SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

It's three hours before Nonpoint's homecoming show at the Zeta Halloweenie Roast in Miami's Bayfront Park Amphitheater, and singer Elias Soriano is doubled over in a chair in his Spartan upstairs dressing room. His dreadlocks brush the floor as he double-knots his brand-new, blindingly white sneakers. "I lost my sneakers on the road," he explains, with an equally white, easygoing smile, while he reties his shoes for the second time in two minutes. "I can't seem to keep a pair of white shoes."

It's not hard to see why. Three seconds into Nonpoint's set, Soriano jumps over two barriers to scream into the faces of the 2,000 heavy-metal fans crammed into the first 20 rows. Only a waistband grab from a friendly roadie is preventing Soriano from getting swallowed whole by the frenzied mass of acne and black T-shirts. After he bounds back onstage, Soriano and his bandmates -- drummer Robb Rivera, guitarist Andrew Goldman and bassist KB -- display the arsenal of arena-rock moves they've acquired during their five years of road-dogging. Rivera jumps up from his drum kit between songs to prance around like Hulk Hogan. KB's stage chops evoke '80s rocker Kip Winger as he mimes the words to the choruses while dancing on the subwoofers. Goldman plays it straight, firing rounds of power chords in a hunkered-down pose resembling a 21st-century Keith Richards. Soriano works the crowd like a presidential candidate, inciting the kids to mosh and then cleaning up the inevitable mess by charming a couple of would-be thugs out of a brawl with a few kind words and a big smile.

In politics, this is called pandering. But in today's commercial-rock radio climate, being all things to all people is the only way to move forward. The Fort Lauderdale-based Nonpoint's angsty, polished, post-n�-metal anthems may leave something to be desired in the originality department, but the metalheads who make up their fan base don't care. To the contrary, they light up request lines across the country, demanding to hear singles and album tracks alike. Sure, it's easy to imagine a junior-high kid in Anywhere, U.S.A., calling up his local Clear Channel radio station to request "The Truth" -- the first single from Nonpoint's new album, Recoil -- so he can try to make his whole town sing along to: "If we only knew the truth about what really goes on/Maybe all the things I do/Would make sense just for once." Hormones have been driving misunderstood youth to dial up musical empathy since the rock era began. Harder to believe is that ultraconservative Clear Channel stations are playing Nonpoint's Spanish-language beat-down thrasher "Rabia." How is this possible?

"Our success lies with where we are as people, with our fans and the relationships that we have with the people on our team," Soriano states, his body language indicating he's very happy with Nonpoint's direction. "Our label [Lava Records] is excited and behind the band. Our managers [ex-Saigon Kick guitarist Jason Bieler and his brother Aaron] are great managers and well-respected and do a great job. And our hometown takes care of us. What more could we ask for, other than a platinum record and a big house in L.A.?"

So is Soriano checking out real estate in the Hollywood Hills? "Hell no!" he exclaims with a laugh. "That's where souls go to die! You think it's here in Miami, but it's definitely there in L.A. [Your soul dies] as soon as you land and claim residency. I think it's seven months you need to claim residency. Your soul dies in that seventh month." Soriano breaks into breathy, California dudespeak. "It just starts thinking about love, man! And being about being there, and being vague -- and being about my career and all the stupid shit that soulless, empty people love to cling on to."

Soriano may scoff at the notion of becoming a traditional rock star, but Lava is banking on it with a huge push behind Nonpoint's cover of Phil Collins' moody 1981 ballad "In the Air Tonight." Even before its official release as a single, "In the Air Tonight" was dominating radio stations from West Palm Beach to Syracuse, N.Y. It is a modern-rock radio programmer's wet dream: a piece of '80s ear candy reworked by a young band. It's the rare tune that appeals to both kids and their parents. If a lightweight power-pop act like Alien Ant Farm can take a middling single from an accused pedophile (Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal") and laugh all the way to the bank, it's hard to imagine any limit on a souped-up version of the song that permanently stamped the cast of Miami Vice as "MTV cops."

On the flip side, it's also easy to imagine the song overtaking Nonpoint's career and steering it toward one-hit-wonderdom and burnout. But with five years of touring and three albums under Nonpoint's belt, Soriano feels the band is ready to take the next step, no matter how steep. "I can't predict the future," he says with a shrug. "Whatever success with whatever songs on the record is fine by me. We've had five radio singles in the Top 20. If we have success with a Phil Collins track or another ballady track, that's cool. Because after the Phil Collins song, there will be more songs. We've always had more songs."

And according to Soriano, there will always be members of the media trying to classify those songs with buzzwords such as n�-metal -- a tag that was affixed to Nonpoint back in its early days. While Soriano acknowledges the band's early stance and surroundings fit the n�-metal profile, he disparages the labeling process. "I've never tried to pigeonhole our band," he declares. "When Latin rock was coming up, everyone called us the next Latin-rock aggro band. When n�-metal was coming up, we were the next n�-metal band. When we came into [the local scene], we were a hardcore band. It changes with whatever mass society says.

"I'll tell you what. We're a rock band. We're an American rock band. We're all from the States. I'm Puerto Rican born in New Jersey, Robb's Puerto Rican from New York. I've got a Jew from Fort Lauderdale and a German from Jersey. We're just four American guys in a rock band."