Chap Stique (second from right) and the rest of Family Force 5 believe that faith and fun are not mutually exclusive.

Arguably the most off-the-wall band Christian rock has ever seen, Family Force 5 continue to be a force to be reckoned with. Celebrated for their outrageous live shows, stage costumes, and humor, these three brothers and two friends take their music seriously, but not themselves. If you spend your hard-earned money on their music and concerts, they make sure you have a good time. Their newest album, Dance or Die (EMI/Tooth & Nail), is further proof of their zaniness—and '80s-inspired dance-rock fiesta that's easily their most daring yet. In between shows during this summer's Vans Warped Tour, guitarist Derek "Chap Stique" Mount took some time to tell Christian Music Today about the method behind their madness, their newfound artistic independence, and why the band believes it's okay to have both faith and fun.

You're in the middle of the world-famous Warped Tour. How's the tour going so far? How are audiences responding to the new material?

Derek "Chap Stique" Mount: It's been incredible, man. We have this invention that we call the Family Force 5000, and it's a 6-foot-6 tall, 760-pound drum machine that we take on the Warped Tour. Everyone's freaking out about it. They're always like, "What the heck is that thing?" It's been incredible. We're having a blast with that. Today we just played in Indianapolis and everybody went crazy. There were bodies flying everywhere, people dancing, breakdancing, two-stepping … you name it.

Fun seems to be the main draw of your show.

Chap Stique: Family Force 5 have always put on a crazy show. That has always happened, even if it was just us in normal clothes playing on some piece-of-junk equipment—we would still run around like banshees, headbang, and dance like crazy. But when you have these cool new outfits that are kind of Voltron, Ewok looking stuff, everybody's really enjoying that. It's a little bit of escapism—trying to make the audience feel like they're almost at another planet or something, to get away from the world for a little while.

Up until a few years ago, you were one of the few bands having a party on stage. Now Gil Mantera's Party Dream and Cobra Starship seem to be catching up to you!

Chap Stique: (Laughs) Somebody just told me about Gil Mantera's Party Dream! I'll maybe try to check them out. I don't know, I think music is in some sense making a great change for the better. There so much studiousness and so much depression in music, and I certainly understand that and can identify with it a lot of times, but I think that people are realizing again that there was a time when music was about a party and having a good time. I think we're getting into that a little bit.

I guess people can only take so much Korn, Linkin Park, and other heavy bands.

Chap Stique: (Laughs) Certainly there's a place for that. I'm a huge Alice in Chains fan, and there's definitely not much of a party there. But I think that these are times to cut loose and kind of forget about your problems and let music kind of take you somewhere else.

Party music for turbulent times.

Chap Stique: Yeah, that's right!

It's been two long years since Business Up Front, Party in the Back came out. How has life on the road shaped the way the band does things nowadays? Are you different from what you were when you first got started?

Chap Stique: Absolutely. Family Force 5 has been able to learn from the road because we have lived on it for the past three years. We have a bus now and that has really changed the way we do things. We're a lot more productive. We have Internet on the bus, which is a huge deal because we're able to knock out a lot of interviews, keep in touch with fans, and work on MySpace and Facebook—it's really added to the interactive element of this band.

We're able to be a lot more efficient too—we were always sleeping when we stopped at a hotel every night. [It helps us do things] more effectively and intelligently so that when we're at work, meeting people and hanging out with kids, we can be at our best a lot more than when we were sleeping around on people's floors and taking sponge baths in bathroom sinks.

You guys recorded your new album, Dance or Die, on your own dime. Why the do-it-yourself approach? How did the process differ from doing things with a record label watching over your shoulder?

Chap Stique: Family Force 5 has had to do everything on our own out of necessity. We've learned how incredible it can be when you do that. Control is one major issue for us. We're really excited about the songs we wrote and the direction they went, and we wanted to make sure they went the way we wanted them to.

There's also a major digital revolution in music, and I think doing it yourself is not so much that we want to be this cool indie pop thing. I think it's more of a necessity at times if the band wants to survive. It's almost as if the functions of a label are being eliminated—by the Internet, by the accessibility that the bands have to connect with their fans and be tangible. We've basically had to do the record label's job for our entire lives, so we finally just said, "Hey, if we're already doing this, let's just go ahead and call ourselves the record label. Let's own this and make it happen."

Would you say your previous associations with record labels didn't fulfill those expectations?

Chap Stique: Sure. We love Gotee Records and we have a great relationship with them and always will. We've had some pretty strenuous times and a lot of heartache and a lot of strain on our families. There's been a lot of reasoning why we had to be on the road so long—label limbo, [misguided] decisions, and just bad things that happened to us as a result of our relationships with labels. Gotee definitely was a cool partner and we definitely enjoyed working with them. But I will definitely say there's a lot of unnecessary stress and added work because of our relationship with some of the other labels we've worked with.

