Well, not quite, but the Young Gods were born. Now, five albums later, the band have overcome the disadvantage of being a Swiss rock group and are ranked as one of the foremost techno-industrial bands in the world.

"It was difficult getting gigs when we started out, people thought we were crazy. Then we went to London and our first single came out while we were there. The reaction to it was good and when we went back to Switzerland the home town of each member of the band was claiming the band as its own."

The musicians in the band are a product of a wide range of European musical influences. From a psychedelic youth featuring Can and Pink Floyd, through a punk adolescence, and the growing technological elements of Killing Joke, Joy Division, and Einsturzen Neubaten to today's techno scene, the Aphex Twin in particular.

"The techno scene at the moment is very creative, much more so than rock music. It's very relevant to the 90's - faceless escapism, people are fed up with attitude."Being classed as industrial doesn't bother Franz but he prefers to be described as 'rock' in Europe because they play gigs. Whereas in America he prefers the tag industrial because "rock means Bruce Springsteen and ZZ Top."

"It's all one music coming through the centuries anyhow, so genre doesn't matter. The content is more important than the style."

He says that the band like to go back to the rootsy elements of the music and put question marks on it, so people go "What the fuck is that. Basically we are the gypsies of the nineties, we're just not living in caravans, we're living in vans."

Asked why the band aren't overtly political in their music Franz replies: "To me, three people in a room - that's politics. Music that tries to be political always ends up as and us against them scenario. But them is us."

He says there needs to be a balance. "People are frustrated, they have to shout about things but take Rage Against the Machine: you can scream about the madness of the world and all the injustice, but then you're on Sony and all the benefits are going into the development of weaponry. You see, there is a fine line between being political and being an asshole."

Where he does get political is about his homeland and drugs. " In Switzerland, there's so much repression, it's creepy, not obvious, but clinical. The future is so organised, that's why people do drugs. There's no freedom, so people always go over the limit."

Although understanding of the reasons for drug-taking, Franz says that heroin turns you into an asshole. "Heroin is one thing you can't control, it always takes over at some point."

Cocaine is kind of the same. LSD can be even more dangerous, though I learned a lot from it. Hash is boring, but speed is cheap so it's good. I only did Ecstacy once or twice, because it's so expensive - it seems to be a snob drug.

"We have this thing though that you can collect in our mountains, Psilocybin, the only thing I would consider keeping on investigating in."

"Magic mushrooms?" we inquired.

"Yeah, that's them," he replied with a laugh.

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