Does anyone in Alesana have any animal companions?
My fiancé and I have a long-haired Chihuahua. She's 3 1/2. She's adorable. [Her name is] Mae Mae. We named her after the band Mae. … Our front man [Dennis]—he owns a pit bull. … Our drummer [Jeremy] has a regular-haired Chihuahua. … Our guitarist [Patrick] has two cats and a dog.

More than 8 million animals are turned in to animal shelters every year, and about half of them end up being euthanized because there aren't enough good homes. If a friend was debating whether to buy a dog from a pet store or adopt, would you encourage him or her to look into adoption?
I would—it's not even a question. I would definitely encourage the adoption. My father has two dogs and a cat; they got all three of them from a shelter. The previous two cats I owned before I started touring ([whom] I gave to my mother), I got both of them from adoption shelters. And four of her cats are from adoption shelters too. … I feel there's no other way to go about it.

PETA has gone undercover and filmed workers from KFC doing everything from cutting off chickens' beaks without painkillers to scalding them while they're still alive. The conditions that we found don't even meet KFC's animal welfare guidelines, but the company still isn't doing anything to improve conditions. How does that make you feel?
I won't eat at KFC anymore. I just think that's disgusting.

PETA also has undercover footage that documents that workers in the fur industry were skinning animals while they were still alive, including dogs and cats. What would you say to somebody who tells you, "It's just a little bit of fur trim"?
I always discourage [people] from wearing fur. I'm not a believer in taking [animals'] fur off of them [even when] they're dead, [and] especially not when they're still alive. God, that's ridiculous. … I would never encourage the use of it or use it myself.

Of all the major animal rights issues, which one stands out to you the most and why?
I hate that animals get tested on. I think it's completely ridiculous. And, you know, medicine will argue that because of animal testing, we've solved so many diseases and things like that, but I just don't see why humans don't volunteer for these things. If we want to fix them so bad, why aren't they doing the tests on themselves so we can actually get verbal confirmation on whether or not things are working and things of that sort? I don't see the need. Because then they'll figure something out on animals and have to go back and figure out how to make that work on a human, so why even waste the time of taking the step of ruining that animal's life or putting them through what they put them through? It's archaic.

We noticed you've been touring around the world. How do you feel about being a hit internationally?
It's kind of surreal. It started with Mexico a couple of years ago. We just decided to go down there, just on a whim, to see what it would be like. And we only took like two boxes of merchandise. We said it was going to be no big deal. And every show was sold out! Just like, what is going on? And that was kind of when we started to research [our popularity] internationally, … and we realized that it's pretty much like that in every country.

We saw you on Warped Tour, and we loved it! What was the craziest thing that happened to you guys while on Warped Tour?
[T]he brakes went out on the bus, and that was pretty exciting. And when the brakes went out on the bus, the trailer also flew off! It did like one of those movie things, where it hit a hill and it like, went airborne in front of us somehow. It was pretty gnarly. … [S]urprisingly, nobody got hurt, [and] none of the equipment got hurt. It was actually just an awesome story that we get to tell now.