Yes, I was born in France. I lived there for a few years I guess until I was seven years old about and moved to Chicago. I lived there for a few years as well and I've been living for a while in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. That's where I met up with Cryptopsy and we formed an extreme metal band when I was 16 and I've been doing it ever since. There's been 10 different albums, different projects, and what have you, and getting to be where I'm at right now.

Have you worked with any other bands outside of Cryptopsy?

Yeah, just a few. Most were like projects. Sometimes it was for one or two gigs. Other times it would be just for little demos here and there that somebody wanted help on. Different styles. Some were metal, some were rock, and then I work a lot on stuff, some my own and practice on my own and stuff like that as well.

Why did you decide to pursue a career as a drummer and how did you get interested in extreme music?

I don't know. There was always something about drums. When I was a kid, I'd always bang on pots and pans and try to get empty coffee cans together. There's just something that interests me physically about the drums and I tried different instruments out. I tried the guitar, I tried the saxophone, and it was really the drums that awoke something within me but then I started at the age of 12 or 13. I didn't practice that much or anything. It was just more of a hobby type thing. Then I just got more and more into different styles of music. Started off like everybody else I would imagine with classic rock like Led Zeppelin and stuff like that. Then I just evolved. When I started hearing double bass drumming and a little bit speedier drumming, it just caught my ear and it was like a challenge. Everything else around started making sense as well as far as the music goes. I started listening to different heavier bands and just got progressively heavier and it was a challenge for me at first to hear and to wonder how these people played at such a tempo and kept everything tight and what have you. That's I guess where it all begins as far as the challenge goes and I was interested in the music. King Diamond, stuff like that. Slayer, Voivod, Iron Maiden at first and so on and so forth.

Do you prefer the double bass drum over the single?

Not where I'm at right now. To each their own I guess. I utilize double bass a lot in what I do but whether it be two bass drums or one bass drum and a double pedal or something like that or what have you, I guess whatever style of music demands the tools then apply the tools. In my kind of music, it's good to have two bass drums as far as speed and distinction between both feet. But for classical jazz drummers, it's not really necessary to have that. Having a double bass pedal on a single bass drum opens up your playing and opens up different realms that you can use your feet more in and you don't have to be in metal to use double bass. Any style of music can use double bass.

Have you kept the same kind of drum setup the whole time or have you changed it around a little bit?

It's changed around quite a bit. Also throughout the years of developing different techniques, I just changed drum sizes. Before it was more of the typical metal drums like big cannon toms and what have you and as I progressed and developed different styles and was interested in different genres of music, I basically really reduced the size of the toms so I could put them flatter and play them more like a jazz style so you can even do rim shots with the toms. Then I've kind of closed in my cymbals so they weren't so high and just made everything easier to reach. I change bits and pieces here and there every so often. For my Cryptopsy kit it's one thing but if I do other projects or what have you, I probably downsize it a lot and use fewer drums and probably a double bass pedal as well. It depends on the gig and it depends on the albums and from year to year things change.

Are there any pieces of gear that you'd like to see come out?

That's a good question. There's so many things that are being done right now. So many different equipment that are being tested and what have you that it's hard to say. I don't really see anything that I would absolutely need to make my playing that much better. Maybe more so in electronics and what have you. Maybe in the triggering system and the sampling system incorporating what I do in Cryptopsy. Maybe that's where I would see some changes and some new things but as far as the drums go, Pearl is just an incredible company who just comes out with new things all the time and Sabian as well. They come out with great sounding cymbals. I'm very happy with what I have right now I would imagine.

You put together a double DVD set on drumming and I read the press release on it. Why did you decide to come out with a DVD set and how long did it take you to it because it's really detailed.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of detail. A lot of people started asking me at the shows if I ever was going to come out with an instructional drumming DVD. The more I got the question the more I got into thinking this might actually be a good idea so I'm going to test the market and put an ad up on the Internet and see how many people would actually be interested. So I did and I got an amazing number of responses and people asking "I'd like to see this and I'd like to see that" so I even write in the DVD too that most of the material covered is material that was requested by different fans on this market study. I just started compiling different footage that I would film at shows or special events that I would do. It took me about two and a half years to do that and then to record the studio stuff and the instructional stuff and I put it together with my web designer. It was a two man job that took us a while but we really wanted to make something that would look good and sound as good as possible. It's not Pro Studio. It's not crane cameras and the best quality but we tried to make something that was the best we could and the most instructive and entertaining as well. I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Has there been a really good response to it?

