Well, we're a small band, from a small country who released their 2nd album midyear, we knew the risks and were ready to "take the hit" for our hastiness and we're quite frankly amazed by the magnitude of Chain Reaction's release. The responses are amazing both local and worldwide, the reviews are great and sales and support has never been higher. It appears we made a real impact and we're absolutely honored and grateful.

I'm afraid it's much more technical than spiritual. We felt it was time to make a new album; we set a budget, dates and started working. I always start with the music, riffs and structure, so after I composed a song, I sent the sketch to the band, they gave me their notes and ideas and when the sketches were ready we tweaked and arranged them in the studio together, only then did we start working on lyrics. I'm not a spiritual person, for me it was a struggle with reason, coherence and a mild case of OCD.

There's no concept, and we definitely didn't try or want to emphasize anything, and yet when I think about it, the lyrics are very emotional. I don't want to affiliate the rest of the band with my notions of the world so for me, all the songs (except for one, which was actually written as a fun escape from all the seriousness) speak about what I hate in this world, our species, society and history - what makes me angry.

I can't go into the specifics, but things are happening, both in Europe and US and we're all very excited.

There are two actually. Every Time She Smiles and Children Of Red.

Every Time She Smiles is my favourite song and is the first song I composed that actually made me proud of myself. I think the human race needs a restart, re-format of sorts, and the notion of a bright light, a super-nova that will carry our particles, our works of beauty to a new, better place is just so beautiful.

Children Of Red is also very emotional for me, and combines a real cry to liberate North Korea with my hate for Communism and the dictators it produced. It's also the only song with a clear political agenda.

That's an interesting question. Unique or not, it's not ours to say, it's the fans, the concert-goers and the music lovers. I guess we will always be a bit out of place, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are those who said the new album isn't Progressive Metal anymore, and I tend to agree with them, it's a mixture of ideas and inspirations from all the artists we love and listen to everyday, most if not all aren't progressive metal. But then again, maybe it's time to redefine what progressive music is.

It's always so hard to answer this type of questions since there are so many and yet you can't put them all, and each has its own unique contribution.

I guess I would have to say, for me, it was Devin Townsend, Tool, Radiohead, Machine Head and Muse who were the major inspirations, but for us as a band, there were also Periphery, Opeth, Porcupine Tree and Meshuggah who inspire us and we all love.

Not at the moment. We're currently working on perfecting our live show.

Yes! November 4th at the Yellow Submarine in Jerusalem and we plan another concert at the Barby somewhere in December, But I can the biggest news is that November will be the first time the band will be performing out of Israel! We have 3 shows booked in The Netherlands (Official details will be published pretty soon) and we plan on expanding it to a mini-tour!

First of all, thank you Gilad for this wonderful interview. Since it's our first interview since Chain Reaction was released, I want to give a huge shout out to my mates - Yogev, Guy, Iggy and Misha.