WITH GOD ON THEIR SIDE

The Christian rock market, rarely, if ever, written about in the music press, is believed to be valued at around £30 million a year. It has an impressive infrastructure - dedicated book and record shops, a concert tour circuit and its own charts.

It facilitates Christian bands such as Delirious (an English rock-metal group) who have now sold over one million albums in the US despite minimal media coverage. Working against Delirious is the simple industry fact that albums sold in specialist Christian record shops don't register on the "normal" charts.

Christian rock acts now want to bring their music into the mainstream, fearful of too much preaching to the converted. Back 20 years ago a Christian rock band such as Stryper (album titles In God We Trust and To Hell With The Devil) would play gigs in churches and distribute copies of The Bible to the audience. Although an out-and-out metal band, they never crossed over from the Christian charts. Lessons were learnt and now Christian rockers favour a more subtle approach.

Big-selling Christian metal bands such as P.O.D (short for Payable on Death) and Creed now downplay their religious beliefs or at least don't make it as obvious as Styper did. You'd have to study P.O.D carefully or analyse Creed's lyrics for any clue as to their religious leanings. Both are now staples on MTV and in the Billboard charts.

One Christian rock band tipped for big mainstream success are US outfit Big Dismal, currently a big deal on the Christian rock circuit. Their singer, Eric Durrance, reflects the new ambiguity: "We never set out to be a Christian band," he says. "We're just Christians in a band, not a Christian band. Our lyrics, though, put us in the Christian market."

Not that Big Dismal plan to do an "Evanescence" and cut ties with the scene that nurtured them. "We'd definitely never turn our back on that market, but we definitely want to be in the mainstream," he says. "That's where you can have a really long career. That's what we want. It's music for everybody. We don't necessarily want to be put in one market."