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When I joined this band, I never thought of myself as a singer. I just did whatever I could, which was rap. And then, over time, I've grown, and we've developed and tried different things. It all happened gradually and naturally.
'The Awakening' is meant to be listened to in its entirety. Every song ultimately explores a character dealing with life, making mistakes, fighting, trying. But we also live in a singles-type world, and it works on that level, too.
At first, we were militant about our faith, really in people's faces. We used to say, 'I don't care if they kick us off the stage - I'm gonna tell them about Jesus!' But what good did that do? They never invited us back to the club.
I was born into hip hop and reggae, and then I started listening to more hardcore and punk bands like Bad Brains and the Suicidal Tendencies; they opened up a whole new world for me. They had something to say, and I could relate to them.
With rock n' roll and touring comes a lot of good and bad decisions. These guys who are 21, they're out there, and they're not indestructible. The history of rock n' roll tells us, and so a lot of these guys are on this road to destruction.
I remember hearing, back in the day, so-and-so got a deal, and bands are spending the money. Some of them live in the old days, where money is coming in and budgets are endless, but bands have to pay that back. Some bands just don't realize that.
There is... a greater sense of divine purpose when we're playing at all-Christian rock shows. In clubs or bars, we know that the audience primarily came to see a show, so we try not to get preachy and instead let the music do most of the talking.
When we first started, I didn't know there was Christian rock or Christian music. I just thought we were a rock band that stuck to our convictions... Like every other hardcore band out there sang or screamed what they thought, we did the same thing.
It's religion that killed our King, you know what I'm saying - that religious idea that has distorted the love of God, and now the world doesn't want it. They don't want religion. They want Jesus in their heart. They want Him. They just don't want the religion.
My grandmother and mother were from Italy, so I was raised Catholic. That kind of just meant going to church on Easter and Christmas. I saw a radical transformation in my family when they started going to a Christian church. I watched them fall in love with God.
If we do a record, and there's a reggae song, it's not shocking to us. If we do an all hip-hop song, it's not shocking to us. We all listen to that sort of music. It's not about what's in at the time; it's what feels right to us and what we're comfortable in doing.
I'm really not the biggest metal fan as it is. I'm more of a hard-street-punk kind of kid, but I also loved hip hop and reggae music, so we have always sort of refused a street style that is something that we are used to. Something that makes us comfortable and sounds good to us.
Payable On Death is actually a banking term, when someone passes on, what someone leaves behind. We related that to Jesus on the cross, and by his death, our sins are paid, the debt is paid. We have salvation if we want it. We got tired of saying Payable On Death, so we went to P.O.D.
We were always just a hardcore band that came out and said what we believed in, but we also talked about the streets and the stuff that we were into and the struggles and everything we were going through. Once people found out we were Christian, it was always, 'Is that Christian music?'
When you become a Christian, all of a sudden you start to live on this rapture mentality, like tomorrow the world's going to end. You live in that frenzy. We come from the streets, so the mentality was like, 'Yo, dude, what's up? You're not going to tell me I'm not down with God. What's up!'
Kids come up to us all the time and say, 'Hey, I'm not a Christian, but what you guys are doing is cool.' Or they say, 'Man, there's something different going on when you guys play.' I believe that's the Spirit of God touching who God intends to touch, whether it's just one person or 50,000 people.
I went through those times in my life where I started to get bitter and angry, and you're like, 'Why am I even a Christian? I don't like any of these people that call themselves Christians.' That's when I had to go spend time with God, and He had to remind me I'm walking with Him and not these people.
You got to look the part. You have to look like all the successful rock bands look. This is what they do. That's never been us. You know, it's a hard game to play: at the end of the day, we are just a rock band and have so many different cultures of music that we have grown up on, because we are fans of all different kinds of music.