Metal Assault's Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal has issued a new interview with FOZZY's Rich Ward, Sean Delson and Frank Fontsere. The following is an excerpt:

Q: A couple of things about the latest album, Chasing The Grail, fascinate me. One is the balled 'Broken Soul' and the other is the 14-minute song 'Wormwood'. What were your thoughts when you went in to record those tracks?

Rich: "We actually wrote and recorded those songs separately. That's what happens when I live two hours away from Sean and Sean lives eight hours away from Chris Jerico (laughs). We're so spread all over that basically what ends up happening is we'll write the skeletal structure of the songs and then mp3s get passed around. Everyone has their own home studios and everyone works on their little parts. Then Sean and I would go down to Florida to our studio where we've recorded all of Chris's vocals and Sean's bass. All the guitars and drums were done up in Atlanta. So it was a bit of a piece-together. It's part of the compromise of being in Fozzy. The main focus of our lives has been STUCK MOJO for 20 years, that's been our main band. And then Chris is a wrestler. So we really have to work hard at our Fozzy quality time. Schedules are hard to make things work together because you can imagine how hard it is to work around Chris's schedule. He's on the road five days a week and then he has a family at home. Sometimes he's gone for two to three weeks on overseas tours. So it's hard to make it work and you've just got to be willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done."

Q: You [Rich] produced this album yourself. How did that whole process go and what difference do you think it makes when a band member is also the producer?

Rich: "Because I recorded so many albums with other producers, I had the benefit of looking over Andy Sneap's shoulder for five or six albums. We've been close friends for years. Then we did SHINEDOWN and a few other bands. It's a learning process like anything else. It's like when you pick up a guitar and learn to play it, there has to be somebody in your neighbourhood who can play good and you go like, 'How do you do that?' So I started learning and part of the process for Fozzy is, because we can't do a traditional album where we all get into a studio for a month and record, it's impossible to hire a producer. If I wanted to hire Andy Sneap to produce the new album, how would that be possible? It's not that I'm insecure about my producing abilities. It's just that I became the producer of the band based on necessity. It's like when Stuck Mojo first formed, the only bands I had ever played in were two-guitar bands and then I met these guys. We said ok let's do this really cool rap/rock/metal band. The other two guys in the band said, 'I don't want to have two guitar players!' I said I'm not a lead guitar player and it was like 'Oh you are now then!' Sometimes life is best when you are forced into it like the mama bird kicking the little baby out of the nest. That's the best way to say I'm going to do this. 'Have to' is a good thing in life. Otherwise we'd just sit in bed all day long, eat pizza and watch crap TV."

Read the complete interview at this location.