POD

It’s a hot, sweaty sticky affair. The Ambassador is packed to bursting with every denomination of metal head under the sun – old skoolers in leather, nu comers in corsets and pink pole spikes and hardcore groupies in the appropriate T-shirts. Then there’s the rest who came down to see what all the fuss was about.

POD’s ‘Christian rock’ trades the satanic, morbid rumblings of the Marilyn Manson’s of this world for more uplifting lyrics (“I feel so alive/for the very first time/I can’t deny you”). The ‘seen the light’ aspect of their music does not detract from their levels of overdrive however, juggling odd electronics and distortion with tribal beats and flanged solos.

The anthemic ‘Alive’ was chanted in unison by the throng as was the equally potent ‘Youth Of The Nation’, but it was a particularly raucous cover of ‘Eye For An Eye’ by Max Cavalera’s posse Soulfly that separated the men from the boys, turning the already violent mosh pit into a sea of flailing arms, legs and dreadlocks.

Ferocious, loud and heavy as hell, I think you might say they rocked.