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After the taster that was the bonus DVD on last year's re-release of Satellite, comes the full feast of Still Payin' Dues. And there is plenty to gorge on here - two hours' worth in fact - including an hour-long rockumentary, instant access to all seven of P.O.D.'s music videos, the storyboard to the "Alive" video, live and behind-the-scenes concert footage, and a two-hundred strong photo album.

The feature presentation is a fascinating window into the history of P.O.D. that should well and truly dispel any remaining myth that P.O.D. is a parvenu band who has jumped on the nu-metal bandwagon and is riding it for all it is worth. It moves chronologically from 1992, tracing the band's evolution from four friends playing in a Californian garage and gigging at local cafes, to a multi-platinum outfit playing enormodomes around the world. Through its expertly-edited combination of interviews, live footage and videos, even the most diehard of P.O.D. fans is bound to learn something new. So, for instance, it turns out that drummer Wuv and guitarist Marcos were initially drawn together by a mutual love of Metallica and Slayer; that bassist Traa was "into funk and R&B at the start... and not into heavy music"; and that Marcos was initially dubious about Wuv's cousin, Sonny, joining as frontman because he was such "a shy kid".

Throughout the film there are frequent highlights. There are pictures of flyers from 1993 gigs in the San Diego area when P.O.D. were playing on bills including bands like Brutal Truth and a certain Green Day (the Green Day?). We get to see the rarely-aired video for "Selah", from album number two, Brown, a song which, with its acoustic jamming in the midst of Biohazardous shouts and mega-riffage, clearly demonstrates that P.O.D.'s invention and appreciation of musical light and shade was fully formed even back then. There is also footage of the band touring the US in support of Brown in a trailer financed by T-shirt sales, and Sonny giving a moving testimony on stage of how he watched his mother die of leukemia when she was just 37 but how he'd "never seen so much love and joy, so much peace in her spirit as she had in the last days of her life" and how this was instrumental in him becoming a committed Christian.

As the film fast forwards from the Brown tours to P.O.D. getting signed by Atlantic Records, the releases of The Fundamental Elements of Southtown and Satellite (with flyers for the latter poignantly capturing the release date of 9-11-01), and the big budget, super-cool videos for "Southtown," MTV-breakthrough "Rock The Party," and "Alive," it becomes clear that P.O.D. is one band with its collective feet firmly rooted to the ground. It is easy to lose count of how many times they say how grateful they are, particularly to their fans, something which is epitomized in the scene of them on their first, proper tour bus where we witness their admitted, childlike glee at being able to afford such a luxury.

Towards the end the band are filmed, hastily organizing, playing and meeting fans at an impromptu gig at the Just Java Cafe, a hometown cafe that they used to play in the early days. Such an act of humility seems to be par for the course for P.O.D. and is an apt way to lead into the conclusion of the film where the band again thank all the fans for their support and Sonny declares that: "It's been a long journey, an awesome journey... We just wanted to play and we wanted someone to listen. Ten years later, I guess someone is paying attention."

Here's to another ten years...

Vik Bansal 02/17/03