MICHAEL WILTON: 'I Don't Know If QUEENSRŸCHE's Gonna Do Another Concept Album'

On August 29, Metal On Loud: The Metalheads Foundation conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE guitarist Michael Wilton. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the response to 2015's "Condition Hüman" album:

Wilton: "For us, it's success. With every release, you hope that the latest release outsells the previous one, and we've done that. The record company's happy; they're pleased. We've done a few videos, and I think we're gonna do one more video, maybe two more videos, for this album. And this album, it's been well received. For us, we've charted in different countries that QUEENSRŸCHE has not charted in in, like, fifteen, twenty years, so we're very pleased with that. And we know that things are moving in the right direction for QUEENSRŸCHE."

On what he dreams about still accomplishing with QUEENSRŸCHE:

Wilton: "Well, for me, I'm the person that's always thinking about the next day or the next project or what I'm gonna do next. I'm that kind of a guy. I don't live in the now; I'm always thinking ahead. And for me, everything's a work in progress, so I'm always looking for opportunity to refine myself maybe. I think as you get older, you refine yourself, you refine your technique, your playing, your way of handling yourself. So I just try to stay in control."

On where he gets ideas for new riffs:

Wilton: "It's being in the right frame of mind, I guess. There's constantly ideas, there's constant inspiration from whatever I do, and there's key things that you go, 'Ah!' And that sparks your mind that that might be special in you, and you put it down. You know, constantly changing your area… like, I'm in a different country now, and I'm in a different room, and it's a different condition. So I know I'm gonna probably gonna come up with a different type of an idea here, and I'm gonna try to document it. It may be good, it may be throwaway."

On what could potentially be an interesting topic for another concept album:

Wilton: "I don't know if QUEENSRŸCHE's gonna do another concept album. Once you've done one that has been so successful, it's, like, 'Let's let it be, and let's see what else happens.' I'm more about, 'Let's grab chaos and see what comes of it, and we'll make it.' If it's conceptual, if it's thematic, if it's just songs… whatever it is, it will be. If you pre-plan anything, sometimes it doesn't go so well. So if you say you're gonna do a prog record, or a pop record, or a conceptual record, you're limiting yourself. It's more about creative freedom and writing what everybody in the band is cohesively putting together creatively."

On the QUEENSRŸCHE songwriting process:

Wilton: "It's the modern day — everybody's got their laptops and they're grabbing their ideas, and we're putting them up on Dropbox and everybody's pulling them down and importing them and everybody's putting their own ideas into them. And it's exciting, because you're taking something that may have been just a riff or a vocal line or a twenty-second demo, and it comes out into something amazing. That's what's cool about being in a band — taking the strengths of all the people in the band and making something cool. When it's just one person saying, 'This is the way it has to be,' then you're confined and it's not a good creative outlet. But when everybody has the availability to input their ideas and everybody interprets them their way, that's when the magic happens."

On where the follow-up to "Condition Hüman" will go musically:

Wilton: "I don't know. It's all in the name of chaos with this band; anything can happen. The music will start happening, there will be a direction, and then you can kind of say, 'Okay, it's kind of going in this direction.' But right now, it's all out being put together and put on hard drives."

QUEENSRŸCHE hired singer Todd La Torre to replace Geoff Tate in 2012 and has released two albums with the ex-CRIMSON GLORY frontman: 2013's "Queensrÿche" and the aforementioned "Condition Hüman".