ours before Elias Soriano, lead singer of Florida rock band Nonpoint, takes the stage, he admits to nervousness, something he said he'd probably never get over. But it doesn't seem too unusual for someone who fronts a band that will play before several thousand fans of both rap and rock as part of a conglomeration of bands united to form the Sprite Liquid Mix tour.
Performing isn't new to him either. Nonpoint made a name for itself by landing a spot on last year's Ozzfest lineup and just finished touring with Filter and Sevendust on the Locobazooka tour.
Despite the battle put up by this summer's popular tours, including Ozzfest and the Vans Warped Tour, Soriano felt Locobazooka had held its own as a newcomer, but looks forward to a more diverse crowd on the Liquid Mix tour.
"The crowd - we want them to be different," Soriano said. "We're out here to play for people that have never heard of us before. If we wanted to play to our crowd we would have booked a headlining show. But we want to convert people and get new people."
For the fans of Nonpoint, the relationship is somewhat similar to that of a religious following. Tattoos of an intricate scorpion, the Nonpoint symbol, appear on the backs of fans who refer to themselves as "hardcore."
"That's dedication," Soriano said. "And obviously we did something for those people for them to want a permanent reminder of our band - so whatever possible we did for them - I'm glad we could do. I'm glad we entertain them and that we mean enough in their lives, because they're everything to us."
Although Nonpoint has now developed a large fan base, Soriano said much of the music from the sophomore album "Development" was written about being in a band and trying to make it. Soriano said he took the long road.
"I grew up and had to work for everything, and I had to walk seven miles to school through snow uphill both ways," Soriano said laughing. "I'm joking - I'm from Florida, there's no snow in Florida. It was just something where I set my goals big when I was a kid, and I think the guys in the band did the same."
When it came time to put the music together Soriano said each member did their own part and in their six years together, all see each other as equal rank, but Soriano is "the mouth" of the band.
"Some of us are just a little more motivated than others but everybody still counts," he said. "You've got to be an expert or professional at it. You read up every single day and hour for two years and you're going to be a pro at whatever you do."
Although the band's name is derived from a lyric drummer Robb Rivera once heard in a song, the meaning of Nonpoint is somewhat similar to the band's recent success...it didn't all come from a single source.
"Nonpoint is a way to measure pollution that can't be traced back to an original origin, like water pollution or air pollution," he said. "You know you can't specifically say its from this one factor...it's measured in nonpoint."
Although Soriano said the band doesn't receive any radio or MTV help, it prides itself in embracing rock stardom the old-fashioned way.
For Soriano, music today has become somewhat of an advertising campaign, and when corporations like MTV try to mix something corporate with something artistic, it ends up corrupt no matter what way you look at it.
"Pop music is exactly that. Pop-u-lar. Pop is a way to sell a car. A way to sell clothes," he said. "It's a way to sell advertising slots between your music. And it's drawing interest whether it's interest because of how a person looks just because they're in the tabloids, interest because they're the new next best thing, or because they sound like we used to in the 70s and 80s. Those are just trend billboards in TV and radio. You can't stake your career on that or else you're going to be disappointed - or lied to a whole bunch."
Nonpoint proved it wasn't going anywhere when the band's label MCA kept them on for a second record after seeing the band's fan base and reactions, despite not having sold a million records. "Development" was released in June, a little over a year after the first album "Statement" was released.
"It's because we're doing it like Metallica did back in the day," he said. "We're doing it like 311 did - like these bands that came up the right way, like Korn did - they built it up themselves and then the radio had to compete and that's actually what we're doing."
The band will head overseas with Papa Roach in the fall.
"We're not going to make predictions on it just yet, we're going to see how it goes, we don't know what to expect as far as our fan base," Soriano said. "We're just kind of interested in seeing how it goes. We're keeping our fingers crossed and hoping everything goes great."
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