RATT guitarist Warren DeMartini is featured in a new interview with Mark Morton at the Heavy Metal Examiner. DeMartini discusses the band's new album, Infestation, working with Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow, and rails against VH1's disrespectful Behind The Music special. An excerpt is available below:

MM: I don’t know if it was something you were conscious of, but I noticed too, that when listening back through the Ratt catalogue, the more that outside writers became involved (be it Beau Hill, Desmond Child, or whomever), it seemed like the albums became less and less focused.

DeMartini: "There was a big difference between making records like the Ratt EP (1983) and Out of the Cellar, when no one knew how well Ratt could do or how valuable Ratt could be, compared to doing records after that point. It just completely changed the game. And that was something that we weren’t necessarily expecting. We ended up with more fingers in the pie, so to speak. And the longer it went on, it became more of a tangible commodity. Add that to the breakneck tour schedule that the band was doing – we were doing a record, then a tour, then a record, then a tour – it got more and more difficult to form the ideas than when we had enough time before the band got busy. And that was one of the challenges we didn’t always win, looking back. I think the stuff still stands up, but I can hear what you’re talking about. It’s definitely obvious when I look back at the way Infestation was recorded. There is one track on there that our producer, Michael Baskette started. But other than that, every song is completely written by the band. It seems like with Ratt, leave it alone and give it enough time to set up, and something interesting will happen."

MM: And that’s what really shocked me when listening to Infestation; not only is it good music, but the band members’ individual performances sound like there really is this renewed energy – like the batteries are recharged, and you’re ready to take over the world again. Two of the elements that immediately leapt out at me were how tight Blotzer’s drumming is and how strong Stephen Pearcy’s vocals have become.

DeMartini: "Yeah! And it’s truly where we were, because we’ve come full circle. We were coming from a similar place that we were when we did the EP and Out of the Cellar. No one was really aware that we were doing it at all, which gave it a detachment from anything that we had to be."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Infestation has landed at #5 in the Japanese album charts. This comes on the heels of their North American chart entries: #55 in Canada and #30 in The United States.

Infestation is Ratt's first studio album in 11 years. The current lineup of Ratt features singer Stephen Pearcy, guitarist Warren DeMartini, drummer Bobby Blotzer, bassist Robbie Crane and new guitarist Carlos Cavazo (ex-QUIET RIOT).

To view Ratt's tour schedule, visit the band's official MySpace page.