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Drowning Pool: Drowning pool

10/09/10 || revenant

Picture yourself at a party, and you have just met some random stranger. For lack of something better to do, you strike up a conversation with said stranger. The conversation eventually winds its way around to music tastes, at which point you mention you listen to metal. “Me too” harps the stranger enthusiastically. Ah, common ground, you think, and ask which bands this stranger is into. “Oh, stuff like Disturbed, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Hell Yeah, Drowning Pool, you know that kind of thing”. You know exactly what that kind of thing is: watered down metal with hook-ish riffs and melodic choruses. In other words: soulless junk that no true metal fan would listen to.

Now I know I’m possibly coming across as elitist, but is a dietitian an elitist for telling you a diet of KFC is bad? Because that’s what this is: KFC metal. Sometimes it tastes good and, when no one else knows you’re doing it, it’s fun to indulge on. But there’s always that guilty, sick feeling afterwards.

Now I will admit, much to my own shame, that I do own the first two Drowning Pool albums. To summarize the two: a couple of decent, catchy tunes surrounded by filler. So the two questions burning in my brain as I approach this album were: have Drowning Pool progressed in their sound, and have they gained more consistency?

In terms of progression, they have not moved far. If anything, the music is less aggressive, less nu-metal influenced, and a little more melodic. But little else has changed in terms of songs and song structures. I would say a real positive is the improvement in the vocal department, the new singer is a much better vocalist than the one they had on “Desensitized”. Everything else, however, is much the same.

And consistency? Well, I guess it is more consistent, if you were looking for something consistently bad that is. There’s really no stand out great tracks here. They are all the same “written for the charts” crap, and it’s hard to stomach (much like the greasiest of greasy KFC burgers) for the whole way through. A couple of songs do have some hook, but they are also annoying and frustrating to have stuck in your head (like that fucking “Horns Up” track. Ugh, I had this song stuck in my head for two days, by the end of it I wanted to cut the band members fingers off with garden shears so there would be no more horns up action from them).

In the end, I just can’t recommend this album to anyone who is a regular visitor to this site. Drowning Pool is one of those bands that people progress through in order to become a metalhead, and since you’re already here, no reason to turn back now. Even if you were looking for a softer album, I couldn’t recommend this.

And if I may close on a rant: What the fuck is with established bands doing a self-titled album a few albums in? Seriously, have they run out of “cool” names or something? Shit, if you can’t think of anything, just name it after one of the songs. It’s not that hard. Here, I’ll do it for this album… quick scan down the song titles… ah, here it is, a song title that perfectly encapsulates the album: “More Than Worthless”. But only just.

3,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Eleven Seven
Website: www.drowningpool.com
Band
Ryan McCombs: vocals
C. J. Pierce: guitars
Stevie Benton: bass
Mike Luce: drums

Tracklist
01. Let the Sin Begin
02. Feel Like I Do
03. Turn So Cold
04. Regret
05. Over My Head
06. All About Me
07. More Than Worthless
08. Children of the Gun
09. Alcohol Blind
10. Horns Up
11. King Zero

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