MORGAN Y. EVANS: Congrats on the re-release for the 25th anniversary of Victim In Pain. It's so influential and the band has survived this long. I feel from the beginning all
the way up to "For My Family" from Warriors the message of the band has stayed intact. You've never really sold out what the band was about whether you were playing more punk, hardcore or thrash influenced stuff.

ROGER MIRET: I totally agree with you on that. What a lot of people don't seem to realize, there's a lot of great bands and in time they come back and they kind of live off those one, two, three records and that's it. They don't give nothing back. We've been a band that's been current and y'know, when we did drop out for a few years for whatever reasons, we came back and produced another four or five records. That goes to show that this is something we genuinely were about. We've stayed current with the scene for many, many years because it's something we love and adore. A lot of bands don't. They come back and want to take the money and leave and move on to whatever the hell they gotta do.

MYE: Your first records still hold up so well. It might have to do with the fact that they weren't just about getting big but getting by, a way to stay sane. It was your life and ever since you've been at it, like Motorhead or something. Keeping it going for everyone.

RM: Absolutely. Victim In Pain is as current today as it was twenty-five years ago and as it will be one hundred years from now. If you put it in a time capsule and someone were to find it a hundred years from now they could still say, "I feel exactly this way," because it talks about social injustice. As long as there is injustice in the world, that record will be current.

MYE: If it wasn't for that record, I am sure somewhere I would've been exposed to it, but that was the first NYHC hardcore record I ever got a dubbed tape of. I'm from Woodstock, New York and had the Bad Brains nearby later on and have opened for Murphy's Law in different bands, but your band was the first time I heard heavy music that had activism. It showed it could be done on a community or worldwide level, which was incredibly inspiring.

RM: It still had a message. Not just heavy music for the sake of heavy music.

MYE: A lot of younger bands, some are awesome or well-intentioned but some groups take things for granted. They sing “boo hoo” this or about their pain, and that's important sometimes, but you guys really fought to prove something.

RM: Well, the difference is we're living this for life. We're genuine people who've spent more than half our lives in this band.

MYE: Absolutely. There must be a lot of build up for the 25th anniversary reunion show of the 1984 line-up coming up.

RM: Yeah, there's a lot of build up. There's a lot of talk. I'm just getting in there were mentions in Rolling Stone, Alternative Press talking about the show. I've got a good feeling about it. It's gonna be one of the most historical shows of the year, if not the most historical show of the year, y'know? Not many original bands can get together from a certain era. Even the Village Voice gave us a great write up saying that Victim In Pain deserves to have the same glory and classic status as The Clash and other bands had.

MYE: I agree. My friend Tom Moretti said he was part of a big posse of people, including Chuck Valle, that went up with you guys to the No Speed Limit Festival in Canada in the mid ‘80s. He said there were lots of metalhead bikers and you guys played with Voivod and Nuclear Assault. But we were also talking about how with Agnostic Front's importance you should someday be in the Hall of Fame. The Stooges are going in, finally after being rejected seven times by those clowns. [laughing]

RM: Absolutely. I agree.

MYE: People don't even realize that you recorded Victim In Pain very quickly and it was still so influential. There's vitality to the material that transcended that.

RM: I think what makes the record is that... if we were a band form anywhere else rather than New York City I don't think we could've made that record. We were all trying to survive, kids living on the street at a particular time in New York City. Anybody can copy any sound but the key element was the actual danger of living that life and the danger of living in the Lower East Side in those days, You can't mimic that. You can look the same and act the same but if you're not living in that element, it's not the same. That's the thing that made Agnostic Front or even bands like, for instance, The New York Dolls...How many glam bands came after the New York Dolls but without the danger? It wasn't the same mystique. Y'know what I mean? The same thing with Victim In Pain. It was a time and a place. I mean, if you go back and try to go to New York City and try to think what I was thinking when I wrote those songs, it's hard to even think of it now because New York City is like Disneyland. It's safe. It's not the same. But if you go back and throw on that movie Taxi Driver and check it out, it was like that. I'm talking about the good old New York: hookers on the street, 42nd Street. There were gangs. It was real, genuine. Now it's Mickey Mouse. What kind of shit is that?

MYE: You guys got a lot of credibility also for protecting your turf, and it made shows better for most people. You'd get criticized for violence by some, but then you have lyrics like "United and Strong" that are clearly about people coming together in the scene. The ending of that song is so resonant with punks and skins, everybody over the years. You got that energy back from the crowd and they were right there with you, man.

