Stef Carpenter interviewed by "Guitar One" magazine June, 2000 <---> Chino's voice is much better on "White Pony": Stef: Chino's been able to sing like that since the day he got in the band; he's just never really believed in himself enough to do it. When it comes to writing songs for our band, everything I write is based on the fact that I know he can sing. So as a guitar player I'm not trying to say, "Check me out! I'm the guitar player." I write riffs that I know he can sing over, and that's really how we write songs. We all write music, based around riffs and little ideas here and there, so he can do his part. Everyone listens to vocals and pays attention to the singer, so, knowing that, we should make that part the best that it can be. Stef and Chino relationship: Stef: We shoot each other down left and right. That's all we do. That's like our band pleasure--brutalizing each other. We often verbally assault each other, but not in a hateful way, just to keep each other in line. And it was mainly me and Chino throwing down, because he and I are absolute opposites when it comes to music. He thinks a lot of stuff's really cheesy, and a lot of stuff he thinks is cheesy I really like, and vice versa. Stuff that he really loves, I'm like, "Man, that sucks!" So when we were writing, we said things like, "No, I don't really like that. I'm not gonna play it." There are at least three songs on our record that I didn't wanna play. But it wasn't because I hated the song. I was just thinking, "You're not accommodating what I wanna do, so why should I accommodate what you wanna do?" And that's the way it was from day one.