off about all the bands that he loves.

Mitchell: It's awesome. That's something you couldn't pay money for. We are very fortunate for that.

Cosgrove: And it's good for music. It brings back camaraderie, just backing each other and stuff.

Mitchell: Yeah, no more music gangs.

Corso: We're all in the same gang.


Going to the "Movies," getting passed over by every label and getting heavy next time ... NEXT >>>