P.O.D. Frontman On JAMEY JASTA Collaboration: 'He Was A Complete Professional'

Bob Zerull of Zoiks! Online recently conducted an interview with vocalist Sonny Sandoval of Christian hard rockers P.O.D. (PAYABLE ON DEATH). An excerpt from the chat follows below.

Zoiks! Online: You've got a lot of momentum going with the new album "Murdered Love". You worked with [producer] Howard Benson again. Was the magic still there?

Sonny: Yeah, man. We've come up together. We are his first gold and platinum record, and after that, he took on the world and made millions of other records. I think with us taking a little hiatus and now coming back, I was keeping in touch with him and he was, like, "When do you want to do it again? Because I want to make a real rock record; I'm tired of the cookie-cutter process." He lets us be us; that's the cool thing. When we say something, he fights for it. We also listen to his opinion because we trust it and he's just easy to work with.

Zoiks! Online: There's are several collaborations on the album. I'm a big Jamey Jasta [HATEBREED] fan. How did he get involved?

Sonny: He's just an old friend, you know?! [There is] mutual respect [between us]. To do collaborations is always just fun for us. We wanted a heavy vocal [so] we thought of him. [We wanted something] more street, then we thought maybe more grimy like Dave Mustaine [MEGADETH]. By Twitter, Jamey and I happened to be going back and forth and I was like, "Hey, dude, I got a song if you're interested." He was like, "Dude, send it over." That's one of the benefits of technology. I think within a couple of days we had it done. He was a complete professional. [He] didn't want nothing. It was just for the love of music and he killed it.

Zoiks! Online: We're headquartered out of the western side of Illinois and there is this festival there called the Cornerstone Festival. You've played it several times. It ended this year. What was your thoughts on the festival and are you sad to see it go?

Sonny: Yeah, I'm sad to see it go. Cornerstone was one of those things where even for me coming from California… We never claimed to be a Christian band; we just were outspoken about our faith. It's not like we knew there was a scene. We weren't playing churches, but all of the sudden we started getting asked to play certain places. The first time we played Cornerstone was 1994, [and I] was like, "Yo, this is cool." I wasn't raised in the Church. I wasn't raised a Christian. To me, Christianity was so conservative and stuffy, but for me it was just a relationship with God. The Church relationship was just so stuffy. Then I went to Cornerstone and there were, like, dudes with Mohawks, pink hair, tattoos and I was like, "I can get down with this." I got love for Cornerstone, man.

Read the entire interview from Zoiks! Online.