One of your fans is named Melissa. She had two wee wee questions for FILTH INDUSTRY. First off, she wanted to know who has the biggest wee wee in the band?

MIKE: Well, we never took them out and measured them.

Haven’t you seen each other naked, in like, a dressing room?

MIKE: No

I knew you guys wouldn’t tell me. So I asked your wife, Ron, if you have a big wee wee and she said “yes”

RON: I do have a big dick.

How big?

RON: Just under 8.

Wow

MIKE: I’m right at 8. (Laughs) Don’t print that!

I have to print that! (Laughs) Melissa want’s to also know if any of you guys have blown each other?

RON: Let me field this question. NO! (Laughter)

How disappointing. OK, on to the band. Tell me about the formation of Filth Industry

RON: My good friend lived next door to a DJ. This DJ wanted to start a band. He said, “we need a singer”. My friend found out about it and so I came over, tried out, and that same night I got the gig.

MIKE: I knew the DJ. His name was Nate. I wanted to play music, so I said, “I have this drummer named Anthony”. Nate said, “well I’ve got a singer”, and it was Ron. The weird thing was the band pretty much hooked up on that first night. It clicked immediately. I knew right from the start we were gonna go places.

How do you classify your music?

RON: Spooky metal with Goth-core.

Was it Spooky metal with Goth-core from the beginning?

RON: No, it was shitty, “I want to be cool” Goth-core (Laughs)

MIKE: It wasn’t even Goth. It was just kind of hardcore, 80’s metal. It was pretty bad. But the vibe was there.

RON: It was a bunch of guys that wanted to sound like we didn’t sound.

How did Fletch come into the fold?

MIKE: We really had some good stuff going, but we didn’t have a bass player. We grabbed the first guy that came by. We knew he wouldn’t fit though, because he was too fancy. He was a really good bass player; he just wasn’t our style. But we wanted to get out and start playing. We did a lot of shows and got our start but eventually we had to get rid of him. When we got Fletch, we knew he was the one because it just felt right.

RON: Fletch was the nasty “crunch” sound we wanted.

I know that Fletch is straight, but the first time I saw you guys play, I thought “Oh cool. They have a gay guy in the band”

(Laughter)

RON: He’s kind of a cute, little guy (laughs) I can see why you saw that! (more laughter)

Is Fletch homophobic?

MIKE: We all might be homophobic. Don’t print that. It’s not pertinent to the interview is it?

Sure. I’m not bothered by it It’s real life. I want to know what your real deal is.

RON: Fletch is the reason we got kicked out of the LongHorn Saloon (Laughter) The Long Horn Saloon is a male stripper gay bar that FI Manager, Denny Farrel and I took Ron to blindfolded on the night of his bachelor party as a practical joke.

Ooooh. Do tell.

RON: Supposedly, Anthony bought Fletch a dance after Fletch bought Anthony a dance. Fletch didn’t like it and kicked and pushed the stripper away. The management freaked out and said, “You got to leave”. (Laughs)

MIKE: We are all definitely, very heterosexual. Maybe a little homophobic. We do not hate…can I say gay? Does that sound bad?

You can say whatever you want

MIKE: We are cool people. We are down with anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.

RON: We are down with anybody. But we know who we are. We like to look out at the crowd at our shows and see a bunch of different kinds of people. Jew, black, straight, gay. It doesn’t matter. It’s what makes the world go round. But when we go home, we know who we are.

Back to the band

RON: Yes, back to the band! (Laughs)

How did you get your name?

MIKE: Ron was born to be a rock star. He had been thinking about the name before he was even in the band.

RON: One night I was hanging with a good friend who built our website. We were shitfaced. I said, How about “The Industry”. He said, How about FILTH INDUSTRY? And I said, “Oh that’s a perfect fucking name”. I had just broken up with my now wife, Kathy, and she had moved back to Florida. So my friend and I decided to fly down to West Palm Beach and visit her. And we decided to dress like rock stars on the plane. We wore sunglasses the entire flight. We wore vinyl pants, crazy ass shirts, and black finger nail polish. All that shit. And I said, “we need to come up with a name for our band before we get on the plane. Because someone is gonna ask us if we are in a band. Sure as shit, before we are even in the air, this flight attendant comes over and asks us if we are in a band. And I said, “yeah we are”. She asked what the name of the band was. I said “FILTH INDUSTRY”. She said, “I’ve never heard you guys” and we said, “Oh, you will” (Laughter) And this was a year before I even met the rest of the guys in the band. So from the very first night I was in the band, I knew what our name should be. The rest of the guys didn’t agree to it until they were drunk (Laughs)

MIKE: Anthony and I wanted the name to be “Guttersnipe” (Laughter) Anthony and I came from a kind of alternative band. We were kind of clean cut. We weren’t very evil looking. When Ron came up with the name, we thought, “Oh God, I can’t tell my parents I’m in a band called FILTH INDUSTRY” (Laughs).

That’s when you know it’s the right name.

