[Submitted by: mgc_mushroom] January 2001 CCM
"Others might say, 'Ahhh! P.O.D., the sellouts!' Sell out to what? We never had your support in the first place!" -Sonny

[Submitted by: Du©t Tape Wa®®io®] Excerpt from Revolver Nov/Dec 2001
Much has been made in the media of P.o.D.'s christian faith... it is impossible to discuss songs like "Christ" [now called portrait] "the messenjah" and "anything right" without mentioning the band's spiritual beliefs - or more specifically, the hammering that they've taken on both sides of the christian/secular divide for daring to articulate their love for jesus christ in a hard-rock context. "We get the people who say, 'oh they're christian rock, dude, don't listen to them,'" says sonny. "and then we get people who say we're not christian because our beliefs don't match perfectly with theirs." "we go around the country and meet all these christians who expect us to be like them," adds wuv. "and we're not -- we're just people who love God. We're not holier-than-thou. so, with the song 'Christ' it's like, 'here's our picture of christ.'"

"the lyrics talk about what we've come to know in our faith in christ," Sonny explains, "and also the hypocrisy we see in a lot of people who call themselves christians."

"We get kind of frustrated," marcos admits. "We believe in christ, and we love God with all our hearts, but we just see so many people who have such extreme outlooks of what they believe christ should be. or people say to us, 'all you say is 'rock the party,' so you're a sellout! you don't love god anymore!' no matter what we do its never good enough. you'll see the same people who picket a marilyn manson show picket one of our shows. it's like, 'dude don't you get it?'"

The god that p.o.d. worships, as expressed in the band's music, is a loving and benevolant creator, as opposed to the god of wrath so popular with tele-evangelists, right-wing politicians, and those who represent heavan by firebombing abortion clinices.

"we've always throw love into the picture," says sonny. "ultimately we believe that god is love, and if we can just get people to grasp the foundation of love, they're gonna make it - you know what i'm saying? they're gonna be alright"

"Can i give you a pretty harsh quote right now?" marcos asks. "we hate religion dude. religion sucks man! it's not about ritual for us, it aboust a personal relationship with God."

Since when is this world a perfect place?
Mistakes happen.
This is an imperfect world.
Isn't that the point of this crazy place?
There's only one perfection I know of......
END OF DISCUSSION

"Do you drink, smoke, do drugs, or swear, for instance?

No, see that’s what I’m talking about. Those aren’t even issues, you know what I mean? But like I said, what if one day I stubbed my toe and said something and all of a sudden somebody said, "Oh my God! He just said the F-word." But it’s like, "Hey dude, I know the word. I’ve said it before." Definitely it can come out, but that’s something that I choose every day not to talk like that.

Is it something you want to keep in the past?

Yeah, definitely. That’s nothing new to me. It’s not like I’m going to melt if I’m in a room with a bunch of guys, a bunch of sailors. That’s a choice that I make. To say, "Hey dude, do I want to sound that way, do I want to say those words?" Or [do I hope everything that]would come out of my mouth would be positive? I’m going to do the best that I can not to swear, but if I do, don’t go and change your whole life around because of it."

Interviewer: A Lecture?

Sonny: Yeah, exactly. But at the same time it is our heart’s desire that they don’t walk away just thinkin’ "Wow, those guys rocked." And toast their beers to us and just say, "Wow" and go into the pit and knock somebody out. We want them to leave and say, "Man, those guys are different than all the other bands."

[Submitted by: mgc_mushroom] April 2001 Hit Parader
"We've always been a band that relied on playing what we felt inside," he said. "We've always admired a band like Bad Brains because you knew they were always ready to try anything if they thought it would work with their music. They were one of the first bands to bust punk, hardcore and reggae, and that was dope. That inspired us a lot. We've tried to take all the music we liked- whether it has a latin feel, a hip-hop feel or a metal feel- and just do it up the best way we can. On the next album (Satellite) we're just gonna try to push everything along the same way. But we like offering up a few surprises too. If people think they've got P.O.D. totally scoped out, we think they're in for some stuff they don't really expect." -Wuv

Sandoval: Because they're loyal. We're thankful for every new fan, but there's a lot of kids [that know us from when] we used to play their back yards. We were playing wherever we could, sleeping on their floors, and they were buying us lunch and dinner. With what we're about and what we stand for ... there are a lot of kids that are proud of us. They were more proud when we got signed than we were. Now, when these kids come out, it's genuine. It's not like, "This is my flavor-of-the-month because they have a hit song." They're coming to our shows to experience what we experience. It's kind of like magic.

Daniels: A lot of them were down with us when the style of music we were doing back in '92 wasn't even cool.

Bernardo: They're responsible for the reaction we get in certain cities. We'll go through the cities we've been playing for eight, nine years, and those kids ... are taking P.O.D.'s name and blowing it up all over the city. Every one of our bus drivers gets mad 'cause we let everybody on the bus. They're constantly looking at the carpet, and we're like, "Dude, we'll clean it up."

Got anymore questions? Answers for questions? Email them to podhllw@aol.com Also, we reccommend answering your question with a quote from the boys, or from someone/somewhere else. Thanks!