Along with the legendary S.O.D., D.R.I. helped bring together the worlds of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a unified force in the 1980's. Though S.O.D. may get more credit in the metal community, largely because of their superstar lineup, D.R.I. has probably done more for the Crossover of the scenes than any other band in history. Soldiering through multiple albums and a never ending tour schedule, D.R.I. brought it to the people instead of being content with the people coming to them.

Kurt - It was good. I didn't actually get together with him to do it, he just called me and then sent me the tape to go into the studio. I wrote my own lyrics to his song, he played all the music, all the instruments, he wrote all the music and everything; all I did was write the lyrics and sing along to his tracks and that was about it.

Kurt - We're not working on it real hard or anything, but we do have some new songs, we recorded some songs in Germany recently when we had a day off. That's basically how it is; it's hard to get us all together, because we live in different areas of the country, but when we're all together, we've got a bunch of songs, it's just a matter of having the money and time to go into the studio, 'cause we're touring a lot.

Kurt - My dad was calling us all kinds of names for practicing in his house and that was one of the names that just kind of stuck. We actually had the band and then we needed a name because we had a show where somebody said we could have the gig, but we'd need a name to put on the flier, so we kind of just had to come up with something real fast.

Kurt - Like the tape trading. We've always been like, steal it, borrow it, tape it off somebody else; that's the way I've always done it and that's fine with us.

Kurt - I didn't know they did, but we didn't really like that title anyway. We were kind of downplaying that whole thing because at the time we were on Radical Records and they wanted to promote us as the fastest band in the world, but we thought that was kind of silly and we didn't want to have to try to be faster than everybody else all the time. If people think we play fast, that's fine, but it's nothing we want to stick to, which is why we started writing some slower songs to mix in with our set because we were tired of playing thirty minute sets of songs that people couldn't tell the difference between.

Kurt - No, we have our own little niche, you know. We tour all over the world all the time, we have great shows all the time and that's all there is to it. We've got our own deal going on and it doesn't matter what other people say. It just doesn't really affect us; we do our own thing, we've got our own music, we play South America, Japan, Europe all the time, so we've got nothing to complain about.

Kurt - Yes, there is. That's all I'm going to say, I'm not going to say much more about that. (laughter)

Kurt - No, more like clandestine infiltration. (laughter)

Kurt - It was great, though it was scary because they tore up so many bands, even Metallica. But for us, they didn't really say anything bad, so we were thankful for that. Mike Judge, the guy that did Beavis And Butthead, he's from Texas and we're from Texas, so he probably always liked us. (laughter) I hope.

Kurt - It was nice because we got to play a lot of shows with Slayer and that gave us a big push, but then it was kind of fucked, because all of a sudden, they just traded us away like a sports star being traded to another team when they think they're doing really good and they're happy to be on that team, then they get traded away to another. That's what happened to us; we got traded for several other bands and put on Enigma. And then Enigma was going bankrupt, so it was like, "yeah, thanks a lot!"

Kurt - (laughs) No, not yet. But it was funny, because we played with Verbal Abuse the other day in Houston and on that same record, Slayer did a lot of their songs, whereas the only did one of ours, and Nicky Sicky got up on stage and said, "this is my favorite Slayer song," and then he did one of his songs. (laughter)

Kurt - No, not for this tour. Dead Kennedys didn't do all the dates on that tour, but they did do some of the more important ones, like Washington D.C. But that was cool 'cause we got in with them and Jello was a big DRI fan, in fact, he wanted to sign us to his label (Alternative Tentacles), but we declined because we were already on Radical. But it was really fun, just seeing how professional those guys were and everything, for a punk rock band. (laughs)

Kurt - (laughs) Right now, no. I don't sleep very much anymore; I think I slept a lot more when we first started the band because we were all malnutritioned, depressed and everything, because we were living in our van, basically homeless with no money, hardly anything to eat, so we slept a whole lot back then, as anybody that's depressed does. And since we started eating regularly and actually getting some real sleep, it's not really like that anymore.