1. At heart how does Challenger differ from Milemarker?
In terms of ideals and ethic it's the same. I think the main difference is in the musical approach. Milemarker came out of the hardcore scene, and was intent on breaking boundaries and knocking over the musical convention that we saw at that time (this was when Maximumrocknroll started refusing to review records that didn't sound "punk enough" and things like that- we saw that sort of rigidity as antithetical to our idea of what punk was). Now that the music scene we're in has sort of "caught up-" using a keyboard or a sampler is almost as required now as it used to be reviled- we decided to try something else. The idea of challenger is to make straightforward, aggressive punk rock, but try to find ways to communicate our political, personal, and aesthetic agenda within that. It's like being a painter and focusing on abstract art for a while, and then deciding to try doing some landscape painting for a change. You accept a set of rules so that you can see how far you can push yourself within them.

2. How long do you expect Challenger to exist as a side project? (Not saying that it would take over Milemarker or anything)
I don't see Challenger as a side project. I see it as a new band that I'm in. And there is no grand scheme at work, we work on a much smaller scale than that. I was happy to get the Challenger record done, now I'm excited to go on tour with the band. When that's accomplished, we'll think about what to do next. I've found that bands with big long-term world-domination schemes tend to implode in six months, whereas bands like Milemarker or Challenger who don't plan past the next tour tend to go on and on for years. So we're sticking with the formula that has worked for us.

3. Who is your favorite Democratic presidential candidate at the moment? Is there someone you would rather see rocking the campaign trail?
I'm not a big proponent of the Democratic Party. I do hope that Bush loses in 2004, but on the other hand, I have no illusions that a Democrat in the White House is going to turn things around in some drastic way in this country. That's going to require a lot of grass-roots action, and the general public's non-reaction to Bush's blatant vote-fraud in the 2000 election doesn't point to that being on the horizon. US foreign policy now seems to function similarly to the Israeli model- they put the right-wing guy in, he annexes some territory, then they put the leftish guy in, and he apologizes for the last guy, but they still keep the territory. Whether Bush wins in 2004 or not, we're still going to be stuck with the repercussions of the invasion of Iraq for decades. And that invasion, as far as I can tell, was being planned already during the Clinton administration. So, I don't know-- vote against Bush, yes, but I think more radical politics at a more grass-roots level is what's needed in the long run.

4. On a similar note, what do you think of punkvoter.com? Do you think they can have impact on the 2004 election?
Well, again, the fact that Bush wasn't actually elected didn't seem to have much of an impact in 2000, so it's hard to say that anything can have much of an effect on the actual outcome, since you can apparently now just get a relative to rig the ballots for you. I do think that every little thing helps, I think it's just awesome that Fat Mike (I believe he's the organizer of punkvoter.com?) is using his influence to re-inject some sense of political involvement and social thought into punk, especially the more warped-tour end of it which seems to really lack that. Of course, every little bit helps. Hopefully it won't end up being a one-issue movement, though, where people get excited until the election and then drop off again. I think the bigger impact would be to get kids politicized in a more permanent and long-term way.