DROWNING POOL
Sinner (Wind-up/BMG)
Reviewed by Jason Thornberry

---

Welcome to Ozzfest, the final frontier for fist banging mania and the last place you can hear bands who admit to being "heavy metal". Most of today’s metal bands only have maybe one token ‘long hair’ in the group, while the rest of the ensemble look like Hare Krishna rejects with weed-eater goatees, ridiculously lame tattoos, and brain piercings.

Enter Drowning Pool. They’ll be gracing the Ozzfest stage this year with all the post-metal accoutrements, right down to those kinda-sorta-but-not-exactly RATL (Rage Against The Linoleum) song structures, plenty of attitude and that "Fuck you Cleveland!" yell that’s only really been used recently by a few other bands, like: Static-X, Disturbed, Staind, Tool, Fuel, Coal Chamber, Deftones, Puya, Limp Bizkit, Alien Ant Farm, Taproot, Sum 41, Hatebreed, At The Drive-In, Mudvayne, Hed(pe), Acetone, Cold, A Perfect Circle, Linkin Park, Korn, Machine Head, latter era Pantera, Molotov and Papa Roach.

No surprises here. Whatsoever. Even if I were eleven again this kind of music would have flooded the market so much that when a new band came out with their "tortured" singer crying up on the stage between the barre chords I’d be asking my uncle if we could go home yet cuz I hafta pee.

© 2001 - Jason Thornberry