BraveWords.com recently caught up to wrestling legend Chris Jericho, but in his other guise, as lead singer for FOZZY, a band now serious into their serious music-making, long past their classic metal covers past and into a masterful new record called Chasing The Grail.

BraveWords.com: What is the mission of this new Fozzy record versus All That Remains? What are you doing differently here?

“Well, this is our fourth record, and in a lot of ways it’s basically our second record, because it's the second all-original record we've done. It's also the first record that Rich (Ward) and I had written from scratch together. In the past, on the stuff we did, he would have some riffs, and I would have some lyrics that I kind of worked with and messed around with, and this time I wrote about 14 or 15 sets of lyrics, I gave them all to him, and he started constructing his riffs and song structures based on my lyrics. And as a result, it's much more cohesive; it tells much more of a story than All That Remains. That album was more of a pastiche, a patchwork sort of record, whereas this one tells a story all the way through. Also there was no rush. The last one was more like, okay, I've got to get it done in a month, get it done in two months. Now it was more like do it until it feels right, where we’re feeling it, and go from there. So that's the big difference right off the bat. And we’re using some of our influences we never used before. As soon as we started doing the record, I always want to do a long song. I was always a fan of ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Keeper Of The Seven Keys’, and that was my only mission, that there has to be a long song on this record. That was kind of a mission of mine before we got started.”

BraveWords.com: And in what way is it one long story, a concept album?

“Well, I mean, it's not really a concept album per se, that the lyrics match up or anything along those lines. But I mean, in this day and age, when the actual animal of an album is becoming extinct, we want to make… the next record might not be an album anymore. It might just be, ‘Release songs as you complete them.’ But I mean, it starts early, and it kind of harkens back to the old days of an IRON MAIDEN record or a METALLICA record, where you start out, grabs you by the balls, there would be a little thrash at the beginning, and kind of a heavier second one, and the middle section would experiment; that's kind of the direction we wanted to go in, do some of the more experimental things in the middle and wrap it up with a couple of heavy metal ones at the end, actually three heavy ones at the end. So it was kind of the idea to make it a 65 minute experience rather than just a bunch of songs put together.”

BraveWords.com: So why the title Chasing The Grail for this?

“Well I wrote the song ‘Grail’ a while back, and originally wanted to call the album Wormwood, and I thought that was a cool title, and Rich didn't think it was cool, so we jockeyed a few titles back and forth. But you know, Chasing The Grail is tremendous, because I mean, it can mean a lot of different things. Because everybody has a different grail in their life that we’re chasing after, whether it's a job or a car or a girl, whatever it may be. So it's something that can relate to everybody that is out there, and everyone who checks out the record.”

BraveWords.com: And just to point out a couple of songs, I know that ‘Martyr No More’, and ‘Let The Madness Begin’ are picked as singles. Why those songs? What is the magic of those songs?

“Well, the one thing about Fozzy which isn't really out there right now, which is very heavy music with melodic vocals and great harmonies and great guitar work and stuff like that - there aren't a lot of bands that are doing that right now. And I think ‘Martyr No More’ is a perfect representation of a really heavy, modern-day SABBATH/Metallica riff, with great melodic clean vocals to go with it. So we thought that would be a song that would appeal to most. You can have it rip right off the bat and get into it with ‘Madness’ too; it's a great metal Zeppelin-type vibe, and ‘God Pounds His Nails’ is another song people are getting into, which is kind of like THE CULT on steroids. That's the thing about this record. There are about four or five songs that different radio programmers could play. A lot of guys are playing ‘Under Blackened Skies’ as well. That's Eddie Trunk’s favourite. So there's a lot of different things to choose from, and that's the sign of a great record.”