P.O.D's Marcos Curiel gives the scoop on new album 'Veritas'

Photo credit: Janson Bulpin

I recently had the pleasure of chatting to Marcos Curiel. Marcos is the guitarist and primary songwriter for American metal trio P.O.D. The group just released their 11th studio album ‘Veritas’ this last weekend, an album that has been mostly very well received in metal critic circles. So, I sat down with him to chat about the ins and outs of the new record, to see what makes it such a special release. We also took time to discuss the influence of their faith, future UK touring plans, their place within the nu-metal scene, and much more…

The new album Veritas is out now. You seem very happy with it as a group. I’ve read that you wanted to make this a really back to basics, heavy, pummelling kind of a record. I wondered whether that was like a conscious choice Because of what was going on now, or just because it was really what you wanted to do. There’s a lyric on ‘I GOT THAT’ where you say, “bands playing themselves to get a mass appeal.” So, it seems like this is an album where you’re really just doing what you wanna do

It is. It’s definitely a roots, heartfelt P.O.D record. It was a conscious decision to just get back to basics and make people feel something. We’re not trying to get too artsy with it. It was more of a just “punch you in the gut” kind of a vibe. We’ve never been the heaviest band, but we get heavy in our way, and we felt the need to like you know what? Whether people love this or hate it, we did our job. if we made you feel a certain way. So this record is that.

The reviews and the opinion had been pretty overwhelmingly positive. There’s been a few haters here and there, but it’s a beautiful thing. We did our job, and we caused a spark, whether you love it or hate it. Veritas means true in the Latin and Old Latin dialect. It was our truth, individually and collectively, as a band, with some internal stuff that we were dealing with, but also in a time period that we were all dealing with the lockdowns and the pandemic and all that bullshit. This album was born through all of that.

Your lead singer, Sonny, recently said that this album was built kind of a song at a time at a studio over 18 months. He talked about how you guys like to do it organically, as a band, in a room. I get the sense that when you’re doing that as a band, you have those moments where you’re jamming on something and then all of a sudden it’s “oh shit, that’s that’s the one.” Even in this more segmented approach, did you still have those lightbulb moments?

Being the predominant songwriter in the band, I’m always coming up with ideas, riffs and progressions. So for me, other than being in a room, it wasn’t that much different, because I still have to do my homework. I think one of the good things about the way that we did this was that we had a lot more time to sit back and reflect.

So if we created something… Usually you create something, you record it and you put it on like “man, I wish you would have done this.” We had the time, since we were doing it song by song, to go back with the producers and be like “you know what I’m not feeling this part” or “let’s change it. I think it’d be better.” Give them more love, I guess.

Time is a beautiful thing. Sometimes it’s a curse in music, but I think for us it is a beautiful thing. We did it exactly the way we wanted it to, and we’re really proud of it. We’re very excited it’s getting the reaction that it’s getting and the fans are eating it up. We’re on the tour now, and people are listening to it, because we’re playing five songs off the new album right now and everyone is loving it. We write it first because we’re self indulgent as artists, but it’s a beautiful thing.

There’s also some great guest spots on this record as well. Randy Blythe (Lamb of God), Tatiana from Jinjer, as well as Cove Reber. I imagine you maybe wrote the music yourselves, but is there any way when you’re doing a feature track that you have to adapt the way you do things? Or is it just they come in and you’re like “we’ve got this thing down, just do your thing.”

We write everything. When they’re features, it’s one thing, and when they’re collaborations it’s a whole other thing. These are more features. We’ve always done more features. A collaboration would mean that we sat together and wrote the song together. We usually kind of hit them with a spot and say, “hey, we have the lyrics for this. We just need you to do your interpretation of it.”

They have to agree to do it because they have to like the song and want to put their name on it. We want them to be proud of what they did with us, and it’s just got to be organic because you don’t want somebody there like, “we paid this person this huge amount of money just to be on the song for their name.” We’re fans of music, so we’re always trying to “ hey man, I wonder if so and so would be into it”, and to and to just see the reaction to be a part of our music.

