What have you been doing since 1993?
- After Shotgun Messiah came to a halt, the guitarist and I parted company to see what else was out there. I wanted to see what I could do without band and label pressure. I'd actually been doing it for a while, but I'd never played it for anyone or shopped it around. I just did a bunch of songs and put them on tape. I've always been interested in manipulating electricity and sound.

The bio said you've also done some remixing for Prong, Drown, and Nature.
- I'm not really a big-name guy. I don't make a lot of money, but I'll take the track and see what I can do with it. I listen to a really wide variety of music, because if you break it down into components of sound, there are some really great production talents doing some amazing things in places where you might not expect. I like to combine some of the high-level, extremely fine-tuned experimental sounds with the straight-out guitar-into-amp, amp-into-mic, mic-onto-tape organic approach. I occasionally venture toward early Skinny Puppy, and try to suppress my ambient tendencies as much as possible; I'm a closet techno fan actually. But I'm primarily song-oriented. I think it was 'Never Mind The Bollocks' that did it to me. I think ABBA writes great songs. And now, technology being as cheap and accessible as it is, you can pretty much record it in your bathroom.

It still comes down to the same thing it'll always come down to: can you write a good song?
- Exactly. Now that everyone has the same presets, the same packaged loop CD_ROMSs, whammo!, you too can play White Zombie songs. But you don't have Rob's writing and voice. You still only have a fraction of what you need. Production has no relevance by itself. You'll always need songs.

Did your time in Shotgun Messiah help you write these songs, or did it stunt your growth in any way?
- First of all, I wouldn't have been stateside. I also wouldn't have been down and out for several years on the streets of Hollywood. I would have had a nice little house with a nice picket fence and a happy wife somewhere in the Swedish countryside. So no, I wouldn't have been able to write those songs.

So what were your choices? Goat herding? Paper mill?
- Goats? You've been watching too many movies. I almost got stuck at the Volvo production plant. Oh yeah, you've got some nice Volvos driving around here with my initials carved into the cylinder. I used to split them too, but that was more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. I still have one muscle in my back, my Volvo muscle, that hurts really bad every time I bend to pick something up. Yeah, it was hell basically.

You're in a situation with RCA where you can create the music and packaging to your ideals?
- It's RCA, Elvis's label, for godssake! There are some people that are pretty cool and all, but it's a record label - they all sold their souls long ago. Evil, evil corporate shit, the same as any industry. I talk to as many people with the broad backgrounds within music as possible, and it's all the same fucking thing. I go backstage to a rave hoping to find peace, love, drugs and happiness and I find the same backstabbing industry crap. It's probably the same at a promotional event for Diet Pepsi; it's the greed industry.

You just lost any potentional Pepsi Generation sponsorship, huh?
- There are only a few endorsements I'd do; guns, alcohol and chainsaws.That's where I draw the line. No hot dogs, no soft drinks, no bullshit. Oops, I'd do cigarettes too. I only forgot to mention them. Only the real, important things in life.

Scott Hefflon