YURI: Most interviews are very similar, but once in a while someone tries to pull something different out…they try to be funny or something.

VOX: Well, lets get it started…what got you into music, specifically drums?

YURI: Well, I met these guys in junior high school, who were playing in a band, and I actually thought bass guitar was really cool, and I asked my mother "Oh, can I get a bass guitar??" and she figured it would be too much money. She figured it was just a phase or something. So I had all these left-over laundry buckets in the garage, and I had some skateboard rails, and I started to bang away on the buckets, and I thought that was kinda fun…and Tom was a drummer as well at the time, and he was like, "You need to get a real drum set. Ask your mom." And so I was like okay, and I asked her, and she said yeah, but we had to strike a deal. I had to be in high school band, for the rest of school, if she was gonna buy me a drum set. That was one of the best things I could have ever done. It helped me so much, with stamina, being in a marching band. You’re walking for miles playing drums. Wearing that uniform, and I was playing quads, so I had four drums to carry.

That’s how I got into music. And I met Mike and Andy, the original guitar player, late in ninth grade, and they didn’t have a drummer, and I didn’t have a band, so it was perfect.

VOX: What kind of drums do you play?

YURI: I have three sets. I got a Slingerland endorsement, so I play Slingerlands live, but I also have an Ayotte, and I have a custom drum kit. This guy in Seattle, his name is Aaron Mlasko, he made it. So I have a Mlasko kit, and a Mlasko snare that I play all the time.

VOX: Growing up in a band, do you ever feel that there may be parts of life that you missed out on?

YURI: Nothing that I regret really. I mean, my girlfriend goes to college, and when I go visit her, it’s usually at college, so I kinda get to see what’s going on a little bit…I don’t have to do the homework, which is nice, bit I’ll go in her classes and sit there. And I’m just like…I didn’t particularly like school, like most people…I don’t think I really missed much. I’ve gotten to tour the world, which is what I wanted to do anyway.

VOX: Do you think that by growing up in the music business, things that you looked at one way when you were younger, you evolved with, just as the band has evolved – instead of saying "Hey, free sticks are great," now you have to look at contracts and the business side of it?

YURI: Yeah, you get to see that side of things, and it does change things a little bit. Yeah, things are different, and you get to see it deeper, how things work…and sometimes you can maybe be disappointed, because you know more than you would like to know.

VOX: How did it feel, the day you signed that first record deal?

YURI: It was exciting…very exciting.

VOX: The parting with Tooth and Nail (their former label) wasn’t necessary the best thing in the world.

YURI: For the relationship? No. It wasn’t. I mean, it was good to get on a major label. Global distribution. It gave us an opportunity to go to Europe, and to have our records out there. But yeah, there has been a lot of bad blood, I guess (between the band and Tooth and Nail).

VOX: Where do you see the band going from here? Say, in the next five years?

YURI: That’s hard to say. Because five years ago I wouldn’t have been able to tell where we would be now. So we’ll keep doing what we’re doing, and keep playing. Let it takes it’s course.

VOX: How has it been having the religious angle?