Radio.com recently sat down with the drummer to talk about the upcoming album Blood for Blood, which was the first one he didn't co-produce for the band. This time around, they opted to work with Kevin Churko, who has produced for artists ranging from Ringo Starr to Five Finger Death Punch. But it was Churko's history with producer Robert "Mutt" Lange that interested Paul.

"The fact that he worked with Mutt Lange was huge for me, I was always a Def Leppard fan," he says, referencing that band's early hard rock classics High 'n' Dry and Pyromania. "And Mutt's records weren't [just] records, they were like Star Wars. They were a true production. Kevin kind of has that same mindset. The Ozzy records, I think he made a big different in Ozzy's career." (Churko produced Ozzy Osbourne's last two solo albums, 2007′s Black Rain and 2010′s Scream.)

Paul isn't the only member of the Hellyeah with a big band name in his rear view mirror. Frontman Chad Gray is also in Mudvayne and guitarist Tom Maxwell is formerly of Nothingface.

"I think early on, we had a pretty good fan base to start with, because of those bands that we started with, and people realized from the start it was a new band. When me and my brother did Damageplan, that was a different bridge. That was like, 'Nope, we want Pantera.' That was really humbling and difficult experience in a lot of ways, although we did really enjoy it.

But with Hellyeah, I think they embraced us right out of the chute. I think with Stampede, the second record, we lost some of them because we really diversified what we were doing. The main reason we started Hellyeah was to do something outside of Pantera, outside of Nothingface, Mudvayne, and really go places musically that you can't go with those kinds of bands. With the third record, Band of Brothers, we felt like we'd gotten that all out of our system, and we felt it was time to get back to our metal roots, and do what we do best. We regained a lot of the people that we kind of lost on the Stampede record, and then with this record, we really just wanted to take it to another level, make it our Back in Black."