Mudvayne stirs broader rock reaction

During a telephone conversation with Billboard, Mudvayne drummer Matt McDonough makes this pronouncement:
"I have to file my official disclaimer," he says. "At some point in this interview, and it's probably already happened, I have told you at least one lie."
McDonough's comment isn't as straightforward as it seems, and that's exactly his point.
"It's important to remember that there are no rules," he explains. "There is no right answer to a question in an interview. There's no right way to write a song. There's no rules for what we're doing. As an artist, I think it's exciting for us as a band to explore and to have the freedom to go into the space, to turn the lights on and to look around."
Indeed, the metal band prefers keeping things open-ended so people can draw their own conclusions about its music on its new Epic set, "Lost and Found," which arrived April 12. (A DualDisc of the album was released simultaneously.) Even though such plain-spoken lyrics as "There's no voice in freedom" or "Turn off the radio/turn off the TV" seem to be direct mandates, McDonough and vocalist Chad Gray say that isn't the case.
"We don't want to tell people what anything's about, really. I think it takes something away from the listener," Gray says. "Like handing you a box wrapped up and telling you what's in it before you open it."
McDonough adds, "We have enough respect for our audience to give them the opportunity to think for themselves. We've never wanted to think of ourselves as being arrogant enough to know or to think that we could tell people what they should be thinking about or what they should assume songs are about. We leave it ambiguous."
"Lost and Found," produced by the band and Dave Fortman (Evanescence, Super Joint Ritual), already has a solid single, "Happy?"
Ashley Wilson, music director at radio station KISW Seattle, thinks "Happy?" will bring Mudvayne further into the mainstream.
"This song is going to really reach out to people that maybe weren't huge Mudvayne fans," Wilson predicts. "It's very palatable."
"Happy?" continues the steady success the quartet (which also includes bassist Ryan Martinie and guitarist Greg Tribbett) has experienced since its 2000 debut on Epic. That album, "L.D. 50," contained the hits "Dig" and "Death Blooms." 2002 album "The End of All Things to Come" brought further acclaim with "World So Cold" and "Not Falling."
Mudvayne's makeup and costumes, which have ranged from face painting to alien masks and uniforms, also got their share of attention. Though the band is not wearing makeup or costumes for now, recent media attention about its decision has grown tiresome, considering it first dropped the dress-up props in 2003 for the Summer Sanitarium tour.
"It's not like we're trying to make up for something or apologize for some big mistake that we've been making all these years," Gray says. "Like, `Oh, you know, I don't know what we were thinking. We wore makeup for like four years ... but here we are now, we're a real band.' That's not the case."