Vampires are lucky, they feed on others. We gotta feed on ourselves, we gotta eat our legs 'till we get the energy to walk. We gotta come so we can go, we gotta suck ourselves dry. We gotta eat away at ourselves so there's nothing left but appetite. We gotta give and give. What does it take to make sense. It ain't worth it. Jesus said so many times...
Q : That's the introduction passage to the first song from Belgian band Channel Zero's latest album Unsafe. It makes fascinating reading but how does it fit in with the rest of the song ?
Franky D.S.V.D. : To be really honest, the lyrics were made out of a song and the chorus 'sucking me dry, sucking my energy' came about when I saw a movie called Bad Lieutenant. There is a scene where the intro is used and when I saw the movie, I just flipped on the sentence. I suggested to the band that we use it as an intro so I checked with the moviecompany and they didn't have anything against it but the actress wasn't too crazy about the idea of us using it. We changed a couple of words and then it was perfect.

Q : Looking at the new album and then going back to the last one, Stigmatized For Life, there seems to be bigger production, better song writing structure and brilliant vocal delivery. Does that mean that Channel Zero has changed quite a bit since previous albums?
Franky D.S.V.D. : Yeah, I guess the band is starting to become a band. We have to admit that we're not very old as a band so actually our debut S/T album, which was released in 92, was always a test to see what we were like.

Q : Let's go back to late '90 when you first set the whole band up in Brussels. What was it like for you ?
Franky D.S.V.D. : Basically, the trash metal scene was on the downside and death metal was becoming really strong. It was not so easy for us at that time because my voice wasn't really suited to sing deathmetal. Now with unsafe, we are getting the response we deserve. With our previous albums we were on a a small German label that wasn't helping us too much. The albums were there but it wasn't easy to get them into some shops. Ever since, we've been with Play it Again Sam everything has finally started to roll. When Pantera's Vinnie Paul got involved with the whole stigmatized project, some people were saying that we needed outside help to get somewhere and others just tried to put us down. We knew Vinnie, sent him a tape because we needed a mixer but some of the magazines said that we tried to sound like Pantera. We couldn't avoid sounding a little bit like them because we were being mixed in their studio and it was after all, Vinnie Paul mixing us.

Q : Unsafe is the band's first world-wide release - except for some Eastern bloc countries in Europe and some licensing problems in the States. It's interesting to note where the band focused its music and lyrics.
Franky D.S.V.D. : For one point, I didn't grow up ina big city so I cannot say that I've had friends shot or anything like that. I try to stay realistic. Suck my energy and Heroin are actually about hard drugs. I never experienced hard drugs but I have my opinion about that, so I can try to explain or at least put the subject somewhere in the middle. On the other side, it's always good to talk about drugs instead of touching them. I try to bring up subjects that are realistic or social.