I don't think we realized how far gone we were in people's eyes, ... We pretty much had to prove ourselves over again, from our fans to people in the music industry. It's been an uphill fight. Nobody handed anything to us on this record.

I don't think we realized how far gone we were in people's eyes. We pretty much had to prove ourselves over again, from our fans to people in the music industry. It's been an uphill fight. Nobody handed anything to us on this record. It's been us just slugging it out in the trenches and playing shows and proving to people every day that this band is legit and we're not going away.

For us, selling a million records in 2005 is the equivalent of selling 2 to 3 million records (five years ago). Rock records aren't flying off the shelves like they used to. Hip-hop and pop are so huge. (But) everything's on the upswing for us.

With the single crossing over to pop radio, it's bringing out new people to the shows. We've got all our metal kids and punk kids who still love us. And then we've got the average joes coming out. We call our fans the 'mixed nuts' because it's all kinds of people out there.

We really refocused ourselves. I didn't want to live my life in a dark shadow all of the time.

We were 6 feet under. A lot of people gave up on us, including fans and critics and show promoters and record labels.