Evan: No, our first one was in 1993.

Shawn: No it was '91; I still have the t-shirt.

Evan: That's rightŠit was a disaster. It was before Maria was in the band and we toured with a band called Big City Orchestra.

Was there originally another member of Battery?

Evan: There was another member. His name was Stuart Scanlon; he was a founding member. When Shawn and I moved to San Francisco, he didn't want to move, so that was it with Stuart.

What cities did you play in on this year's tour?

Maria: We played in Peoria, Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Chicago. It was a Mid-Western tour.

Evan: We also played a show in San Francisco at the end of the tour.

Shawn: We were very happy about that because we finally got to play with Switchblade Symphony.

Where and when was that show?

Maria: At the Maritime Hall, on July 26th.

How did you come to cover "Gangsta's Paradise"?

Maria: Chase from Re-Constriction called us up and asked if we would do a cover of a rap song for a release he was putting out. The first time I heard it, Shawn and I were listening to the radio, and we heard an ad for "Dangerous Minds"Š "Gangsta's Paradise" was playing in the background. Evan works for a design company that gets preview copies of CDs, so we had a copy of "Gangsta's Paradise" before it came out. We covered it and right after that, the Coolio song went #1 and stayed in the Top 10 for ten weeks.

So you covered it before if became a hit?

Maria: BasicallyŠwhen our producer heard it, he asked that we put it on our album, so it ended up being the second track, which is kind of weird, since our album came out first.

It's on the "Operation Beatbox" comp.?

Maria: Yes.

Any interesting stories from this summer's tour?

Maria: WellŠDetroit was our best showŠmainly because we played with Hate Dept.Š it was really fun.

Evan: We played that tour with a band called Heavy Water Factory. We'd never heard of them before. There was a really small turnout at our Dayton, Ohio show.

Maria: The bartender gave us free drinks because he felt sorry for us.

Evan: So from that time on there was a great camaraderie.

Maria: We all bonded drunkenly and hedonistically.

Evan: We stayed in a house in Milwaukee that had 15 cats, five dogs, and seven birds; it was a haunted house, so that was also fun.

How did you first get involved with Battery?

Maria: Five years ago I was in London with Evan's sisterŠI used to sing to her for fun, and she said, "Oh my God you have a beautiful voiceŠand you have all these Skinny Puppy posters on the wall above your bed and you like industrial music, and my brother's in an industrial band looking for a singer; you should sing." I said "OK," and she hooked me up with him when we got back to the States. I auditioned, and that was that.

How long have you been singing?

Maria: Since the day I joined the band.

Being one of the few industrial bands with a female vocalist, how do you think that you impact industrial music? I know that a lot of people, myself definitely not included, feel that female vocals are too weak to work within industrial.

Evan: Shawn and I don't have it in us to be the macho type, so we thought it would be a nice change, and it worked out.

I've heard of Battery being referred to as "COP International."

Evan: WellŠthey're our label; our studio is mixed with theirs in the same house. It's a big familyŠin the way that all the bands signed to COP help each other out.

Maria: We were the first band that they signed.

How did you first form Battery?

Shawn: It was to get extra credit in our electronic music class when Evan and I were at Bennington College.

Where's Bennington?

Shawn: It's a very small (300 or so people) liberal arts college in southwestern Vermont.

Why Battery?

Shawn: We chose Battery because the name stands for many things, and we feel that we have many different facets to our musicŠit's a term that can be used with many different connotations.

Some people classify you as an industrial/gothic blendŠthis kind of seems strange to me, except for that this (club) is RaptureŠ

Evan: Terminology is something that people need as a reference point, and that's fine whether they say it's industrial, or it's gothic, that's fine. Our music is neither and all of thatŠwe definitely don't identify with it being gothic, but we do have songs that we write that are in a gothic vein, and the same goes for industrial.

"Distance" charted #2 on CMJ. How have you been affected by this success?

Shawn: Not at all, except for maybe being scared as to how we're going to top it.

Have you ever toured in Europe?

Evan: Yes, we did a German tour in May of this year.

What are you working on now?

Evan: We're working on our new albumŠit's going to be different than anything we've done before, in two waysŠfirst, we're including multimedia/videos, which all three of us are working on in the same way that we work on our music. Basically they're going to be pieces of art. Secondly, we're doing remixes with other bandsŠwe're doing a remix of "The Void" by Hate Dept., a song remix by System Exclusive, hopefully a remix by a band called Misery Loves Company and a remix done by Zip from Bigod 20.

Are you doing the Remix Wars?

Maria: NoŠbut someone on RMI suggested that we do Battery vs. the Indigo Girls.

Where's your next show?

Maria: Live on KDVS 90.3ŠOctober 24th, 1996.