Back to Part I

antiMUSIC: Ok I promised to keep focused on the new album, so what I’d like to do now is cover the album song by song. I’ll give you the title and if you can tell us a little about the song, what it’s about or any stories associated with it, what inspired it, funny stories etc? 

Elias: A lot of them are along the same lines. 

antiMUSIC: If you guys want to pick a few out that really stand out? 

Elias:

• “Development” was about breaking out of the norm. Trying to define our sound I guess. 

• “Circles” Was something that we wrote for the NASCAR soundtrack, for Fox TV. It was excellent. 

• “Your Signs” was about misdirection… being pointed in a direction and expecting something and it not being there. 

 
•  “Normal Days” is about dealing with somebody really difficult and going through life daily and having these fucked up days and just wishing they would get back to normal. That kind of thing. 

• “My Own Sake” is about that fucking guy from MTV; cuz I ain’t doing it for him, I’m doing it for me. 

• “Hands” was one of the first songs, I think it is the first song that we wrote for this album. Something we were kind of testing the waters with on the last tour. The headlining tour. It went over with the audience so that’s kind of why the direction went the way that it did. Because our fans were responding to a new sounds from us and they were really responding to it. That’s what it was about. The song was about turning around and wanting to see the support. 

• “Excessive Reaction” for some reason I thought of why watching Malcolm X. The movie Malcolm X and he was talking about a powder keg. I was just thinking about that and for some reason, I just wrote that song. 

 
•  “Mountains” is about an argument that keeps happening between two people and it’s about something so small they keep making bigger and bigger and bigger every time it comes up. 

• “Any Advice?” was a song that was written at the very end. Half the people loved it and half the people didn’t know about our album. It was just an emotion of “then, what the fuck do you want us to do?” 

• “Hide And Seek” is about the best communication in a relationship. It’s about one person saying to another person all we have to do is say everything that is on our minds, say everything we’re thinking about. You know the instant emotion and just saying it without hiding it at all. 

• “Get Inside” was originally a song about Columbine. I was watching the news and they were talking about all of the lawsuits that the parents were putting up because the police were just hanging out outside. They couldn’t run in because of insurance reasons or this whole big thing. They said that they got in as quickly as possible but it was like some of these kids had enough time to write their parents that goodbye letters. I just hope each everyone of those people win their case because that was just… who cares when you should be running in there to save those kids, you know what I’m saying there are a bunch of kids in there.. they look to us, adults for protection and when the real people who are supposed to protect don’t do it because of technicalities.. it’s like, you know.. the song was originally was, it used to say, “Forget about polite/ hurry up and fight / You’re words are just lying there helpless / Hurry up and fight / Get inside they’re helpless why you wait for nothing” is what it used to be but somebody else wrote a song about Columbine and it was all a big thing and we really didn’t want to like make it look like we were trying to make any kind of money off of it. It was that kind of message, it was something that when we originally did the song that’s what we wanted to do but with everything that’s going on, September 11th and everything, you kind of like gotta be, everything is really touchy so we just want to be smart. 

• “Mint” is about being left helpless and trying to make sense of what you are left with. 

antiMUSIC: What songs are your most proud of? 

Elias: “Mint,” “Any Advise,” “Hide and Seek,” and “Your Signs,” Those are the ones that are my favorite on the record. Seriously I really love all the songs on this record. I don’t like to put in my first album and jam it. Every once in a while I can tolerate, everyone hates their own voice. I have my own voice as much as everyone else hates theirs but this is something I can actually put in and be really proud of. 

antiMUSIC: Unlike a lot of bands that keep their fans at arms length, I’ve heard that you guys try to keep in as close of contact with your fan base as possible. In what ways do you do accomplish that? 

Elias: As soon as the show is done we walk off the front of the stage, the side of the stage or whatever. We go straight to the merch booth and say hey to everybody. I make it clear to everybody if you didn’t get me there, get me, outside you’re gonna get me. If you want to meet me, you’re gonna meet me. Anybody in the band. We have promotions all the time. We have meet and greets. You buy the CD, come on the bus, you can meet us. We have a cell phone out here with a phone number where people can in touch with the band directly. We have no way of keeping up with our website and our message board, it was insane. Kids were going there and we go shit let’s give them a number for if they want to talk to us, they can talk to us. If they have a question, if there is something wrong, if we helped them get through something, whatever. The phone call, it keeps us going. It really does. We are constantly going to retailers and signing stuff. We just try to keep it as normal as possible. Try to keep the view of the band at arms reach as possible. They can definitely not be scared, they’re gonna come up and meet us. Eventually, if we do go platinum or double platinum I still want to walk around. That’s what we’re trying to set a base for. We’re trying to be normal people. 

antiMUSIC: What has the fans reaction been to the new album overall? 

Elias: They are supportive as hell. Like I said, they just… everybody is taking a really big hit in record sales. Fucking look at Korn, they sold five and half, six million records twice in a row and then now they are not doing anything. Disturbed, 300 thousand the first week, a hundred thousand the second week and it’s going down. People aren’t buying records… I don’t blame people. It’s hard. It’s hard to save money, it’s hard to buy things. Especially with as quick as technology is growing and as accessible as everything is, it’s pretty much for free now. It’s hard to make it. People don’t really understand that this is our livelihood. For big bands that have already sold millions and millions of records it’s no big deal but every single record scanned counts for us. We hope that our fans understand that and love us enough that they don’t just like one song on the record, they like the album. I’m a fan of buying records. I still buy them. I still go out and buy the CD, I don’t just burn it off the Internet. 
 

antiMUSIC: How would you describe Nonpoint to anyone who hasn’t heard you?

Elias: A honest to goodness live rock band that you’ll have a blast watching. Hang out, come to the show, you will walk away buying the record, I guarantee it. 

antiMUSIC: On that same front, if you had the chance to use only one song to give people an idea of what Nonpoint is all about which song would it be? A signature song?

Elias: There are a bunch of them. That’s what I mean, we get such a good reaction from some of our songs and that’s what I love about it. It’s not where you stand around and wait for us to play [that one song]. If somebody comes to our show and they’re not gonna go at the very end, “oh yeah, that’s the band”. They know “Victim”, they know “Endure”, They know “Signs”, they know “Development”, they know “Circles”… and they sing it all night long! You’ll see it, they sing our music for us. Like I said, you are either a fan of our band or you haven’t heard of us yet. That’s how I feel, I feel like at least people will respect what we are doing and respect the fact that we take pride in our music and we’re trying to be really good musicians. We understand the position we’re in, we’re entertainers. We’re not gonna slack, we’re gonna try and get better and hopefully we are. I think we’ve gotten better, from the first record to the second record I definitely think we’ve got better. And anybody that begs to differ, then they’re just not a fan of us and not everybody is gonna be a fan. I’m not a fan of everything either. 

antiMUSIC: Finally, what do you want people to take away from your music?

Elias: A good time. 

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