An outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, Everclear singer Art Alexakis will bring his band to controversial Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba on Memorial Day to honor U.S. troops guarding militant combatants captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I want this war over," Alexakis tells Spinner. "It has become this generation's Vietnam. I'm old enough to remember Vietnam and friends of my brother's coming home in bags. I do a lot of stuff for the USO where we'll go to the hospitals when we're in [Washington] D.C. and talk to the kids who have been over there. It's brutal."

Alexakis recalls meeting a fellow Oregonian who was "a perfect model student, perfect model son" and two days before he was to return home from Iraq, his arm was blown off. "His mom and dad were heartbroken," Alexakis says. "His mom was like, 'My heart's broken. But it'll fix. He might be missing an arm but he's still alive.' I have kids and I'd rather have a kid with one arm than no kid. He had the same perspective about it. Talking to people like that gives you a whole perspective of the war."

After Everclear returns from Guantanamo Bay, the band will head to the studio to record the angry single 'Jesus Was a Democrat,' which will be downloadable from to-be-announced websites. A new album will follow in 2009.

"'Jesus was a Democrat' has a few lines about Guantanamo Bay," Alexakis says, "and how I think that a lot of people who call themselves Christians would think -- if Jesus came back today -- that he's a terrorist because he isn't blond-haired or blue-eyed. He was an Arab. He was a Hebrew. He looked like Al-Qaeda. Those are the people we're trying to kill."