Going as far back as Lou from Sick of it All, Page from Helmet, Mike from Suicidal Tendencies. All these legends. And that’s because we’re fans. When they come back and go “I would love to” we’re like, “wow, we didn’t expect that.” It’s the same thing with this record. We’ve built friendships and bonds with these people, and they were like “well, if I like this song, I’ll do it.”

Again, we’re fans of music, so the genres are going from Cove who’s known from Saosin, all the way over to Randy from Lamb of God. That’s two different sides of the rock and roll spectrum. Then you got the Ukrainian metallers in the middle. We’re always artistically thinking about pushing ourselves and who we could get to feature on our record. So we’re really happy about the features on this one, especially since our last record, we didn’t have any.

I remember Atlantic Records was tripping on us, “why do you guys want to feature different people on your albums? It’s weird, that’s a hip hop thing” and we’re like, “exactly, that’s why we want to do it, and now, everybody does it. Back in the late 90s, early 2000, it was unheard of for rock bands to do it.

Obviously, your guys’ faith is a very important part of your lives and your music as well, but that can inform the music in different ways. I was reading some of the lyrics for the new album, and a lot of it was “don’t give up, push through the hard times,” that kind of thing. I wondered how it influences each album differently depending on the circumstances, or indeed how it influenced this record.

It all comes from a personal place. I think that’s the beautiful thing about being an artist. It’s a moment in time that you’re caught in, and that’s why we named the record ‘Veritas’ because it was our truth, but in the grand scale, it was also everybody’s truth, going through the pandemic and the lockdowns and all that stuff. In past interviews, I’ve said we don’t frown on anything, but a lot of people just write about the same things: Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, depression, and anger. Those are all valid emotions, but as a band, we’ve always made a conscious decision to try to inspire and encourage our fellow man.

We’re not religious. It’s principles of faith that we were brought up on and why we speak of the things that we do to try to encourage our brothers and sisters. It’s because we’re influenced by bands that weren’t necessarily metal or rock. It was Bob Marley, Carlos Santana, and U2. They’re all different genres that we’ve grabbed from that inspired us and we’re like, “how come there’s not many bands that play heavy rock or metal that do this sort of thing?” Even to this day, you’ve got emo music. I like it too. I like Depeche Mode. I like a lot of this stuff, it’s real emotion.

If you listen to a P.O.D record and you’re a true fan, not every song is going to be super positive, but we’re going to talk about the struggle. We’re going to talk about, “hey, man, we can get through this.”. The first lyric of ‘Alive’, “every day is a new day, I’m thankful for every breath I take.” We’ve all got to get up in the morning regardless of what we’re going through, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.

On this record, we even have a song called ‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves’, which is about mental health, and that’s a very big issue now. It’s always been an issue, but I think now that it’s been more diagnosed… When I was growing up, we didn’t have all these terms, it was just that you dealt with it. Now everything has a term. At least people know about it and are aware of that, so we wrote a song about it. Everybody goes through their peaks and their valleys and their ups and downs. How do we encourage you to get through that?

You’re on tour at the moment, and a lot of your live shows are super energetic and really up there, going for it. I wondered what your perception was of UK audiences in terms of that, because I’ve read a lot of metal bands’ interviews, who say that UK audiences are pretty rowdy. I wondered what your take was on that, like whether you noticed any change in particular in UK audiences, and whether you plan to come back here again soon?

We definitely plan on coming back to the UK. We just did three dates with Skindred: Wembley Arena, and the O2 Academies in Birmingham and Manchester. The crowds were amazing. For our discussion with Benji, the singer from Skindred, it’s hard to team up with certain bands at times, because they’re either so Metal Deathcore, or they’re so this or that. When you mix genres the way that we flirt with genres, especially when you’re mixing punk or reggae or hip hop. It’s kind of a broad palette. When you put us in there with other bands, it’s like, “well, this is different.” We’re OK with that.