MIKE: That’s why we eventually did it. (Laughs)

When did you know you finally had the sound you were looking for?

RON: I think about 8 months after we started playing. Once Fletch was in the band we started getting the sound that people associate with us. I think we sound so much better now than even back then when we thought we were a good band.

How long ago was that?

RON: December of ’98 was when the band started.

Who are some of your influences?

MIKE: In Highschool it was, Depeche Mode. Then I got into Nitzer Ebb, Frontline Assembly. Then, out of the blue, I got into Pantera. Guitar wise, they are my main influence. I listen to them today. I’m into Slipknot, Ultra Spank.

RON: I didn’t know Ultra Spank was a huge influence until I met Mike. I played them for Denny (FI’s manager) and he thought we had cut a new CD without him knowing (Laughs) Now we are compared to Disturbed. I think they are a really good band. I’ve got a lot of stupid influences. I used to listen to a lot of Ambient music. I would listen to Sounds From The Ground, Higher Intelligence Agency. I would listen to Depeche Mode, Stabbing Westward. Nine Inch Nails is probably one of my biggest influences.

MIKE: Yeah!

Being your manager is your brother, Ron, do you ever kick his ass? Or visa-versa?

RON: Sure. At any show, if you come backstage afterwards, you can see us slugging it out (Laughs)

You have one CD out. It’s called “Bandersnatch”. How did you get that name?

RON: Bandersnatch is actually a word that I stumbled across. I had a home page, so to speak. At work, when I would bring up the Internet I would go to microsoft.net. I would bring up news, weather and all that shit. And there was like, this quote of the day. This was like, March of ’99. And the word of the day was “Bandersnatch”. And I thought, “What a fucking cool word”. I looked at it. And it’s gives the definition of the word. The definition of bandersnatch is a widely grotesque and bizarre individual.

That sounds like me! (Laughs)

RON: So I approached the guys with it and said, “what do you think?” And they all went, “Oh yeah!”

Were they drunk when you approached them?

MIKE: Probably. (Laughter) We’re drunk a lot. I think we liked it because it sounded like Band or Snatch? (Laugher)

RON: Do you want a head’s up on the next CD name?

Sure!

RON: My personal thought is “Bound and Gagged”.

Is it just me or does Filth Industry have a Psycho sexual, S&M kind of vibe?

RON: I think the whole psychosexual thing…I don’t think the rest of the guys subscribe to that image until I said, “This is what I want to do”. It kind of evolved to that. That’s what I always wanted to show. The song “Submission” is about tying up a woman and leaving…to go get a burger or something.

Ooooh. That’s hot.

RON: Leaving her there, pissed off. Then you come home and fuck her, like an hour or so later. And she thinks she is stuck there forever.

Have you ever done that with Kathy?

RON: I’ve never left Kathy for a burger, no (Laughter) We will just say, I’ve had an interesting sexual background.

What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?

MIKE: Probably a public hot tub in the middle of a bar that was surrounded by glass. People thought we were just cuddling.

What were you doing?

MIKE: Oh, we were fucking.

What about you Ron?

RON: Well, I was married in 1994. I lost my virginity to my first wife. I was 21. Just after our first year anniversary, I walked in on her fucking somebody. And I went ape-shit after that.

What’s ape-shit for you?

RON: Ape-shit for me is partying, very self-destructive. I went from one sexual partner to…I don’t know dude…how many sexual partners in like, two years? I agree with your observation that there is a kind of psychosexual aspect to this band. I think I brought it to this band.

What do you think of the local music scene in Colorado Springs?

MIKE: Poop

RON: Crippled

What would you like to see change?

RON: Bars staying open past two. Abolishing 3.2 beer and a genuinely enthusiastic scene.

Who does most of the lyrics for the band?

RON: I do most of them. Not all of them. Anthony wrote some of our best songs. Anthony wrote “Betrayal”. A lot of people don’t know it, but Anthony is a major contributor to the band.

Anthony seems really cool to me. But I think he’s a little freaked out by me.

RON: He was really freaked out when you were putting makeup on him today (For the photo shoot)

You’ve mentioned previously that your music and lyrics help you work emotional shit out.

RON: I definitely think so. I wrote the song the song about my Father’s death called “Losing You”. I wrote that even before I met these guys. I wrote the song ‘Katie”, about my ex-wife. A lot of my lyrics are just poetry that I would write in this big journal of mine. That was my release, rather than blowing my fucking head off.

Speaking of death, I have a couple of spiritual questions for you. If you were God for one day, what would you do?

MIKE: Blow up corporate America (Laughs)

RON: Give everyone a scorching case of genital herpes (Laughter)

And what if you were the devil?

MIKE: I’d play with my tail

RON: I’d give everyone a scorching case of genital herpes (More laughter)

OK, enough about your spiritual lives (Laughs) my final question of the day. If your wee wee could sing, what song would it sing?

RON: “Happiness and in slavery” by Nine Inch Nails

MIKE: “Suck” by Ultraspank (Laughter)