WITH their multiple tattoos and piercings, southern Californian rock band Payable on Death look indistinguishable from acts such as Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. Unlike their peers, however, this multi-racial four-piece, commonly known as POD, don't live by the familiar rock rules of pulling babes and getting loaded; they live by the word of God.
In America, they are a huge success. Their last album, Satellite, turned platinum last year, following an unexpected hit with their inspirational single Alive, which was adopted as an alternative national anthem after the events of September 11.
But then Christian rock is one of the few thriving genres in the beleaguered American record industry. Indeed, such is the financial might of Christian music that it accounted for 7 per cent of total record sales in the US last year. Christian rockers Creed have topped the Billboard album chart since November, despite the fact that their music is as dull as ditchwater.
Unsurprisingly, the genre suffers from something of a credibility problem, and will always be associated with the success of Eighties glam-rockers Stryper, a big-haired cartoon of a band who wore black and gold Spandex and flung Bibles into stadium crowds.
POD are cut from an entirely different cloth. For one thing, they claim not to be a Christian rock band at all, but a rock band who are Christians. For another, they actually sound pretty good, transcending the clumsy rap-rock of other million-selling acts by combining their taut, melodic rock and funk-laden rhythms with a heavy roots reggae influence.
Satellite, released on East West in the UK this week, features contributions from Jamaican toaster Eek-A-Mouse and HR, vocalist with revered Rastafarian hardcore band Bad Brains. There is no scripture quoted, but almost every song seems concerned with either dispelling wickedness or invoking higher powers.
At a low-key London show last week, POD proved their mettle in front of an unusually young and clean crowd who greeted the band's appearance with rapture. The atmosphere was charged like a revival meeting. At one point, dreadlocked singer Sonny Sandoval raised his palms Christ-like to the crowd and they responded in kind. Some, possibly oblivious to the band's faith, flashed the devil-horned heavy metal call sign. The first and only time that God's name was invoked was when POD bowed out at the end of their ferocious hour-long set.
"It doesn't make sense to go into a club and tell people that they are dirty, rotten filthy sinners," said bass player Traa (pronounced Tray) Daniels earlier that day, sitting with Sandoval and drummer Noah "Wuv" Bernardo in a spacious hotel suite overlooking Hyde Park. (Guitarist Marcos Curiel had ducked out of press duties.) "Yeah, nobody wants to hear that, dude," agreed Sandoval. "We're like, just come out and rock with us."
Their self-released 1992 debut album, Snuff the Punk, suggests that the band were not always so laid-back about their faith. Steeped in the kind of combat imagery more usually associated with the Christian Right, it contains an anti-abortion song called Murder. "We were militant back then and proud of it," says Daniels.
POD were formed nine years ago by Bernardo and his schoolfriend Curiel, who were born and raised in San Ysidro, a lower middle-class suburb of San Diego. Bernardo then asked his cousin Sandoval to join the band, in order to take his mind off his mother's recent death from cancer. Daniels was subsequently poached from a local funk band when POD's original bass player left on the eve of a make-or-break appearance at Los Angeles' famous Whiskey A-Go-Go.
Sandoval puts the earlier records down to the "the immaturity of a teenager". "When you become a Christian all of a sudden you start to live on this rapture mentality," he explains, "like tomorrow the world's going to end. You live in that frenzy. We come from the streets, so the mentality was like," - he suddenly stiffens, adopting an aggressive tone - " 'Yo, dude, what's up? You're not going to tell me I'm not down with God. What's up!' "
Such was their ferocity that they would often find white-power skinheads turning up to see them. "At one show," recalls Daniels, "there was this guy standing up front with his fingers in his ears because he didn't want to hear what we had to say to him."
Even now they come off like a street gang turned out for the Lord. Years of battling against indifference has instilled in them an us-against-the-world mentality. When they get riled, the street mentality rises to the surface. Sandoval gets as pumped up as a firebrand preacher, Daniels bristles with righteousness and Bernardo begins to pepper his speech with swearing. "When people see us they have preconceived ideas of how we're going to be," says Bernardo. "So when we play, we have to go out and blow people's minds twice as hard as everybody else to get half as far. You know, that's why I'm glad to be a Christian. Because, if I wasn't, the only thing between you and me is my drums and a whole lot of fury."
The hard-won success may have tempered their drive to convert, but it has only strengthened their faith. "I realise that our success is a gift," says Sandoval. "I'm like, thank you, Lord. Thank you that I'm here with my best friends. Thank you that today is going to be wonderful. Thank you that I bought a home last year and that my wife and daughter are sitting in front of a big screen TV, looking at the nice beautiful yard that we just built and the flowers."
To their dismay, however, they now find themselves broadsided by Right-wing Christian groups who rail against POD's decision to share stages with "wicked and vulgar" secular acts such as Kid Rock. The band themselves see nothing wrong with playing events such as Ozzfest, the heavy-metal festival named after former Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne. In fact, they view it as a challenge.
"At every Ozzfest show there's horns and devils somewhere," says Sandoval, "there's some kind of darkness somewhere. But the thing is, this is a stage, homey, and those fools are entertainers. And you know what, it shows! It's fake. On stage, they're all 'rock and roll, the devil, f-this and f-that'. Backstage it's all about caviar, three catered meals a day, personal trainers, and therapists for all the people that don't know how to handle this rock and roll life."
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