By championing Christian morals on one side and playing to the rapcore faithful on the other, P.O.D. sits on the throne that Creed always refused to. Toss in their somewhat trademark and always-awkward reggae influence (that even producer Glen Ballard can’t slick up properly) and you have Testify, an album so disjointed the band could release it as two separate EPs. For fans of Evanescence, there’s the metal-lite single “Goodbye For Now,” which threatens to add “emo” to P.O.D.’s hyphenated genre. Their own internal demons are hard at work, churning out retread lyrics like “In some ways everybody feels alone/So if the burden is mine then I can carry my own.” “Lights Out,” an unsurprising hit on WWE since November, heads up the rap-metal section, which uses its worth-a-glance lyrics to elevate it above standard rapcore fodder. But there’s no smash here to bridge the genre gap; of course, when you consider the fact that their 2001 hit “Alive” floated to the top in a groundswell of post-9/11 patriotism and that no subsequent single has performed as well, their ability to scale the charts is questionable anyway. The lack of potential hits is odd considering Ballard’s production is often more than enough to give any album at least something radio-friendly, but considering he’s given co-writing credits on the unbelievably atrocious “On The Grind,” it’s clear he doesn’t work well with singer Sonny Sandoval’s style.
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