Prong’s Tommy Victor on the New Self-Titled Album and Revisiting Cleansing

Well, Tommy, listen, we could go on all day about rock and roll legends, but welcome back to Metal Mayhem ROC.

We had you on the last time around during state of emergency.

So here we go again.

Good to have

you.

Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

So listen, you've been doing this now for, I think, about 30, 35 years.

But I want to start with something that has always fascinated me about your songwriting.

It's your lyrics.

They always struck me as super intelligent.

You use great words, and they're very carefully constructed.

And even when you're dealing with the real world, political differences, wars, things like that, you don't necessarily take the obvious and easy road.

And you don't tell your listeners what we should think.

but I'm always curious when you craft material, how do you decide what you want to say and how you want to say it?

It's a good question.

There's a balance between being too direct and then obscure.

I have to compare lyrics to the greats.

I mean, we keep going nostalgic in this conversation, but like the stones, for instance, like who knew that how, what they were talking about, like I was listening to, you can't always get what you want.

Uh, That always, that lyric and that song, along with Gimme Shelter, it sort of always moves me.

And I can't always get what you want, but you can try sometime.

So who knows really what it's about? And he talks about a guy, Mr.

Jimmy, in it.

Now, who is Mr. Jimmy? He's a guy that he met at a store.

So that vagueness leaves people open to their own interpretation, and that's important.