While WASP have often courted controversy, there can be no doubt that vocalist and mainman, Blackie Lawless, has written some deep and thought provoking music throughout his career. Whether new album 'Dying for the World' will form an important part of this impressive resume is still to be seen, but with the on sleeve recommendation that this is 'a collection of songs to go kill people with,' I can foresee yet more controversy stirring in the weeks ahead.

Your new album 'Dying for the World', I understand it was written mainly about September 11th.

"Well some of it was. 'Hallowed Ground' was based on my visit to ground zero. You know, one of the first things that hit me was the smell; if you have ever smelt an electrical fire, the way the wires have that real heavy acid smell. It was really thick, it was everywhere, I mean really, really strong and a few hours later I went for something to eat and it was draining from my nose and into the back of my throat and I could taste it in the food - it freaked me out, I had never experienced anything like that before and the song 'Hallowed Ground' came from that. There's a line in the song that say's "I've tasted Hallowed Ground" and that's literally what I mean. A couple of weeks went by and I started thinking, you know do I really want to do a record based on that, because that's an emotion talking and it's not logic. I thought 'What does this mean? Where are we going? Where's the future headed? Where's the world going?' and that's really the point of view that I thought I'm going to write from. In other words it's based more about the future than anything. I started thinking about a lot of things really, like the first Gulf War. I remember we were getting a lot of letters from the troops down there saying they were playing metal music in the tanks, and they'd got those big projection speakers on them that projected sound two or three miles away; one will be playing our music and another would be playing Judas Priest and they said when the Iraqi soldiers heard it they new what was on the other end of it, they new death was coming, which was an interesting concept. "You know John Major and George Bush senior had the chance to go out there and clear the whole situation up, and get rid of what I call those 'Hitler wanna be's' down there you know, and they wouldn't do it for what ever reason I don't know, but we are going to have to deal with these guy's eventually because we are dealing with a culture that's almost a Millennium behind the rest of us, you know 'everything western is evil.' "You know they were trying to run a plane into Parliament the same day they knocked out the Trade Centers. Anybody that would go in to attack the US or Britain, Germany or any where like that, think about the Balls that it takes to do something like that. You're dealing with people that are capable of anything. History teaches us that these are 'isms', whether it's communism, fascism, nazi-ism…those are all ideals and history has shown us that you cannot kill an ideal, the only thing you can do is kill the carrier. Think of it as smallpox, you may not be able to eradicate it completely but if you keep the numbers down then it's not so much of a threat. So that's what I was thinking about when I was making the majority of this record - the best defence is a good offence."

It's written on the sleeve of the album that it's a collection of songs to "go kill people with." So do you believe revenge and retribution is the way to deal this?

"Not revenge and retribution. If you look at this as if it was a plague, you know…keep the numbers down, although there is one song on there called 'Revengeance' and that was me giving into my emotional self-indulgence if you like. The rest of the album, you know like 'Stone Cold Killers' and things like that, when I'm referring to them as the 'Seed of Cain' which is what the Bible refers to them as. I'm looking at what's coming down the road because like I said when you start dealing with an 'ism' like this, they're not going to go away, anybody who's got the balls to do what they did you know, that's a force to be reckoned with. They have got this thing called 'knowledge through loss' which means they are willing to sacrifice numbers of people to educate themselves, and whatever it is they are trying to do and whatever their agenda is, we should have known when they blew up those Buddest Temples last year This is not just a Western problem, anybody who does not agree with their religious fanatasisms are on the shit list. So like I said, I don't see it as a point of retribution or redemption or revenge, or anything like that because like I said, that's thinking with an emotion. I'm trying to look at it from a point of view we say okay, what's done is done. We can't change it, what do we do to keep it from happening again."

How hard is it to still be creative when your writing after being in the business all these years?

"Well to be honest with you while we were making this record we were working on the next record at the same time, which is going to be a concept thing like the 'Crimson Idol' album, and it's probably going to be a double album. I don't know why but I think I'm in the most creative period of my life right now. People say to me 'How do you do it after twenty years?' I think the secret to it is whether the music is driven by passion or not, because if you are really passionate about something then you believe in it When you hear people talking about having 'IT' I think that's what they're referring to. You know, when you look at a performer and they seem self confident - and I don't mean arrogant - it's because they are passionate about what they do."

You produced this album. How long can you see yourself continuing in the business and would producing be something that you would like to get into?

"I don't know. The right band would have to come along and I'm so busy doing what I do… I'm kind of the dog chasing his ass right now, I just don't have time. To give you an example, if you think back to the 'Crimson Idol' record, we toured that record for a year and if this record ends up being a double one, I hope to have it out next year but wouldn't swear to that so if you take all that into consideration from this moment we are talking right now, we are looking at three years down the road so I don't even want to look beyond that but I would say as a blanket answer to your question, as long as I still feel passionate about what I say, I'll do it and when I don't I won't."

You said you were inspired by the Beatles' album 'Revolver' when you wrote the track 'Trail of Tears.' Why?

"Well when I was making the record I was listening to it a lot because I became intrigued with the idea of combining psychedelic elements with heavy rock because no one has ever done this before that I know of. So I started to get into it and it took my creativity to a place I've never been before and quite honestly that's where I'm going."

Would you agree that the album has returned to the old Wasp sound?

"I don't know because I'm looking at it from a whole different point of view, because I know what the influences were that created it, like the psychedelic influence which is really old so you're taking old and putting it together with some other contemporary sounds. It probably has a tendency to make it sound fresh, so old is new again as far as the production goes. I will tell you this, I mean I can't tell you if the record is any good at the moment because I'm too close to it right now, but I do know this, sonically this record kicks ass because we went back to using all analogue. The last couple of records were digital and I wasn't happy with it so we went back to the old fashioned way of making records and sonically it's just like this thing will beat you up. So that might be why you think it sounds that way."

Have you got plans to come over and tour this year?

"I don't think so, not this year because I want to go back to finish this other record that I'm working on, that's where my heads at right now. It's funny because I'm making two records at the same time, I've never done that before and there was a real tendency to want to cannibalise stuff from this other record and I really had to resist the temptation. So I think we'll wait until this album's finished and we'll do a much bigger tour, a world tour like we did with the Idol."