“We are, we are, the new revelation. We are, we are, the youth of the nation”.
This what P.O.D. proclaimed on “Youth Of The Nation” back in 2001, when nu-metal was in its heyday. That was a year when Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and Korn were sniffing around the top of the charts and teenagers lapped it up, wearing baggy jeans, heavyweight chains and choosing to adopt a “fuck you mom, I won’t clean my room” attitude.
To say that eleven years later these bands have become a parody of themselves would be giving the music credit in the first instance. While Korn are claiming they “invented dubstep”, Linkin Park disappear further up into their own anal passages and for some reason, Limp Bizkit’s Gold Cobra sold some copies. P.O.D. are here to deliver their EIGHTH studio album “Murdered Love” – but in an attempt to show the record-buying kids and young adults of 2012 that they’re still worth your time, they have become utterly lost.
This album has oh so many directions, but there are dead ends at every one. Opener “Eyez” sounds like a sixth-form band covering Rage Against The Machine, with Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta barking aimlessly somewhere in the background. Title track “Murdered Love” takes a stab at being something like Skindred (every attention-deficient 15 year old’s favourite band), but it sounds just as groan-inducing. I don’t think P.O.D. had a clue what they wanted this album to be when they went into the studio. There is no attempt at sequencing here: what might have been peaks and troughs on a better record ends up like a Jackson Pollock painting.
This scattergun approach pandering to the shuffle generation may have been forgivable if there was anything decent on display here, but it’s only turgid nonsense. “Lost In Forever” is a drawling re-visit of Matrix Reloaded-soundtracking 2003 single “Sleeping Awake“. Then there’s “West Coast Rock Steady“, a Sublime rip-off featuring Sen Dog of everyone’s (and by that I mean no-one’s) favourite stoner hip-hop collective Cypress Hill. This one may be among the worst attempts at “hip-hop for white boys” I’ve heard since Transplants.
You might not believe it, but it only gets worse from here. “Bad Boy” is up there with the very worst in genital-grabbing misogynist bollocks – remember “Bartender” by Hed Planet Earth? Imagine that from the perspective of a man in his mid-30s, who “just wants to settle down”. And these are God-fearing men. The shame.
After finale “I Am” bleats out its sense of injustice over another set of sub-Tom Morello riffage, I am left wondering what sort of pathetic man-child would buy this record. Sure, nu-metal is still all well and good from a nostalgia perspective – crack on “Break Stuff” or “One Step Closer” and I’ll own that dancefloor. This is not just a bad record, it’s a series of blundering mis-steps, each more galling than the last.
OLLIE CONNORS