 |
Yea, while Jesus himself said to turn the other cheek, the band's lead singer Sonny Sandoval just laughs, "You only got two cheeks, you know what I'm saying?
"We're not quiet boys and everybody knows that. You ask any of these bands and they'll tell you: Don't catch us on a bad day. You might get knocked out for saying the wrong thing."
Onward, Christian soldiers.
At Red's tonight supporting its latest album, Payable on Death, this San Diego band is an enigma in tattoos and black T-shirts. On the surface they sound like every mook-metal band out there: Lumpen Korn Bizkit with a side of reggae gravy. The musicians are all tough and rough like hard-rock dudes should be. Their music is quite loud. It causes mosh pits and arm tattoos. They're a favourite of both the Billy Graham Ministries and Ozzfest - no sense in preaching to the converted, eh? - whose respective founders display crosses for different reasons.
They saw The Passion of the Christ - last summer in Mel Gibson's office on special invitation - and "when I read the scriptures, I picture (the crucifixion) a thousand times worse," Sonny says. Their fans are known as "warriors."
Not to be messed with, these dudes. But then there's P.O.D.'s lyrics. It's an odd feeling hearing this band rumble and stomp about the low end of the rock 'n' roll seismic scale, expecting darkness and doom and finding love and hope instead. Now that's rebellious. As it became clear during a phone interview with Sonny - an affable, typically laid-back "So-Cal dude" who just happens to accept Jesus Christ as his personal saviour - P.O.D. is not another Christian rock band that denies it's a Christian rock band. Christian record labels were too "afraid" to sign P.O.D. in the early days, Sonny says, but now that they're a secular mainstream hit, the Christian bookstore scene alone is just too small to sustain them.
This band has truly crossed over, so to speak, to enjoy the best of both worlds: Christian and secular headbangers alike. Besides, they have, Sonny points out more than once, stuck to their guns for 13 years.
"We just talking about the things that are true to us, so we tend to get put in a box and stereotyped," he says. "But in 13 years, we've proven to rock with the best of them and hold our own."
Don't just judge a band by its lyrical content, he urges.
"It's like looking at a beautiful painting. You're not worried if the guy is Christian or not. It's like, what is this painting saying to me? I'm not going to go up to some death-metal group and say, 'Hey, we're a Christian metal band.' It's like, dude, let's just get up and play music and let it speak for itself. Let's prove it by the music you're playing."
P.O.D. is not alone when it comes to being dissed, having been caught in what will come to be known as the Great Nu-Metal Backlash of Ought-Three.
Last year was a terrible year for rock bands that combined hard rock with rap music.
The public turned en masse against Limp Bizkit and their ilk - in part, Sonny suggests, because the genre became so popular that everyone started doing it. Surfeited kids rebelled in disgust and started downloading Evanescence songs instead.
Then again, most of these bands don't share P.O.D.'s moral conviction. Most sturm und doom-mongers are not to be taken seriously, Sonny says.
"We played Ozzfest for two years," he says. "And a lot of these bands they get out there and it's nothing but gargoyles and demons, but you know what? It's a joke. That's why I can go out there with confidence. We've established something that's real to us as four individuals who believe in something. We play with our heart and passion.
"They get out on stage and they appear to be the evil-est thing in the world and it's like (feigns tough voice), 'What's up, motherf---ers!' and yet backstage, they're all vegans or whatever eating figs and berries, doing yoga, you know what I mean? And sitting around with the softest female voice (feigns effeminate voice), 'Hey, guys,' and you're like, 'is this guy trying to pick up on me or what?' This doesn't make any sense. That's when you realize that it is a joke.
"Regardless, anybody who hangs out with P.O.D. knows we're the nicest guys, the coolest guys and people wanna hang out with us and be our friends. We're just down-to-earth So-Cal type of guys. We're laid back, and if there's anybody else that has anything bad to say about P.O.D. they don't have the balls to say it in front of us anyway."
At the very least, I think we've established that P.O.D. is not the Stryper of the new millennium. They are the anti-Bizkit.