RM: That is one of my favorite songs too, now that you mention it. I haven't played that song in years. It's gonna be great to re-do that song and get that same energy back from the crowd for the anniversary show, this particular one show we're doing together. What's really cool about the show on Feb.26th, the other bands that are joining us...It's gonna be a complete retro show. I've asked The Abused, Urban Waste… All these dudes that were living that life. It's gonna be retro. So, it's gonna be a fuckin' great show, man.

MYE: I was looking at some of the promo stuff for your brother Freddy Cricien from Madball's new solo record Catholic Guilt with DJ Stress and he was talking about how the purpose of that record is questioning things. I was prepping for this interview at the same time and it made me wonder when you developed your own mentality of speaking out. Like you said, part of it was survival but there was also stuff you wanted to talk about.

RM: Well, it's obvious. We grew up in an era. Ronald Reagan was our president. We weren't afraid to voice our opinion or how we felt about stuff. We weren't afraid to riot or do many things that people are a lot more afraid to do in this day and age. It was a different time. Lyrically-wise, we felt the need to voice our opinion. I knew we couldn't change the nature of the world. It's almost impossible. I mean, it's almost impossible to change the world but we knew we could make a difference. That little difference would make it better for our children to follow through. Believe me, I'll tell you right now, when I look back at all this I think we made a difference and it all had to start somewhere. Lyrically, talking about all the injustice going on around us like "Blind Justice" and about how we need to stick together to get through this, like "United and Strong", we were just young rebellious kids thinking we needed to group together. It was New York but we found out there were people like us all around the country and we found this connection. Prior to us becoming the band we became, New York had the punk scene, of course. We were all part of the punk scene but it was a negative thing. Live fast, die young. Fuck this. Fuck the world. The world sucks. I'm gonna kill myself. But we came in with a more positive attitude. Yeah, the world does suck but I'm not gonna kill myself. I'm gonna make a difference and make it a better place. I wanna live! I'm not planning on dying anytime soon. That was our mentality and it went into the hardcore, you know?

MYE: Definitely. Right on, man. The material has always been thought provoking. I like that Bridge 9 Records for the re-releases of United Blood and Victim In Pain repackaged the stuff but also kept the original art inside. Victim In Pain had very controversial art initially with a Nazi officer shooting a Jewish man. But then you have songs like "Fascist Attitudes" and "United and Strong" which show that the band is fighting against victimization. You got flak later on even for "Public Assistance", but I think people misinterpreted that song.

RM: Well, I think the problem is that people don't read lyrics. Everybody judged the book by it's cover, and at that time and era, we were skinhead dudes. What does that tell you? Not until you read the book does it tell you, "These dudes think differently". We grew up in New York and in New York there's really no room for racism. You grow up with a multi-cultural environment and different people all around you. There's no room for it. I can see how it happens in other parts of the world. I saw it when we went on tour. The first time we went to Alabama there were still signs that said “Blacks” and “Whites” on toilets. We couldn't even believe it. We saw a KKK rally. We couldn't believe it. We thought those days were over, y'know what I mean?

MYE: Yeah. I'm Upstate and even today I see some rednecks who have never been out of Green County and it's like, "What the fuck!" and I wanna just drop them in the middle of Chinatown and shock them out of their bullshit comfort zone. In New York City everyone is equal. We're all right next to each other. That's great.

RM: Yeah, we had no room for racism. We knew we were different and walking out of step. We knew we weren't like the normal kids, but we all found each other and a place to call home at the A7 and CBGB's. We gathered and we shared music and protected each other, period! All the bands from that New York era...The Bad Brains, a black hardcore band. A phenomenal black hardcore band. We all stuck by each other and that's how it was.

MYE: Murphy's Law are still always playing in various line-ups and other bands still sometimes rise back up. You guys have kept at it basically the whole time. Of course the records still hold up, but are there any bands from the first era that you wish were still around or people could still learn something from?

RM: Those bands are gonna be playing with us in February! Well, there were a lot of great bands from that era but all they did was release singles. Agnostic Front stick out because, Kraut was the only album that was out there. Kraut was a phenomenal album. Straight up punk album. A great, great album. After that there was a bunch of singles from all these hardcore bands, but when Agnostic Front dropped Victim In Pain that changed the face of music in New York and kind of all over the country. They bought this record and were like, “Wow, what's this!?” That's one of the things The Village Voice was saying, once that record dropped it revolutionized the sound of music. All these punks were doing New Wave or whatever was going on and all of a sudden this crazy, aggressive record came out and changed music again. It was special. We were the first hardcore band from New York to release that kind of record. Besides that there was Bad Brains. The Bad Brains had their record, but they were always considered a D.C. band, y'know what I mean?