Are things easier for you in that regard now?

Chap Stique: I don't think anything's really easier, just more rewarding. We've learned to own responsibility. Every single person in our band has a job that goes way beyond just playing music and writing. We own our own marketing company, we do all our press, we own our publishing—everybody works really hard in accounting, artwork, and everything. This is a fully functional business. It's an entertainment company in itself.

Family Force 5 used to call itself a "crunk-rock machine," but with the new album it seems your leaving the hip-hop thing behind in favor of more party-based dance music. Was that a conscious shift?

Chap Stique: Yeah, that's just the way our listening habits went and the way a lot of us felt like writing the new record. It wasn't, "Hey, let's abandon the crunk and get away from hip-hop"—and by the way, there's still a big element of hip-hop on the new record, for sure. But we've been listening to a lot of dance music and being influenced by that. It's really cool stuff and always something we've had in us. It's just now starting to come out in our music a little bit more.

Dance or Die has a definite '80s vibe, much stronger than that of your first album. The '80s seem to be enjoying a resurgence in rock music. What gives?

Chap Stique: I don't know. The new generations are kind of fascinated by the '80s. It was a party decade and people had fun. There was a big glam element to it. Family Force 5 wants to bring back a little bit of the mystery and the enigma in music. Looking at the shows these days, the dude on stage looks just like the guy across the street wearing the exact same clothes. We've left the days of people with the huge hair and outfits and David Bowie-looking stuff where it's like, "Who is that awesome-looking alien dude?" I think people are ready to have fun again.

With titles like "Wake the Dead," "Fever," and "Rip It Up," Dance or Die is poised to become another party classic. Why is having fun important to what you're trying to accomplish as a group?

Chap Stique: I think there's a big spiritual element to having fun, and Dance or Die in itself speaks of what we're talking about. Sure, it's a fun little thing to say and it sounds cool, but it's also a statement. We have been given life, and we can choose what to do with it. You can either dance and live it abundantly, freely and selflessly in an incredible, beautiful way. Or you can choose to die, which sadly a lot of people really choose to do.

I don't know if everyone consciously makes that decision either; we're are guilty of it at times. In religion we have this mentality that we have to get through this awful, horrible life so that we can get into paradise. And I think that when we have that mentality we really miss out on the fact that salvation is here and that life is to be lived freely and abundantly. That's a big part of what this record stands for. We want people to choose to dance. It terrifies me and breaks my heart when people choose to die [instead of choosing life].

Some believers subscribe to the idea that Christians aren't supposed to have fun—that it's a sin.

Chap Stique: Jesus was the opposite of that. We don't try to make music for Christians; we try to make music for everybody. We hope that people can see that you can live your life with a lot of faith and a lot of perseverance and still have an incredible time. Jesus didn't come to this earth to say, "I expect all of you guys to go and sit in a room and read Scripture all day." When he came to us, he was subversive and extremely progressive and very much challenged everyone to live life in an incredible way—to love extremely.

I think that message is a very beautiful one. It's very challenging. I hope no one interpret this as arrogant, but we hope that our show—which is just fun and escapism—is in some way a glimpse of what it's like to not let anything get you down or destroy your spirit. To me, there's a very beautiful thing when we lose the inhibition that we have, when we lose the categories and definitions that we sometimes needlessly put on things.

In what ways has your carefree spirit inspired kids outside of the four walls of the church? Have you had chances to show them what you're really about spiritually?

Chap Stique: We've had some incredible experiences on the road from performing in clubs and bars. Warped Tour has really put us in some opportunities that we would've never been in if we just would've been in the traditional Christian band route. We've had kids come up to us that would have never, ever, ever stepped foot in church and said, "You have no clue what this song means to me."

Recently we had a girl [who told us], "I've been contemplating suicide for a very long time and actually tried to kill myself, but a friend of mine brought your CD to me in the hospital. And it wasn't like any Scripture or any lyric or any verse that touched me personally. It was just the overall fun and mentality of your music that made you the first happy thing in my life for about five years."

Hearing something like that from a kid who is not wearing the cross around her neck is so cool. And even if they are wearing the cross around their neck, kids are the same. There's no need to categorize between believers and non-believers—everybody believes in something. We want to bring some kind of hope and to show people that we're human and we're tangible and we're definitely not these super-Christians that have all the answers. We're just here to love them.

So in other words, you believe a dance song can lead someone to salvation.

Chap Stique: It's true! I really think there are a lot deeper elements to the idea of fun [and faith] than we give credit for.

Family Force 5's sophomore album Dance or Die releases August 19. Click here to visit the band's artist page on our site, and check out Christianbook.com to find Family Force's music.

Copyright © Andree Farias subject to licensing agreement with Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.

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