I am so ready to rock!! We are on a tour to get the ball rolling again in Europe and I don't wanna waste any time, I wanna deliver the goods, go back to the States, do about eight weeks there and then hopefully come back to Europe. We're talking to the guys from IN EXTREMO and maybe doing something with those guys in December, which might be cool.

That would be a really diverse evening, your music and their music. And quite some mixed audience.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what works best for FILTER. We opened up for Papa Roach in Cologne two years ago and when I asked last night whether there was anyone at that show with Papa Roach only about two people raised their hands. So I don't really know if opening up is our thing but... You know if you have a huge band like In Extremo saying like "Let's tour!" you don't take it lightly. It's bizarre because I think that I actually get more work done headlining shows on my own.

Well, as a headliner you can put up a show like you want to, not only thirty minutes with limited lights.

Yeah, but we have limited lights, compared to a big full production. Our band is a punk band ethicly - like the way Nirvana-age grunge was - with a computer. So our first record was this bizarre bastard child. It didn't have a refined production like Nine Inch Nails. It was this angry, unrefined, loud, bitter, pissed-off, drunken, grunge-alike record with a computer playing drums.

(Me, cutting in on him) ...but you now have a live drummer!

(Richard, going on undisturbedly) ...but I love it! I love "Short Bus"! Well, and then it was like "ok, we finally found a drummer, so let's add some real drums". And then it became this rock band. It's this kind of situation that dictates what we are doing and I think it is important, that the fans know it's just FILTER. Of course I can throw on a leather jacket and start writing some songs that sound like Rock'n'Roll or whatever is hip at the moment. And I could play the game and try and follow that trend. Or I could just stick to my guns. And that is what "The Trouble With Angels" is all about. "The Trouble With Angels" is a hybrid of all the records that we've done before, packed on one record. And I think it's important that this record gets pushed the way it's supposed to. And I think the only way to do that is to tour. It took us so long to get out here. We released this record one year ago. But I think what we're going to do is to relaunch it again out here with a live record attached to it. So it would be "The Trouble With Angels" with a live record. That might be an idea that we might do.

So how do you keep the spirit high in the band with changing line-ups?

It takes the right kind of persons. For instance I love Mitch Marlow (former guitar player 2008-2010) and he wrote a lot of music on that record. But Mitch doesn't like to tour. He just gets home sick really fast. So he'll play a few things, but he doesn't want to go on tour and sweat it out and "be in a band". Rob Patterson (current guitar player) on the other hand lives for the road. He loves the road. Same with Phil Buckman (current bass player). Mika's similar (Mika Fineo, current drummer). I like this version a lot. But I tend to work with everybody nowadays. You know, if Geno (Lannardo, guitar player 1995-2002) called me up, and he said, "Hey, I think I've got something really great for FILTER and want you to have a listen", I'd have a listen. Brian Liesegang worked on the last record. Essentially it's kind of a Bruce-Springsteen-situation. Or Tom-Petty-Situation. But I don't like to have all of the attention, I don't really care about getting all the attention.

So how did you get Brian Liesegang in again?

I was calling him: "Hey Brian, what are you doing? Hey, I need some programming, would you like to do some stuff?" - "Yeah, great! Hey, what's the song?" - "It's called "Fades Like A Photograph" - "Great, wow, that's beautiful." That's just it. He tripped down on it and went to town and did his famous Liesegangian things. Well, there was a lot of ego involved ten years ago. And now it's all just like "Let's just work and make music" - it's way more of a collaborative kind of excitement. I like working with everybody again.

It looks like you're working a lot for motion picture soundtracks. Is it kind of by accident, so that you have already written them and somebody picks it?

No, we've always been working with producers and directors, all the way through the years. In the beginning I ran into Ben Stiller at a show, and he said "I love 'Hey Man Nice Shot' and I wanna put it in a fucking movie" and I was like "Ok, cool" and than the next thing I know is – hey , there it is, in the score for "The Cable Guy". I always loved collaborating with film and it's important to me. Especially now, you can spread yourself everywhere. It's not only film, but video games, ring tones and commercials. That changed from ten, fifteen years ago when I got blamed by the guitar player in Soundgarden, who asked me "Hey, did you do that fucking Reebok commercial?!" - I answered "No, I turned it down." He went on "Well, someone ripped you off and did it for the commercial. They got a sound-a-like." And I was like - "Damn!" How much flag could I get for not even doing it! And he was literally pointing his finger at me!

I turned down stuff like JC Penny and all these different things because it was just not cool to let people use your music for things that you wouldn't even buy yourself. But when the Hummer H3 commercial came out, I thought "Hummer H3, that's a fuckin quality product and they bring my niece and nephew to school." It's just a changing world and it's good to constantly make sure your name's out there at any capacity, and that's why.

Doesn't it make it easier to ask someone like Sonja Kinski (daughter of Natassja Kinski, granddaughter of Klaus Kinski) to be part of your video for "Fades Like A Photograph"?

Sonja Kinski was asked by a friend of our director and she was like: "Hey, I'll do it." She's a very beautiful girl.