MYE: Yeah, until they moved up here later.

RM: So, yeah, then they based themselves in New York. But, um...there were bands like Urban Waste, The Abused, Cause For Alarm, Murphy's Law. All these bands had phenomenal singles but nobody had the album. We had the album. We did a tour on that album. Nothing else came out until '86. That was the Cro-Mags Age Of Quarrel and when Murphy's Law came out with their album and we dropped Cause For Alarm, our second album… '86 was the year for albums. Prior to that all you could get was Victim In Pain or the Kraut album.

MYE: Yeah, and it's interesting too. Nowadays there are so many sub-genres in music. There were arguments about crossover back then, but it seems to me crossover was inevitable. People wanna expand their musical horizons. Everybody is in the underground together at the end of the day, whether you're a long hair or have a shaved head.

RM: Well, I always looked at it this way. There's a lot more stuff in common with the metalheads and hardcore kids of that era than things they didn't have in common. We dressed alike, pretty much. We both liked aggressive music and were out of step with society. People looked at metalheads like weirdos like they looked at us like weirdos. We shaved our heads and were bald or had spiked hair, but they had long hair. We all dressed in black and liked aggressive, fast music. It was inevitable, so the crossover thing was bound to happen. We were all sharing lives. Anthrax used to come to all our shows. The dudes from Metallica, too. It was just common. We'd go to their shows and liked what was going on. That was a normal thing. The difference I had with a lot of bands was over lyrics. We spoke differently. But, Metallica is one band I can relate to lyric-wise. They are a phenomenal band.

MYE: In hindsight, if you don't mind answering this, I guess there's always been some controversy about the sort of second wave as far as Chris Williamson's Rock Hotel. Some people think it damaged the scene. But there is also stuff like Chris would hire some people from within the scene to be bouncers, which was a positive thing. So there were pros and cons. Do you mind talking about any of that stuff at all?

RM: Well, not at all. I was the head of security for many years for Chris. Chris was smart and hired people from the scene like myself and Raybeez and everybody. He knew if he was to hire anybody else and they tried to bully us around or stop us, somebody would get beat up or there wouldn't be any respect. Having myself or Ray or Jimmy onstage, people understood we knew what the crowd was doing and weren't assholes. They respected us. We knew what was going on. It wasn't just a bouncer. It was good for us 'cuz we made a little bit of extra cash. We were living on the streets and we got to go to the shows for free if we were working it and/or playing it. That worked out. I think the problem was Chris saw the potential of what was going on and saw all these bands kind of blowing up and he went into Rock Hotel records and management with them. He tried to sign every single band, Blah,blah,blah. I always saw it. I saw it from the outside. I was like, “I don't know about this.” We were the only band that did not. Think about it, Murphy's Law went there, The Cro-Mags, Leeway. I could go on.

MYE: Right.

RM: We were like, “Nope. No thank you. Not for us.” I kind of knew it. How he did it was saying, “If you sign with us, then you'll get all these shows.” I never had to do that because he needed us. I didn't need him for shows. I could go and do whatever show I wanted because we always held our own clout and our own weight. He'd call me for shows and I didn't have to be on his label. That was the way it went. I remember one of his biggest things...One of the last times we actually played for him was the S.O.D. show with Morbid Angel. It was a week before the Agnostic Front show at the Rock Hotel. We had our own show too. Chris called me up a week before. S.O.D. recorded that show. It was the last show they played in New York. Our show was selling better and he was panicking and asked if he could combine the shows. I kind of put him on the spot. Billy Milano was my friend too and he called and said, “Please combine the show. We'll make this a really big show.” But, that's the kind of power I had over Chris. We'd do our own show easily and back then it was 3,500 people selling out The Ritz, y'know what I mean? So, that was a great show. It was good.

MYE: Dude, man, like thinking back on all of this also is there any message you'd like to say to the friends or family or fans or people who through all the ups and downs have run the gauntlet with you guys? It's been an eye-opening lesson in how your struggle really proved the character of the band and you see all the sides of what you guys went through over the years.

RM: Well, I wanna say thanks for the support and for being there. I hate to use the word “fans”. They are our friends. Without them, we wouldn't be nothing. Most of the support comes from them, so I always thank them first. They're most important. I realize one hand washes the other and I'm very grateful for this, so I always want to thank my friends and families for their support.

MYE: Well, everyone appreciates what you've done and continue to do so well.

RM: Thanks, man. I hope to see you at the Brooklyn show.