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"I believe that if you're a Christian and you're a musician, you should be doing Christian music. You're missing an opportunity if you don't. Whether it's playing in your church or playing for thousands of people in a big concert or whatever, I think that you should sing from your heart and sing from what's going on in your life..." - Karl Messner
MQ: We were wondering about your musical influences? You cover such a broad range of music. Where did this interest come from?
KM: A couple of things:
One - we have a broad audience. We're not trying to raise the value of our band. We're not trying to sell 'Apologetix.' We're trying to reach kids for Christ and teach their parents and them about the Bible. So we don't necessarily care about coming up with our own sound, so we're open to anything. We don't want to be typecast as a rock band, although 90% of what we do live is rock. From a standpoint of liking it, we all have various tastes. If we only did the songs that all four of us likes, we'd put out two songs a year. (laugh) 
I like everything, but some of the other guys are like 'Ooh Country' or 'that's a silly pop song'...you know? So we all like different things. I grew up on 80s pop and 80s metal. When I really started getting into music, I got into classic rock and Led Zeppelin. From a standpoint of where we pull our songs from, we spend a lot of time looking at what the rest of the world is listening to. We look at the charts and study them like math books. Just because a song is a number one hit, doesn't mean we're going to do it. But that doesn't mean we won't consider it. When you look at our song library, every song we do is a number one or number two hit, maybe a number three. All of them are huge hits so we do look at that. We do a lot of new songs
so we have to keep our ears open to
what the mainstream is doing, which unfortunately is usually years ahead of what is going on in CCM. When I come to GMA week, I'll
hear the modern bands and they sound just like the
bands we were parodying three years ago. Do you
know what I mean? (laughing)
MQ: Sometimes Christian music is thought of as being substandard? Do you think that is still the case?
KM: Maybe. There aren't any real ground
breaking bands right now. But there are bands
that totally raise the bar of music. They rock
and music will never be totally the same way
again. Like Nirvana. Nirvana ended the hair
metal era with one song. BAM! 'Smells Like
Teen Spirit' killed all of the hair bands. The Beatles, Nirvana...there have been very few revolutionary bands
that change music. Then there have been bands
that just kick it up a notch. Dave Matthews.
Now there is a new thing. He kicked it up a
notch. Outkast kicked it up a notch. Eminem kicked hip hop up a notch. All of them kicked it up
a notch. A lot of bands are revolutionary and
they kick it up a notch but never in Christian
music. They are always water skiing a couple of
yards behind the boat. Music didn't start in
the 30's. The world of music started at the
beginning of time. In the Renaissance era,
Christian musicians were the leaders. Bach.
These guys were leaders. Handel. All were
outspoken about their faith. It was never
popular to be a Christian. They weren't any
more popular doing their Christian music than we
are today. But they were leaders. I don't
see that right now. I see some great bands.
There are some dynamite bands.
Everlife - they're dynamite. One of the best
bands I've ever heard in my life and they're a
Christian band. Dynamite, dynamite band. We
loved them so much we asked them to sing on our
CD. They sing 'Meshach' with us on Adam Up.
Just dynamite. Audio Adrenaline kicked
Christian music up a notch. Larry
Norman. Part of it is we are dealing with one
tenth of the population or even one
twentieth of the population so we have fewer
people to pull from, so there's that. From a standpoint of
music, I don't know how important it is to say
they are revolutionary musicians. I
believe that if you're a Christian and you're a
musician you should be doing Christian music. 
You're missing an
opportunity if you don't. Whether it's playing
in your church or playing for thousands of
people in a big concert or whatever, I think
that you should sing from your heart and sing
from what's going on in your life and do whatever you're
going to do. And I think that if you don't take
one shot at sharing your faith through
your music...you're missing an opportunity and you
will be held accountable for missing that
opportunity. The parable of the talents in the Bible where three guys were given
some money to look after. The first two guys invested the money wisely,
and doubled their money. The third guy, fearing the master, buried his
portion, so as not to lose it. The guy who hid it got in trouble
because he could have put it in the bank and at least have gotten
interest. In other words, you should have used your head and found or
created an opportunity for your talent to become something more than
just unrealized potential. I believe that
really applies to those of us who are in Christian music
who are just musician snobs. Who say
'Hey, we're just poor musicians, we sing about what we want to sing about, we sing about our
relationship with God' - you know the 'Jesus is
my girlfriend' music. If I ever meet those guys and I'm talking to them, I'll say 'Why don't you sing
more about yourself' and 'Tell me about your faith in your next song?'. It doesn't
have to be a 'Come to Jesus' meeting, but tell me
about your faith. You've got an opportunity -
you have the ear of thousands of kids who are almost
expecting you to do just that. Did I answer
your question?
MQ: Yes. Definitely.
KM: - and then some! I guess I should shut up now, huh?
MQ: (laughing)
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