So how's the tour going so far?

It's been going great man, tonight's going to be great, we love coming to Glasgow, it's one of our best towns.

This tour you're playing a lot more out of the way places. Do you prefer playing the smaller, intimate venues?

Well we love coming to the UK because it's always been a second home for us. This is our fourth tour on this record, Chasing the Grail, so we've played all the big cities, London, Manchester, Glasgow again, we also like playing, well, everywhere. Anyone that wants to see us we'll go play for them. We love big stages, we love small stages and everything in between. We just like playing.

This is your first tour with Paul DiLeo replacing Sean Delson on bass, only weeks after he joined the band. How's he getting on and has that made any change to the touring experience?

Amazing. Amazing. He's the missing piece of the puzzle that we never knew we were missing until we got him. His stage presence, his playing is so heavy and so good, his look, his personality, he's amazing, we're really excited, he's actually made us a better band just in the short time that he's been here. We're really, really lucky to have him.

You tour a lot, do you find touring is the only way for a band to stay financially viable these days? Is there just no money in record sales any more?

Yeah, records are more just a souvenir for your fans to accrue in any way that they want from the live show. It's one of those things that's a little bit of a drag because it has changed but there's other ways to make it worthwhile, as well as playing live we have a very great reputation for VIP packages, people get a lot of value for that, they enjoy coming, it's kind of a whole secret society of VIP members. So there's other ways to do it you just have to be smart but to us the music is just as important as it ever has been because that's what gets you on the map and even though people might not be buying the music they're still listening to it more than ever so you still have to put a lot of time and effort into making music and then make that pay off in other ways.

Certainly the period of time when it's been possible for band to get rich playing music has been very narrow, do you think that's over with the internet and things will balance out eventually and there will be other revenue streams for bands?

Well yeah, we're in a transition phase right now, the whole industry is, where there's still people like me who grew up buying the actual physical CD, record, tape, whatever it was and I'll always want to have that, I like looking at the cover, I like reading the liner notes, I like having it in my hand whereas our kids are just downloading, they download a song here, a song there, so I think in 20 years or 30 years the actual concept of an album might maybe disappear but there's ringtones and all these other ways you can make money off a good song. So it's just a weird time right now and that's not just for music it's for movies, DVDs, books. I think it's so handy just to have your iPod or Kindle or just go on Netflix, the whole concept of what a record store basically doesn't even exist any more. So that's sad in that case but as far as music being available it's easier now to get an album or song than it ever was, especially if there's only one song you want from a specific band, before you had to buy the whole record just for one song, which is better for the artists but for the fan now it's easier just to pay the 99 cents and get the one song.

What's the balance between covers and original material when you play live these days?

Oh we don't play any covers any more, actually we play one cover now which is pretty much like one of our songs anyway, it's so synonymous with us, Eat the Rich, whenever I hear it, if I hear the original version it doesn't even sound like the real song, it's almost like Van Halen and You Really Got Me or Metallica with Am I Evil, it's so synonymous with that band it's become one of their songs. So all the rest we play is all original stuff.

How do you prepare for a live performance? Do you have any pre-show rituals or warm-ups?

Just really extensive warm ups, especially on long tours like this and we have a reputation for doing a lot of shows in a row, this tour will be 13 in a row so I have to go down stairs and really start preparing warm-up wise, not talk very loud. I had a couple of vocal issues in the last couple of days from just being rough around the edges, just from the wear and tear of singing for an hour and a half every night plus the weather, plus being on the bus. So the best way to remedy that is you don't talk much all day, you keep your throat warm, drink a lot of liquids, take some anti-inflammatories when you need to and just hope for the best.

Especially coming to Britain, the cold air must hit you as soon as you get off the plane?

It it, it is, yeah. So sometimes too you have to transpose, maybe if you're going to go high on a note you might take it lower, where it's an odd octave lower to save that wear and tear too. So there's always a way to do it. In live rock and roll the beauty of it is it's more about the vibe and the energy rather than getting everything technically correct. You know what I mean? If you want it technically correct that's what a record's for, if you come to see a band live, especially a band like ours, we're very energetic and very intense, we're fun to watch, very crowd participation friendly. That takes precedent over anything else that we do on stage.

What's the song writing process like for Fozzy?

I write the lyrics then I give them to Rich Ward and then he starts constructing songs, riffs, ideas based around the lyrics that I gave him. So I gave him my lyrics maybe two or three months ago and he's been working on some ideas and he's some real great songs already and that's basically how it starts then he'll go take it, work with it, you know he writes the majority of the material, I just write the words.

What's your inspiration for the lyrics? Are there any themes you like to go back to?

Not really, I get intrigued by song titles, ideas that if I hear a certain title that's really cool I can write a song about that so I have a list of probably 40 or 50 titles that I write down in my iPod or iPhone and then when it comes time to write music, write lyrics, I'll take those song titles, think about it and just start writing whatever comes to mind. Some of them are more story friendly and some of them are more just about a vibe, maybe a little bit more of a mumbo-jumbo type lyric that doesn't make sense but does make sense, you know? So its a combination of all that sort of stuff and real life things too.

So there is going to be a new album quite soon?

Yeah we're going to record it in the winter and have it out next summer, next year and come back and play all the festivals over here and over in Europe again.

Finally, do you have anything you'd like to say to your UK fans?

The UK fans have always treated us so well and this is like a second home to us to we will continue to come back here and tour as many cities as we can, big or small, as much as we can for the duration of our career.

Thanks very much for talking to us.