VOX: Let’s start with how you guys came together…

JEFF HOLLINGER: We got started in 1998…we were watching a band and just said, "We can do this." We were watching a Rage [Against The Machine] cover…Rage are huge to us. It was just the four of us, without Carlos - he came in a few months later. Carlos plays bass. We played some parties, and the kids just liked it. Of course, it was 311, Rage, stuff like that we were playing. We decided to write original music from that point, and really become a band. So, we started rehearsing for a couple of months, and we decided we needed a bass player. The one we had was wanting to do it more for fun, and we wanted to be more serious. That day that we let our original, our first bass player, go, we found Carlos that night. He came over and jammed with us, and we were like, this is the band.

VOX: Has being in the band been everything you thought it would be?

JH: It’s weird, cuz we don’t really look at it like…it’s like, we’re more friends, and not like five guys who are out to get a record deal and do the whole music business.

VOX: How about touring?

JH: That’s the part that we love. We love the fans and the whole live show. We don’t really care about…I mean, we care about having a label and all that, but it’s much more about the live show and the fans to us. That’s what we care about the most.

VOX: Touring never gets tiring?

JH: After a month or two straight on the road, it gets to be like, "Oh, man!" Because you’re so tired, but we look at like it’s family on this bus, so we don’t get tired of each other. We try to find stuff to do in every city so we don’t get bored. It’s important to get off of the bus.

VOX: Where did the name come from?

JH: We had bought our some of our own equipment at the beginning, and we looked at the music as the "Shuvel" that was going to help us dig our way our of our debts. It stated out as this cheesy thing, and then we figured we would just keep it until thought of a better name, but it never got changed.

VOX: There seems to be this backlash in the media against the rap-rock genre. What do you think is going on with the genre?

JH: Well, I think it’s lost it’s edge and it’s intensity, from when it started. It was much more in your face and now it’s more hip-hop. More people are rapping now, and I look at Isaac and I as screaming it in your face so you can’t run from it anymore.

VOX: Why do you think it’s lost it’s edge?

JH: Fame. Fortune. It’s all about glamour and having people party and try to reach the high class. It’s not about the music.

VOX: You guys are focused on the music.

JH: Yeah. We care about our friends. Well, we call them friends, our fans. We have phone books we carry around, and when we hit town we have them come to the show and get them tickets. We’re not about celebrity. Once you get in the spotlight and become a rock star…we don’t even think about it. We want to stay level-headed and focus on our music.

VOX: How did being on Ozzfest change things for you guys?

JH: That was the change, I think. When, uh, we left for Europe right before Ozzfest, and we toured with Tommy Lee’s band, Methods Of Mayhem, we were playing big festivals, with lots of kids, and it was like nothing we’d ever seen. Maybe a little bit with the Kittie run before that, but that, Ozzfest was it. Touring everyday with Ozzfest, and we played off days with Soulfly and Incubus. We were very fortunate. We have so much more confidence walking on stage, which we didn’t have before the summer started. It was wild.

VOX: What were you guys trying to get across on the album? Was there a specific goal?

JH: We just wanted to make the record as much ‘us’ as possible, as live as possible. We didn’t put any candy stuff on there. It had to be raw and it had to be real.

VOX: How do you guys create?