The Fundamental Elements of Southtown — P.O.D.

The Fundamental Elements of Southtown is P.O.D.'s third studio album and their first for a major label. Atlantic Records put it out in August 1999. It runs sixteen tracks and a little under an hour, and Howard Benson produced it. If you only know the San Diego band from "Alive" and "Youth of the Nation," this is the record that came right before all that, and it's heavier, scrappier and a lot more local than what followed.

Where it came from

P.O.D. had spent most of the 1990s on Rescue Records, the small label that put out Snuff the Punk in 1994 and Brown in 1996. Then Atlantic signed them, and around the same time Tooth & Nail put out The Warriors EP. Only one song from that EP made the jump to the big album, and it was the one that mattered most, "Southtown," re-recorded here as track three.

The band on this record is Sonny Sandoval on vocals, Marcos Curiel on guitar, Traa Daniels on bass and Wuv Bernardo on drums. Darren "DJ Circa" Tanzella adds turntables, Benson plays keyboards, and Lisa Papineau sings backing vocals on two songs. Chris Lord-Alge mixed a handful of tracks, including both singles.

Years later, Sandoval told Ultimate Guitar what that first big-label deal felt like. "Atlantic Records gave us a budget and we all went out and bought guitars and cabinets just because all our stuff was ghetto," he said. "This was big for us." Benson told the same site in 2011 that the album was "one of the very first rock records made in Pro Tools that became huge."

What it sounds like

The short version is rap metal with a reggae heart. Sandoval raps and shouts over downtuned riffs, the rhythm section locks into grooves that owe as much to hip-hop as to hardcore, and every few songs the whole thing drops into a Bob Marley sway before kicking back in.

"Hollywood" opens properly after a short spoken greeting, and it's a five-minute shot at fame and money from a band that had very little of either. "Southtown" is the anthem. It's a love letter to the band's corner of San Diego, built on a riff you can hum and a hook you can shout, and it still sounds like a band that can't believe it's been let into the building.

"Rock the Party (Off the Hook)" is the fun one. Papineau's vocal gives it a lift, the turntables get more room, and it's the closest the album comes to a straight party song, even if the lyric keeps pointing upward. Then "Lie Down" arrives and flattens everything. Jessi Zilka at New Release Today called it "the peak of the album just shy of halfway through," a song that "smacks you straight in the face," and that's about right. Sandoval and Curiel trade vocals and screams over the heaviest playing on the record.

Right after that comes "Set Your Eyes to Zion," a reggae song with a worship chorus, and it works far better than it should. Then the band covers U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky," with Papineau again, and turns Bono's protest song into something louder and more street-level. It's a bold choice for a debut on a big label, and it mostly pays off.

The second half is where the album gets loose. There are more short interludes, like "Psalm 150" and "Shouts," and a run of "Image," "Tribal," "Freestyle," "Follow Me" and "Outkast." Some of these hit hard, especially "Follow Me," but the run is long and a few of the grooves start to blur together. "Outkast" closes the record, and with an extra piece tucked in after it, that last track runs past nine minutes.

What it's about

This is a Christian record that doesn't hide it. Kevin Chamberlin, reviewing it for Jesus Freak Hideout in April 2000, wrote that "what's awesome about the album is the lyrics that are blatantly Christian." He heard "Hollywood" and "Follow Me" as songs about people filling their lives "with money, women, and cars instead of Jah," and "Lie Down" and "Tribal" as "little testimonies of how they grew up from the ghetto, but found Christ."

He also made a point that still holds. The band, he wrote, "don't water down the Word, but get harsh at times because they're representing real life." That's the balance the whole record strikes. It's about God, but it's also about broken neighbourhoods, hard streets and a band trying to stay honest while somebody hands them a bigger stage.

The artwork caused one small fight. Christian retailers didn't like the cover, and they called it "pagan." So the band changed it for Christian stores and took out things like a cigar, the Deseret News reported in 2002.

What the critics said

Reviews were mostly warm, with a few shrugs. Alex Figgis at Cross Rhythms gave it a perfect score and called it "a fine exponent of rap-core" and "the best album by P.O.D. thus far." PopMatters was far cooler, scoring it 4.8 out of 10. Mark Jenkins at The Washington Post said that the album "drops Bob Marley refrains and makes common cause with U2," but decided that "mostly, though, P.O.D. raps and rocks in a vigorous but commonplace manner."

Time has been kinder. Loudwire ranked it the band's second-best album in 2017, writing that "the band's hunger is infectious on the album" and that the "Southtown" single "still sounds impactful and exciting." Zilka at New Release Today called it "a pivotal moment for P.O.D." and "simultaneously sludgy and tight in aesthetic from start to finish," adding that longtime fans would likely put it "just above the rest."

How it did

It sold, and it kept selling. The album peaked at No. 51 on the Billboard 200 in April 2000, finished as the 143rd best-selling album of that year in the US, and went platinum on November 6, 2000. "Southtown" and "Rock the Party (Off the Hook)" both got music videos, and the "Rock the Party" video won a Dove Award for short form music video.

In 2000 the band played Ozzfest and then headlined their own Kings of the Game tour with Hed PE, Linkin Park and Project 86. A year later Satellite made them stars.

The verdict

The Fundamental Elements of Southtown is the sound of P.O.D. right before the world caught up with them. "Southtown," "Lie Down" and "Set Your Eyes to Zion" are as good as anything the band ever recorded, and the U2 cover is a gutsy swing that lands. It's too long, though. Sixteen tracks and a run of interludes and similar grooves in the back half take some of the air out of a record that starts like a riot. Still, the hunger Loudwire heard is real, and you can feel it in every track.

7/10

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