Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

If my memory serves me correctly, it was exactly a year ago when hard rockers P.O.D. hit the Rivera Theatre for the first time, bringing along compadres Project 86 and hed (Planet Earth). Since then, a lot has changed in the world, as well as the lives of band members Marcos, Sonny, Tra, and Wuv. They’ve seen their latest disc Satellite rack up the soundscans since its fateful September 11th release, as well as its lead single “Alive” race up the charts. This time through town, everything was bigger and better, from the sound and lights, to stage design, to attendance. 

The blistering hardcore quartet blazed a trail of familiar songs from Satellite and their Atlantic Records debut The Fundamental Elements of Southtown throughout the evening, starting with the opening cut “Set it Off.” Like the version from the latest album, P.O.D.’s live take was powerful with Sonny making an instant connection with the audience. Unlike last time through town, he didn’t do a running stage dive into the crowd, but still managed to rile up the ground floor by towering over the security barricades and sticking his microphone in the face of countless faithful “warriors.” The thundering “Boom” followed, maintaining the group’s commanding stage presence and the perfectly traded guitar licks and drum crashes between Marcos and Wuv. Songs off the last project, like “Hollywood” and “Southtown,” induced a frenzied response from the crowd, while the band’s interpretation of their latest smash “Youth of the Nation” sparked the most reflective moment of the evening. During that track, on the jumbo screen poised ten feet above the band, images of teens and young adults waving tiny flags accompanied the words “God Bless America” that lined the speaker rigs to pay tribute to those lost in America’s terrorist tragedy.  Other memorable moments of the show came during the group’s Rastafarian inspired reggae segment, featuring a respectable cover of Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up” and the P.O.D. groove “Set Your Eyes to Zion.” The pairing of “Alive” with the band’s last smash “Rock the Party (Off the Hook)” also made a killer combination.  P.O.D. could have done without a few songs during the night, including their first single that never really made it “Outkast” and their Bad Brains tribute “Without Jah, Nothin.’” Despite their rapid pace and lyrical intensity, the band’s interpretation was lackluster at best. In hindsight, perhaps the group could have included their grand acoustic ballad “Thinking About Forever” or their cover of U2’s “Bullet the Blue Sky.” 

Blink 182 tour alumni Fenix TX hit the stage prior to P.O.D. showcasing a sloppy conglomeration of songs from their Lechuza and self-titled projects. Songs like “Threesome” and “Phoebe Cates” were just as uninteresting as they were brainless. Their cloned, testosterone driven punk mayhem was a clear mismatch from the hard rock headliners and the equally intense openers Blindside.

The Swedish bred Blindside are spiritual brothers with P.O.D. and the two groups have toured together in the past (most notably with Project 86 in 1998). Although they’ve been around the block quite a bit since then, they lacked the intricacy and genre blending that P.O.D. demonstrated, often drowning in hard driving sounds that lack any accessible hooks or intelligible lyrics.

Hopefully, P.O.D. can continue down this trailblazing path of mixing the right sounds with a much needed message. Perhaps in the future, their open acts will maintain the same type of quality and excellence.