MTV: Can you elaborate on your other influences?

Scott: Earlier on, I had gospel and country influences, which is of course from my dad. As I moved on I didn't have a lot of records around the house, so I had a lot of '80s radio influences like Peter Gabriel, the Police and stuff like that vocally. And then as I got older and ran into hood thugs like [Chris], I was getting into Mötley Crüe and Black Sabbath and Ozzy and stuff like that, Randy Rhoads, and it's an eclectic mix, and we try to pull from all areas. ... "My Goodbyes" is kind of a tribute to my dad. He passed away in 1997. And vocally it's kind of a tribute to him 'cause there's kind of a country twist to it — maybe even on "Hollywood" [there's] a little bit of country sound. We're not trying to totally go that route, but our music is about freedom, and we're not afraid to paint with broad brush strokes and to do whatever pleases us. ... We pull from all of our influences.

MTV: Who brings the hip-hop into it?

D'abaldo: I can, musically, and he can rap — he can freestyle and rap.

Scott: He's a real percussive guitar player.

D'abaldo: I like a lot of Southern gangsta rap and Three 6 Mafia, Cash Money and all that. But anything else in the past 20 years is all an influence on me — rock and roll, whatever — but I use it to bounce. When I write a riff it has to bounce. If it don't bounce, then it ain't a Saliva song. It doesn't even become one.

Scott: I was lucky enough to grow up in an urban community in Memphis and be around rappers ... and stuff like that as well as being influenced by the stuff of that time, like N.W.A, the Beastie Boys and stuff like that. That was a heavy influence on my life. I never felt painted into a corner with one sound — I never wanted to just do metal or hard rock. I never just wanted to do hip-hop or rap, but I wanted to combine all those things and to see what we could come up with in the melting pot.

D'abaldo: We've got a lot to say.

Scott: To us it's not rocket science. Back in the '50s you had Chuck Berry and stuff like that, and you had great blues artists like Muddy Waters and then, boom, rock and roll. You know, one plus one equals two. So when you inundate kids through the '80s with metal and melodic radio like what was going on with Peter Gabriel and stuff like that, and then you come along with N.W.A, Beastie Boys, stuff like that, then there is going to be a collective sound of that genre coming out sometime. [RealVideo]

D'abaldo: There's a real cool thing that is going on right now with music buyers and music listeners — it's that everybody is getting into everything. .. You've got kids listening to rap, kids listening to a little bit of country, a little bit of R&B, and then some heavy metal or something like that. They're not scared to jump around. It's pretty cool. It's very cool.

MTV: Aside from the record, you've done some extracurricular work. You had a song on the soundtrack to "Dracula 2000" and on the "Tomcats" soundtrack, plus you also recorded a theme song for the XFL's Memphis Maniax, right?

D'abaldo: Yeah, [XFL founder] Vince McMahon had asked us to come up with a song. ... We're up to any kind of challenge, so we are into doing stuff like that. We love wrestling, we love the XFL, and we're happy that we got a team in Memphis. I go to as many home games as I can. [RealVideo]

Scott: It was pretty much overnight. They sent Bob Marlett down, our producer, and we jumped in the studio there in Memphis. They had some pieces of ideas that they wanted us to sort out, and we came up with our own little twist on it and we jumped into the studio with Bob and laid it down, and it sounds pretty phat. We want to put it on the second record. ... We kinda took a different approach, because we wanted to challenge ourselves creatively. It's not verse-chorus-verse, so to speak, like the normal formula of our songs. We took three main sound bites and kind of put it all together, just real intense. It just bounces, like a hammer. Kind of like a bomb.

D'abaldo: It's crazy, crazy.

MTV: What's it called?

D'abaldo: "Maniac." Every time Memphis scores or gets a first down or whatever, they play it, and it's real cool to hear your stuff in the arena.