P.O.D.: Thunderheads from Southtown
Don’t be a snob. P.O.D.’s got some bangers.
Chalk it up to the pop-rock production prowess of Howard Benson, Marcos Curiel’s unique guitar tones, and Sonny Sandoval’s guy-you’d-like-to-crack-a-beer-with charisma, but they’re just the parts of the machine that are showing.
Dig a little deeper and you find Traa Daniel’s riffs that might be nu-metal but are influenced by the unwritten rules and regulations of jazz and funk. His bass grooves might be that secret ingredient that set P.O.D. apart from a crowded field in the late 90s and 2000s. Yeah, he’s a rock bassist at the end of the day, but go way back to Snuff the Punk released in 1993 and you might see a little more of what I’m talking about.
P.O.D. is one of those bands who toiled in the shadows in grimy clubs for nearly a decade before they finally landed a record deal they liked. Yes, they dumbed down and ironed out their formula, but with results like Alive and Boom it’s hard to complain. And a few years after they lost their MTV luster, they were still experimenting just a little bit more than their rinse-and-repeat peers with reggae, hip hop, and a plethora of other sonic flavors that are undoubtedly an outgrowth of their melting pot background.
Like Switchfoot, P.O.D. hails from San Diego, but from a dramatically different side of the city. While the founding members of Switchfoot grew up in a wealthy suburb and attended an elite private high school with alum I like Eddie Vedder and Emily Ratajkowski, P.O.D. came from the overwhelmingly Hispanic areas of San Diego (or Cleveland, in the case of Traa). While both bands dig surprisingly deep into deeper thoughts than their Hollywoodized images might have projected, Switchfoot is brooding and delicate while POD is roaring and bombastic.
Like U2, POD saw their popularity explode in the aftermath of 9/11. Satellite was released on September 11, 2001.
The music of their peer bands, like Korn and Limp Bizkit, were drenched in nihilism and misogyny. As a terrorist attack encroached on the ridiculous suburban angst of those bands, POD’S brash, testosterone-drenched optimism with its generous dose of religion hit just right. That’s not to say P.O.D. hasn’t delved into surprisingly dark subjects but they’ve always had a patina of religion which, like any form of earnestness, is easy to make fun of but usually shouldn’t be. They clutching rosaries and drop dog whistles for their Christian listeners without alienating the mainstream.
At the end of the day, though, P.O.D. just wants to have fun. No one’s sitting around trying to parse apart their lyrics, but anyone would love to go to one of their family barbecues. Now that the band members are pushing their 50s, I bet any one of them could grill a damn good steak.
I doubt the members of Korn even know how to barbecue.
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