She looks like her mother back then. Isn't it funny that those actors working with you are 20 years younger? What was it like to make the video, did you need some real acting skills to do it?

They used a little Canon camera. It's amazing, it's HD and it looks like film. The director put a little transistor radio with a cd player right on the scene, then he took his little camera and told us "Ok. Fall in love with each other! Sing! And act!" So we acted and did a video. I don't know if the age element is in there at all. I'm 43 but - when you're older you don't really feel like you're older. The only thing that is that your body starts fallin apart which is strange. For example I can't get rid of this ankle problem I've had for the past week or two. I've hurt my ankle and it just won't go away. Probably because I go crazy on stage, you'll see it tonight. Yeah: Your mind is constantly growing and developing and changing – but your body falls apart. That's the weird thing about getting old.

Many people realize they are getting old when their own kids grow up. So you mentioned a niece and a nephew?

I've got nieces and a nephews, but that's a different story. My kids are two and three. I've got two little babies snd I'm married to my wife Tina for like four years now.

And you are back on the road now.

Yeah, I have to work. I did a record, it was falsely launched. We didn't do the right single. Nuclear Blast needed us to come over here but we didn't get enough dates here. I think we gonna spend a lot more time out here, I really do need it to keep building our fanbase in Europe.

You've done some dangerous business, at least some people would call it like that, you've played for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Not in Afghanistan. We played in Iraq, we went there twice. We played the Mid East three times, we played Bagdad once, we went to the Joint Base Balad they call "Mortar-Rita-Ville" (LSA Anaconda) because of the mortars that constantly come in. They're under attack because it's right in an area they call the Sunni triangle. We were attacked, we were shot at a few times.

How is it like to come there? You of course wear vests?

Yeah, you wear body armour, it's called flak jackets, and they say: "Get on your battle rattle, we're going out. We're gonna go get off the plane." And then you wear your helmets and all the other stuff. Luckily they didn't shoot at us when were getting off the plane. It's really important that the troops know that people care about them. I don't know about the wars. I tried to fight against the war with my record "Anthems For the Damned". And no one in America cares. America is like: America is at war with Irak? The marines are at war, the Army is at war, and the Americans are at the mall. Or in the unemployment-line. America's got a lot of shit going on right now and everyone is fuckin hurt.

And then the hurt come back home. In Germany it's a new experience. We haven't been at war for about 45 years, and when the soldiers are coming back from Afghanistan traumatized or hurt, the care for those has to be newly established. Is this an issue in the US?

It's called Post-Traumatic stress disorder. You know, when you shoot someone, the bullets are that big on a 50-kaliber-machine gun, so the bodies just explode into a million different pieces. And seeing a human beeing... Especially the sad thing is that there's always civilians and animals involved. From what I've been told by the troops themselves that I've talked to, the trauma is not only about the enemy, which is what you're there to kill, but there's all these little kids that get into the way. They're like: When a 3 year old get's in front of a convoi and won't move – you can't stop the convoi. It's fucking terrible. That's the part that they hate. They don't mind killing the enemy. It's when they run over small children in their vehicles and stuff like that. It's the women they kill. It's the human shields: When a guy's got a rocket launcher and there's two or three people standing right next to him that are women or kids – hey, the guy's got a rocket launcher and you've got to protect your tank.
It's shit. The world's shit. You know, the Middle East is shit. It's total shit. They're fucking crazy. They've got a fucked up religion. They're uneducated. They don't follow any logic. And they've got all the oil. It's just this insane place. 60 years ago they've been living in tents, riding camels. That's all they want to do, that's all they ever wanted to do. Read the Quran, fuckin chop each others heads off and be warlords. Now they've got all the oil and now they're getting nuclear bombs. Iran, the Ajatollah – it's a theocracy.

I'm an atheist. So when I see people with power who believe in superstition and fantasy – that scares the shit out of me. Scientists like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson – those are my heroes. And when I see things like fucking Ahmadinejad saying "Gay people should be hung" that's like hanging people because they have brown eyes. It's their sexuallity, it's just something that you're born with. I agree with Lady Gaga here. It's like Hitler killing all the retarded people or clearing out the Jews. It's the same shit. Bin Laden thinks everything should be his way. And then when you go in and you fucking kill him – and you realize he's a dope fiend?! He's got a bunch of pot and he's got poppy and he's got fucking opium?! And he was an egomaniac watching himself on tv. These are the fucking people that fucking rule the world. These are the people that fucking kill people on 911. That's the problem with the world!

Their basic power of terrorists is to scare people.

The world is a fucking crazy place. America's crazy, everybody's crazy. Even Obama can't admit that he believes in nothing. About 40 percent of all people living in the US are Atheists, but 100 percent of our representatives in Washington are Christians? Of course not, but they all want to be re-elected. This is a crazy hypocrisy! I think we're about 2000 or 3000 years from evolving to a point of "maybe it should be about humanity helping each other and maybe that's what it should be about." Maybe we're just about 10.000 years away from being awesome. And we've got the technology to do so many amazing things but – I don't know. "The trouble with Angels" is my new record and I address a lot of these issues on that.