On their seventh major release and fourth record label, P.O.D. have come roaring back on a concept album vaguely reminiscent of Queensryche\u2019s seminal 1988 masterpiece Operation: Mindcrime<\/i>. This is their most concise and strong collection of material since 2001\u2019s Satellite<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The whole album is strung together by dialogue and bits and pieces of action at the beginning and end of various tracks. The album tells the story of a young man trying to find his way through a very treacherous path in life. The opening track \u201cAm I Awake\u201d is one of the best songs P.O.D. has put out in a very long time. Catchy and infectious with some great vocals courtesy of Sonny Sandoval, the song stands as a very strong statement about the state of the world in general. It\u2019s one helluva way to start this beast off.<\/p>\n
The rest of the record veers around to a heightened sense of impossibility on \u201cCriminal Conversations\u201d and \u201cSpeed Demon.\u201d The former, featuring Maria Brink of In This Moment, is a decent enough track, but what really pulls it out of mediocrity is some fantastic guitar work from Marcos Curiel, who is one of the most underrated guitarists of the last fifteen years. \u201cSpeed Demon\u201d is one of the fastest and most intense tracks this band has put out in a good long while.<\/p>\n
Other tracks, like \u201cRise Of NOW,\u201d sound a bit dated and clich\u00e9d. Still, they\u2019re not as bad as \u201cRevolucion\u201d with Lou from Sick of It All on guest vocal, which seems a bit too forced and stuck in the past to really make much of a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWant It All\u201d slows things down a bit while keeping the overall mood of the record very introspective and focused. The closing title track brings everything together as the young man finds his way through the darkness and into the light. If you\u2019re not interested in the storyline, though, there\u2019s enough good music here to keep you interested.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s been an interesting road for P.O.D. since their early 2000s heyday, they\u2019ve stuck to their guns and the final result here is one of their most interesting records they\u2019ve put out in a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":32490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7775],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-44251","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-p-o-d","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44251"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44251"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}