"It's good in the end, because you feel really proud," Martin said. "You know if it got messed up, it's no one's fault but your own because you got to do it all yourself. When I was deciding to do the artwork for the record, I thought it would be cool. I'll do a couple drawings, play around on the computer for a little bit and it will be done."

Instead, it took Martin two-and-a-half months of sleepless nights.

"I was drawing all day long, staying up until 5 in the morning and having to change it because the record label said it's too expensive to print on this kind of paper. There's all these other factors I never really thought of. It's a lot of work but it's still fun."

Martin talked with liveDaily.com about Good Charlotte's artistic endeavors, "The Chronicles of Life and Death" and touring.

liveDaily.com: I recently saw the premiere of your new video "I Just Wanna Live." It is a clever way of poking fun of your own lives and the microscope you live under.

Billy Martin: Our parents keep telling us they see it and they say, "We don't get it." Man, I hope everyone gets it. It's supposed to be funny.

Who came up with the concept for the video?

We've come up with every video idea so far. Most of the time we wait for treatments to come in from directors. We get a bunch of them, and no one ever seems to come up anything we like. At the last minute, say, we have to make a video next week and we've just got to come up with something. [The "I Just Wanna Live" video] was really spur of the moment. We had a whole lot of different ideas ready for the video. We'd have a meeting with a director. He left, went home and wrote the treatment. Two hours later, we were like, "You know what? That idea sucks. We have to do something funnier." Benji goes, "What about if we just dress up in stupid costumes? People can't not laugh at costumes." We were like, "OK." At first, we were just going to do animals, like a pink bunny, or a big teddy bear--then the idea of food came out. "Let's do food." We just wanted something that would be dumb funny. It couldn't be smart funny.

Good Charlotte seems to alternate between funny and serious videos.

I guess it's kind of important. I know, personally, I like really serious videos. At the same time, we don't like to take ourselves too seriously so it's kind of fun to do both things.

During your tour, your stage set was strikingly gothic.

We've been wanting to do something for a long time, but all we ever had before were backdrops. This time, we really wanted to go for it. Phoenix was missing half the pieces because the stage was too small. Phoenix was a real small version of it. Normally, we have 14-foot dragons and gargoyles on either side of the stage, but those couldn't fit. It happened a lot on this tour. We went really big with everything. When we were building it, they were like, "It might not fit." Of course, I was being stubborn (and saying), "Oh it's fine. They have to be big. Don't worry about it. Make it big."

It sounds like you guys have a creative hand in everything.

It's really important. Before I was ever a musician, I thought I would be an animator, or a comic book artist. I'm really into the visual aspects of the band--the album artwork, the merchandise, the stage set up, the videos. I just think it's cooler. If someone else does it, what's the point? They're not in the band. Obviously, we know better than everyone else because it's our band. It's fun. It's the only thing we got so we might as well be as involved as we can.

It must be really gratifying.

For the next record, I don't know. I just didn't expect it. It's very hard when you're an artist, if someone says, "No, no. Try it this way." It's like, "What are you talking about? It's my drawing. You didn't draw it." I have to learn to take constructive criticism more. It's kind of hard, because I'm outside of it as the artist and I'm inside of it because it's my band. I feel like with another band it would be different because I don't really care how it comes out as long as the band's happy. But when it's my band, then I have to play both sides of the fence ... that's hard.

What is the songwriting process with Good Charlotte?

Benji and Joel write all the lyrics. They're the ones who sing them. Most of the time, they write stuff on an acoustic guitar, and during band practice we see if we like the song, then we would work on it. With this record, I wrote some stuff for the first time. I've got a recording rig at my house, so I just demo a bunch of ideas. I like a lot darker stuff than everybody else. I was always a little timid to play my songs. There were a couple things that I really thought could be Good Charlotte songs. I brought my views in, and everybody was into it. It opened a lot of doors. I'm pretty excited to see what the next record will be like, after how comfortable everybody got in the studio this time.

What songs did you write?

Parts of "Ghost of You" and "Mountain."

This album is really a departure for you, especially with the rap- and funk-influenced "I Just Wanna Live."

I think it's kind of weird if you look at the music [the members of Good Charlotte] listen to, each one of us listens to something really different. There's a lot of bands that we all agree on. But it's definitely not the easiest thing to do when you're working together to make a record to really find a way to take five ideas and actually make it make sense. For this record, we just took each song one at a time. "This song has a hip-hop feel, so let's really give it a hip-hop feel." "This song has an '80s feel, so let's really push this one in an '80s direction." This record, it's really diverse. Everybody really tried to put in their influences. You wouldn't expect to put those influences together, but we did it anyway. Benji and Joel, as singers, are going to sing catchy, melodic stuff no matter what. If we put together some weird, artsy, dark song, it's probably going to be an artsy Good Charlotte song, just because of the kind of melodies that they write. It's pretty easy.

Who are some of the influences on this record?

For me, I was really into Depeche Mode and The Cure. I've always been into '80s music a lot, even though I was born in 1981. I was barely around for it. I kind of know the '80s well. A little before the record, I got bored with a lot of bands. There wasn't anything I was into, so I bought a lot of older records. I really got into Depeche Mode, so I started practicing keyboard and piano, and really wanted to try keyboard on the record. Another band is Muse. Everybody really likes Muse. We would listen to Muse on the way to the studio. I've really been into The Faint a lot lately.