With the release of the single “Alive” in early September, POD made its dramatic return to music television on “Total Request Live,” which is an unusual place for a former Christian rock band.
The band first hit airwaves in 1999 with “Rock the Party (Off the Hook),” which made POD only the third hard rock band to reach the coveted number one position on TRL, following Korn and Limp Bizkit.
Unfortunately for POD, its new album “Satellite,” the long-awaited follow-up to “The Fundamental Elements of Southtown,” doesn’t sound much different than the music typical of its hard rock predecessors. Following in the rap-rock trend, the band combines it’s religious roots with the sound that was started by the Aerosmith/Run-DMC duet in “Walk this Way.”
Although the album has a few too many misses, there are the occasional diamonds in the rough. “Alive” features the typical sound of a hard rock song, but sends an uplifting message through Traa’s heavy bass. Luckily for POD, these positive messages of harmony and spirituality come at a time when the average listener is looking for something lighter after the Sept. 11 tragedy.
“Everyday is a new day/I’m thankful for every breath I take/I won’t take it for granted,” lead singer Sonny Sandoval raps.
The most promising song for the next single is the opening track, “Set it Off.” Again, the spirituality expressed in the song comes at a time when the music audience desperately desires it. The only downside to the song is its similarity to the first single.
Proving POD is not just a Limp Bizkit rehash, the band moves in a rare direction for a mainstream band. It seems the band kept up-to-date on current events and wrote “Youth of the Nation” in response to the recent rash of school shootings.
“Who’s to blame for the lives the tragedies claim/No matter what you say/It don’t take away the pain” is the band’s response to much of the negative focus being aimed at hard rock and rap music.
The song was first inspired after POD played a concert for some of the teens of Littleton, Colo., the scene of deadly violence at Columbine High School in 1999. On top of that, the band retired to Santee, California to record “Satellite” in the spring of 2001 because of its secluded location.
On March 5, 2001, a high school freshman entered Santana High School in Santee with a .22-caliber handgun and started shooting. Two were killed and 13 others were injured. Both events helped to inspire the song, a call for teenagers to stop the violence in the schools. Acting as the climax of the record, the song continues the positive message of the album, although it is one of the last songs to do so effectively.
Finishing off the exceptional tracks is a song written after the death of Sandoval’s mother. “Thinking about Forever” diverges from the POD sound to prove the band can play a ballad too. The combination of a beautiful melody with heart-felt lyrics lifts “Thinking about Forever” out of the pack, a rare occurrence on this album.
The majority of the remaining tracks are mediocre at best. They feature the band trying to expand it’s sound into other genres, but fails to be valuable proof of the band’s proven skills. Featuring three instrumental tracks and two collaborations (one with HR of the Bad Brains, the other with Eek-A-Mouse), the rest of the album is often typical POD fare, highlighting heavy guitars, lyrics attempting to be spiritual and a failure to recognize creative limits.
Not only is the album rare in the fact that it doesn’t sport a parental advisory label, it doesn’t contain a single swear word on the entire album. This type of album is every mother’s dream and luckily, there are enough high points on the album to warrant a try from the average listener.
