A: Sounds good. Related to the punk-hardcore scene around the world, it seems you all would have a good assessment of it since you have been a lot of places. I wondered if anyone wanted to comment about some of the places you've been on tour and what some of those shows were like.

AX:We'll, we've been twice to Brazil, I mean, one thing to start with, from all the touring, and all the shows we've played all over the world, its great to see that there's people all over the world that love the same music and have a lot of the same ideas that we do and basically live the same kind of life as we do. You grow up having prejudices about whatever whatever-that people in Japan are people from another planet-those kinds of things. You see them with your own eyes. It changes how you think about the world, at least it did for me. I always had a lot of fun playing in Brazil. The scene there has been really good for the last ten years or so. They've been doing this big DIY festival in São Paulo called Verdurada Fest. Last time we were there was two years ago and there were maybe 1500 kids. In between the music they had workshops and part of the money that came in went to good causes like helping the squatters movement and animal rights groups around there.
MK: I think in general wherever we play either in Brazil, Japan, US, Europe, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia...the great thing about this music is there's such a well developed DIY network nowadays. Wherever you go in any part of the world, you meet people the same as you, who like the same music, have the same ideas, even love the same movies. I never thought in my whole life I'd be playing in Jakarta in front of thirteen hundred people and everybody singing along with us. That was so abstract even to think about going there and playing a show. It was really something to remember.
M: So we were in Brazil and our friend Jão Gordo, the singer from Brazilian band RATOS DE PORAO (RDP) has a program on MTV Brazil. They invited us to play live on that show and of course, at first we hesitated cuz we don't like MTV. But Boka, drummer from RDP and also our drummer and tour manager on that tour, said all DIY punk hardcore bands are playing that show. So we decided to do it.
MK: Yeah, I wish we have something cool like that on our MTV, it's actually run partly by kids in the scene.
M: Exactly! Anyway, I told Alex I wanted to smash my guitar just for fun. Guitars are not that expensive in Brazil so I bought the cheapest I could find. Then Alex said he also wanted to smash his bass so he bought a cheap bass as well. Arriving at the studio there's lots of Brazil kids waiting there, hundreds of them. They could only fit like 200 or something in the studio. We start playing, in total we played six or seven songs live. The kids were divided from us through some barricades but during the last two songs they could come closer. So, we started playing the last two songs and during the last song, me and Alex started smashing our guitars. The kids go crazy because they want to have the pieces of the guitar and bass. So everyone jumps on each other to grab these leftover pieces of our instruments. As soon as the MTV security sees that kids are jumping over each other to grab stuff, the security jumps on the kids. A fight starts. We had this spray fake snow stuff. Some friends of ours grabbed the foam stuff and sprayed it in the security guards eyes so it was one big mess. All the kids got kicked out. Afterwards I'm talking with this MTV producer and I'm saying, okay you guys probably never wanna have us again right? And he said, No man, this was fucking cool man, great, great footage. Best stuff we ever had (all laugh).

A: Speaking about how you have been all over the world, I noticed that all of your English is really good even though it is not your first language. How do you communicate with people in say, Indonesia or Brazil?

M: In Indonesia, they all speak pretty good English. In Malaysia and Singapore too. In Japan, there's almost no people who speak English. Sometimes they don't even understand yes or no. So we just tried to communicate with our hands and feet and go along.
MK: In Japan we always had someone with us who was helping us out. Like David, a Canadian teacher friend who speaks Japanese. The toughest moments in Japan I found was finding out what was vegetarian. Then I really had to grab David and spell out the ingredients for me because they put fish in a lot of stuff.

A: I wanted to ask next about the fact that you all are, not necessarily a straight edge band but you all are straight edge. So, I was just wondering if you all had come to this point or if its always been a lifestyle that you have embraced.

AX: For me, I never really found joy in drinking or smoking cigarettes. As soon as I found other people who were straight edge in my city, it was no question to me to continue drinking or smoking or something like this. It wasn't even hard for me to stop it.
M: I never drank any alcohol. I don't even know how it tastes. And also never smoked or did any other thing. For example, when I was 11 or 12, we went on a school camp. I was rebellious and always doing the opposite of whatever others were doing. So everybody started drinking at this school camp--everybody. I was like, okay, if everyone is gonna do it, I'm not gonna do it. At one point, I heard about straight edge. People were actually telling me, ''You are straight edge''. Then I said okay, if that is the word for it then okay but that's just how I am. I don't drink, I don't smoke.
MK: Well, a little bit like Marc, I was never into drinking or smoking or whatever. When I got into punk as a young kid, everyone was making fun of me because of me refusing to drink beer. That annoyed me until I found out about straight edge. And I said Yes! Later in 92, there was a little period when I started experimenting and using drugs. It was a depressing time, I left my country when there was a war going on, I was living in a squat, I didn't have papers, and was all the time arguing with the Dutch government how to get papers. I couldn't go back to Serbia because prison was waiting for me. But I quickly figured out it's not really anything for me and I just quit everything in one day and here I am, still straight after 12/13 years.
AX: When I was growing up, like Marc said, he went to summer camp, well I went to summer camp as well but I was the one who got everybody drinking (laughs) cuz I thought it was cool. That was when I was 11-12. Then I also moved to Holland, I was living in Russia before that. I didn't have many friends and I didn't speak the language. Then I met a couple of friends and all of us got into hardcore and we used to drink a little bit of beer but I sort of never got...I don't know, I never liked beer. It tastes vile to me. So all of my friends got into straight edge so I was like okay, yeah, fuck it. I never liked drinking, I never liked smoking anyway so why do it? Actually all those friends are big beer drinkers and pot smokers now. Someday I would like to try some mushrooms maybe. But that's because of my obsession with Jimi Hendrix and the counter-culture of the 60's, and their use or abuse of psychedelics. I would like to try it once to see what that's like. To be honest, at a certain point, like early 2000, I really resented people calling me straight edge. Because there were so many straight edge bands out there who just did and said such stupid, stupid things that I really did not agree with and I was almost gonna start drinking just to fuck them over.
M: I think Ian Mackaye from MINOR THREAT wrote this song because he thought that you should have freedom. So you should not have alcohol or drugs enter your mind and influence your way of thinking. But it's the same thing with straight edge; if your mind is too full of straight edge, you're also not free anymore. That's why, although I never drank or smoked anything, I don't like hardline straight edge. Well, I guess they also don't like me cuz I'm from Amsterdam and -being from a heavy smokers family - I can roll good joints.
W: How do you know they are good? [laughs]
M: Well, people always say, they look good [all laugh]. But some people say, I'm not straight edge enough because I can roll joints. I mean, yeah, okay, whatever.