So when we teamed up, we’re like, “this works really well.” They were having success with their latest record, and we were just like, “you know what, man? They invited us over.” We weren’t sure about, “hey, we’re going to go over there for three shows”, but we took it as an opportunity to warm up for this new cycle and this new album.

The UK has always been so good to our band. That’s why we did it. We’re like, “man, we haven’t been there since 2019. We might as well go back and play some new tunes and see if we can get some good reactions from it.” It ended up being a blast. We plan on coming back. We’re not forcing anything.

We’re at an age now as artists that we’re not out to prove who we are. You know who we are, or if you don’t you’ll find out. That market Has always been very good to us in the sense of energy, and actually understanding what we’re bringing forth musically and lyrically. We’re going to keep doing this until the wheels fall off.

I really enjoy your culture. I enjoy British, English culture, everything from music to footy. I’m a huge footy fan, I watch certain games, I follow so many different leagues around Europe. I follow the American leagues, and I have a passion for it.

That’s a whole other misconception is “you’re an artist, man. You’re not supposed to like sports.” That’s a bunch of BS. I like things that I’m passionate about, and sports, that’s an individual thing. That’s like, “dude, I got to work hard to get to where I need to be”, whether you’re a fighter or a football player. The culture has always intrigued me and every time I go there I have a great time.

You guys have been through the struggle, you guys are going through the struggle with a lot of things, and that’s why I think you guys kind of latch on to our band: because you can relate. We’re stoked on that, man.

You talked earlier on about melding genres and how you approached that, and obviously you guys were kind of lumped in with the nu-metal scene in the mid to late 90s with bands like Slipknot and Korn and Static-X and what have you. It seems like in recent years, nu-metal’s seen a kind of resurgence. I just wondered whether you guys accepted the term and were happy with it, or whether/how you think you fit into that scene

You know, as you get older as an artist, things don’t bother you like they used to, at least for me personally. There was a lot of stigmas and a lot of people like to put this band in a box. I know that’s not true, but that’s just how the human brain works. “Oh well, you’re a nu-metal band” or “you’re a rap rock band”, or “you’re a Christian band”, and I sit there and go, “we’re just four kids that started in the garage, we have good principals, and we had a good upbringing.

We had good parents who taught us “treat people the way you want to be treated.” We also grew up in the neighbourhood, so we learned street smarts from being with our friends, seeing what we didn’t want to become, and seeing what we did, what we wanted to do and not do. Music pretty much saved our lives, man. We took all the elements and we put it into our craft.

When people have all these pre-misconceived notions of what our band is, it disappoints me, but at the same time, I know who we are. It’s no different than when we go out and play deep cuts live, because there’s the fan that only knows the stuff that’s on the radio, or that’s on a video. Then there’s the other songs that we enjoy playing from the record that some people are like, “what is this?” If you do your research about our band, there’s so many shades and different colours, and I’m very proud of that.

I used to get hung up on things, like “we’re not that, now you want to call us a nu-metal band”, but if you really put us up with our peers, we don’t really sound like any of those bands. One of the first bands that we actually went out with and were tight with… I mean, we’re tight with the Korns and Limp Bizkits, but it was Linkin Park.

We were asked by the head of Warner Brothers, who couldn’t get [them] a tour to save their lives, to take them out on one of their first American tours ever. We’re like, “we already have 3 bands”, “we don’t care, put them as the opener, 20 minutes.” We didn’t even know who they were. They ended up playing 20 minutes before three other bands, and all these kids were showing up and were like, “who are these guys? They’re blowing up.” We built a friendship. They were P.O.D fans, and look how massive Linkin Park blew up.

We were more relatable with them because of the melodic and rap fusion, but also the pop sensibility. When you listen to all these other bands, if they try to lump us in nu-metal wise, I’m like “we sound nothing like that”, but if you want to put us in that, we’ll take it if that’s what we are to you. Thank you. Thanks for listening. We’ll be your nu-metal band.