How About That Thing?

For many, Drowning Pool is a relic of a bygone era that, in their opinion, should stay gone. To other, more positive-minded individuals, they were “that band who wrote “Bodies”.” For me, though, there is a lot more tied to them than just some dismissal of nu-metal’s supposed inferiority, or as some one-hit wonder from the 2000s.

For me, Drowning Pool is a modern tragedy. They were a band that started with so much promise. True, nu-metal had pretty much oversaturated the market by 2001, but Drowning Pool were, to me anyway, poised to be the next great rock band.

And then their vocalist passed away in the middle of touring. It was a shocking announcement that came out of nowhere, and looking back on this band twenty-plus years later… I hate to say it, but losing Dave Williams was probably the worst thing that ever happened to this band.

Dave Williams was the vocalist featured in Drowning Pool’s debut album, Sinner.

Yes, “Bodies” is the lead single off of the album, and yes, it’s probably their most successful song ever. But after listening to the rest of this album via Tidal recently, I can say with certainty that that is a very unfair dismissal.

True, not EVERY song on the album is gold, but if you have a standard twelve-track nu-metal album with two or three mid tracks, and the rest being absolute “bangers” as the kids like to say, I think you’d made a pretty successful debut.

This era of Drowning Pool had a lot of groove, and a lot of choruses that felt more like chants than actual choruses. IE, tracks like “I Am”, “Pity”, etc. This, however, was not a detracting factor. If anything, the chant-like structure of the choruses made them MORE memorable.

Also… Let’s face it, Dave Williams was just such a good vocalist. I’d heard stories about how his nickname was Dave Stage, because he just knew how to steal the spotlight from everyone else once he was up there.

This album was in pretty heavy rotation in my CD player, back when us filthy millennials had those. I have plenty of fond memories of this being on in the background while playing the original Super Smash Brothers into the pavement. There’s probably some type of irony in “Bodies” being at full blast while I made Donkey Kong destroy several Yoshis or Kirbies.

More than anything, I was excited for this band’s future. Then, I got the news about Dave Williams’ passing. It was tragic to see someone leave us so abruptly… But the tragedy only really began there.

You see, when faced with a situation like this, you can do one of two things:

1. break up, go about your lives, an be grateful for the opportunity to make mad cash and tour the world. Maybe the individual members could form other bands down the line, but Drowning Pool would exist forever as a one-hit legend.
2. Find a new vocalist that sounds nothing like the original, and hope to god it works out.

Drowning Pool went with option 2.

Sadly, time has proven to me personally that replacing vocalists is kind of a hard task. I think the only time it’s succeeded was with Bad Wolves, and only because the original vocalist was kind of an asshole.

Drowning Pool decided to go with Jason Jones, and put out their second album, “Desensitized” in 2004.

After listening to this album from start to finish for the first time in decades… Yeah, I’m astonished that I remained on the wagon as long as I did. The writing has definitely changed from album to album, and I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.

. With Williams as vocalist, the choruses were punchy and chant like, the songs had a groove to them that made them memorable. With Jones as vocalist, things… Started to sound a little ho-hum.

“Step up” was the first of three singles from the album, and it is such a generic track. The equally generic music video didn’t do anybody any favors, either. Suffice to say, this did NOT sound like a Drowning Pool song. Hell, twenty-plus years later, I’d say this sounds more like something Five Finger Death Punch would write, and I don’t care what anybody says, 5DP fucking SUCK! I know the rock and metal world is full of dudes trying to convince you they’re tough (thanks a lot, Pantera), and that’s pretty much WHY this track fell flat.

“Love and War”, and “Cast Me Aside” were pretty much the stand-outs on an otherwise mediocre follow-up. “Cast Me Aside” was the one song on the entire album that felt like an actual Drowning Pool song, upon relistening, and “Love and War”… Well, what can I say? Somehow, this song just wormed its way into my heart.

Overall, this album is kind of a dud. It’s a serious disappointment that made me begin to second guess my fandom altogether. And then, Ryan McCombs joined the band.

Ryan McCombs, for those who don’t know, was the vocalist for the band SOiL. And can I just say, WHEW BOY! What the fuck did I ever see in SOiL? Seriously, I could probably do an article on that band and their fifteen minutes of fame with that fucking “Halo” song… But for now, let’s just say this much. Listening to that first Drowning Pool album again for the first time, I could understand how I used to like this band. Listening to SOiL’s debut album again… Well, track 3 was pretty good. but I digress.

I don’t remember why SOiL and McCombs went their separate ways, but Drowning Pool had kicked Jason Jones out of the band around the same time. The stars aligned, and the fates said to one another: “Hey dude, watch this.” Next thing we knew, we were getting these albums.

It’s honestly astounding to me that I even entertained either one of these albums with my money.

For starters, the band decided the first single of the album should be “Soldiers”. Admittedly, I got some milage out of this song as the theme song for a comedy animatic on YouTube involving plastic army men you can’t find anymore… But outside of that novelty, fuck this song.

“Soldiers” is the kind of pro-war pandering that I despised back in the days of Operation: Iraqi Freedom, and decades later, little has changed. Instead of sending our children to die in the desert in the name of big oil, though, we’ll probably be sending our children to die in Asian wilderness so Trump can finally get a fucking hotel in Beijing.

The rest of the album sucks, too. It’s quite literally a SOiL album from start to finish, and… Well… “37 Stitches” was okay, I guess.

And then, there was the self-titled album. If ever there was an album that killed my fandom dead, it was this one.

“Feel Like I Do” is one of the stupidest songs ever written. It’s like a heavy metal “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” Even the album art feels uninspired. I could easily see this half-hearted effort at a band logo being used on some garage band’s shitty demo tape. Except you can forgive it when the garage band does it, because they don’t necessarily have access to professional artists or decent sound engineering. The fuck was you guys’ excuse?

Hell, this album is so bad, Tidal didn’t even want to put it on their service! To which I say, good idea.

This was pretty much the point where I’d given up entirely on Drowning Pool. With a heavy heart, and realizing that this band had nowhere to go but downward, I gave up my copies of the albums I’d acquired over the years, and moved on.

The last time I heard Drowning Pool, they’d thankfully gotten rid of McCombs. Then proceeded to give the world “Saturday Night”: a song so fucking terrible, I can’t even put it into words. A band that gave the world an anthem for mosh pits had been reduced to another raunch rock act putting out stripper anthems at a time when even guys like Buckcherry and Theory of a Deadman had long since worn out their welcome.

If Drowning Pool is still around to this day, it’s news to me. They seem to have come out with a few albums after the album “Saturday Night” was featured on, but by this point, I’m so disappointed, I don’t dare continue this trek.

It’s a real shame. This band had so much promise in the early going. And then their vocalist passed away. And since then, they’ve gone through multiple vocalists, multiple personalities, and multiple failures to recapture that glorious debut album magic. It still amazes me to this day that I even bothered sticking around as long as I did! By all accounts, I should’ve taken my ball and gone home around 2004. But I stuck with the band all the way up to 2011. Then, after that self-titled faceplant of an album… Well… As Luke Skywalker once said to Darth Vader: “Okay, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m just going to go.”