Yeah, it's doing very well. It's selling very well and the critiques are really good and people dig it. That's what I guess they wanted to see from what I can gather from the information we collected so yeah, people seem to really like it.

Well, everyone I talk to thinks that you're the most awesome fucking drummer out there. That's a quote by the way. "He's the most fucking awesome drummer out there."

I hear it sometimes. It's flattering. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I know I want to improve on and that I want to touch on but yeah, it's nice to hear that in the field of extreme metal drumming I'm pretty well recognized. That's a good feeling.

Not only that but your range of music is very varied. It's not even tapped into just one thing.

Yeah, that's what we like and that's what I find interesting about playing our music is that there is no limit to it. I don't understand some bands that do put limits or that restrict themselves to just a certain thing. If you can go all over the place and still make it happen and can still pull a song together then sure, why not? Incorporate jazz, incorporate Latin, incorporate a whole bunch of different genres of music and make it into metal. For us it's fun to do and we wouldn't have it any other way. We don't want to do something that's straight forward and linear. We like to dabble around.

On January 22 you're going to be performing at the NAMM show in L.A. What type of performance are you going to put on?

I'm not even sure what they want me to do. They said at first take about six minutes to pull off a solo or something like that and then they said it might be a little bit longer so I don't know. I might just pull off a 10 minute solo like the one that I have on the DVD. I've been dabbling around with the same format for a bit to promote the DVD so I might do a solo that encompasses pretty much all the things that I do and then we'll see. I think it's going to be in an isolation booth and it's going to be projected. It's not like you can really interact too much with the public. I guess time is pretty limited. I'll ask them when I get there. I'll wing it if I have to. I'll try to pull off a nice little solo.

You guys just recently put out a record called Once Was Not. Tell us a little about the record and how it's doing.

Yeah, sure. It's been a while since we put out a record because we had a few different lineup changes and different reasons why we didn't come out with it. We finally recorded all the material last summer and I wanted to make it something really, really special and kind of conceptual and use a lot of different samples and a lot of different styles and feels. It's something that we enjoy very much. It's something that we've never really heard before, not only from ourselves but in the genre of music. It really goes different places and it's really detailed. It takes people a long time to get used to as well because there's so much detail in the music. It was a lot of fun and it's doing quite well. It's our fifth studio album with Cryptopsy so we're going around the world to promote it. We're doing Europe at the end of the month.

The Domination tour.

Yeah, I guess that's what it's called. Yeah, the Domination tour. Sure. We didn't pick it. Then probably doing Australia and there's been a few I guess Asian countries as well and probably doing another North American tour later on this year as well so we put it out and tour it. That's what we do.

You mean you don't pick these wonderful names for your tours?

No, it's the tour booker that does all that but hey, we'll go with it. Sure.

We'll dominate the world, no problem.

Sure, sure.

Is there a particular drum sound on LP or CD that you like?

I don't know. My taste for drum sounds changes quite often. There's one I really like from a band called Candiria.

Those guys are cool.

Yeah, from New York. Really nice guys, really cool guys. Their latest album, What Doesn't Kill You...Will Only Make You Stronger, the drum sound is just amazing. The playing, first of all Kenny is an amazing drummer but his drum sound is really good. It sounds really big and round and has nice overtones so I really like drum sounds like that. I like a lot of what Sting has done and recorded. It sounds great as well. I don't know, it varies. I like Dave Matthews Band. Carter Beauford's sound is really nice and sharp and clean. It really depends.

Any other thoughts or comments?

Thank you very much for the support and I hope to see the fans that listen and read what you guys write about go to the NAMM show if they have a chance.

Cryptopsy