We've done smaller tours at the beginning of records, we've done Lollapalooza , but this is our first real official AUDIOSLAVE tour.

And I think that on this record, we've accomplished the mission we set out at the beginning of the first rehearsals. And that was, not to just make the best Rage Against the Machine record, but to make the best Rage record by a wide margin. We've made the heaviest record to date and it's our funkiest record to date.

We were all against the war from the very beginning. But now, I think you're seeing more and more that Middle America is turning against the war for reasons that are described in this video. The real human cost, the human tally of this awful war is shown in a very subtle, very real and very humanistic way. That's why it has such a great weight to it, because it personalizes this tragedy that's happening halfway around the world.

It's not like we just changed a rapper for a singer, ... We happen to have one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.