Payable On Death, known more widely as P.O.D., has been tearing it up ever since their big-label debut album, "The Fundamental Elements of Southtown" (Atlantic), hit stores, shelves, and CD-listening stations last August. The album went immediately to the Top 10 on Billboard's "Heatseekers" chart, as well as Billboard's top 200 best-selling albums chart, and started climbing.
But the real story behind P.O.D. begins when the bandmembers were each scratching and clawing their way out of the stranglehold that was their home turf--the depressed mean streets of south San Diego, on the Mexican-American border. Vocalist Sonny, 26, and drummer Wuv, 26, were cousins and next-door neighbors, and both were born to teenage parents more interested in partying than raising a family.
Both found their way to church through hard times. After Wuv's parents broke up, his father found God at a Christian street concert, left behind his life as a drug addict and dealer, and began to go to church, often bringing Wuv with him. Meanwhile, Sonny's mother was dying of cancer, sending him on his own search for reasons and relief that eventually brought him to God.
Wuv, who had started jamming with another south San Diego musician, P.O.D.'s 24-year-old guitarist, Marcos, suggested that Sonny join them. Bassist Traa, 30, completed the picture. The band, influenced by Bad Brains, Bob Marley, Santana, and Jimi Hendrix, was born in 1992. The shy Sonny slowly let go of his performance quirks, like singing with his back to the audience, to become an emboldened frontman. The band showed a fearlessness that translated as a fresh passion. The mark of a rough childhood still scarred them, but they sang about hope, the kind they wanted everyone else to know about.
Self-created, produced, and financed, Rescue Records served as a home to the band's first three independent releases, which sold more than 40,000 copies. They did what they knew--made records and played wherever people would have them. When they began, they didn't even know that the contemporary Christian music scene existed, and though "Southtown" is nominated for Best Hard Music Recorded Song at this month's Gospel Music Association's Dove Awards, P.O.D. has never fit well inside the CCM fold.
Every new band draws comparisons. For now, P.O.D. is being compared with the likes of Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine. But though the sources of inspiration bleed through, P.O.D. makes Limp sound like Top 40. Comparisons with Rage are closer, because Rage songs boil over from passionate emotion--theirs political, P.O.D.'s spiritual.
But unlike many other Christian musicians, P.O.D. is grounded in the real world: south San Diego, a border town with plenty of drugs, poverty, and crime. They aren't hanging out on clouds, espousing washed-out truisms about the Lord. They tell it like it is, complete with the pain and frustrations of being human. They are holding out for hope without leaving town.
