If I had to describe Disturbed’s 4th studio album, Indestructible, in a short sentence, I would call it, “A mo’ mainstream-friendly The Sickness that aged better”: we still have the spoopy sound & subject matter & theatrics, but with mo’ professional musicianship & production, fewer awkward elements like the infamous parental abuse crashout during the bridge o’ “Down with the Sickness”, & fewer cringe nu-metal elements that haven’t aged well. Unfortunately, that makes it less interesting & weird than The Sickness; but it is mo’ consistent.

It is also a better representation o’ Disturbed’s actual sound: while they would switch up sounds a bit thru their 1st 4 albums, the albums following Indestructible would mostly stick to its mainstream theatrical spoopy sound, with mo’ shitty electronic o’erproduction — they called it the “Imagine Dragons Effect” — & sappier melodies later on, especially after the abomination that was their cover o’ “The Sound of Silence”, to diminishing returns, unfortunately.

1. Indestructible

This album starts with some fine cheese with this song that is either trying to compare the band’s success to indestructible masters of war or trying to butter up military folk, a big demographic o’ theirs, so I hear. Either way, the way they describe war sounds mo’ like a video game for preteens rather than the actual horrors o’ war. & yet this song’s lyrics are so infectious, the way Draiman scat-sings, “INDESTRUCTIBLE / DETERMINATION THAT IS INCORRUPTIBLE”.

Grade: A

Music Video

I don’t e’en know what’s going on in this music video: it starts with Draiman’s bald head covering half the screen greenscreened o’er an explosion in the corner followed by the band greenscreened o’er a wasteland from a movie set while random scenes o’ cave men, tribes men, samurai, & modern soldiers in camouflage run around & shout, but don’t do anything else. I guess this is meant to show how humanity has been involved in wars since their beginning. That’s deep bro. Also deep is comparing a line from this song to a famous quote from Julius Caesar @ the beginning.

Grade: C

2. Inside the Fire

OK, but this song is e’en better than “Indestructible”, with its verses scat-sung so quickly that most people have no idea what Draiman is saying. Joke’s on them: e’en if they could hear what he was saying, they’d be scratching their heads @ such lines as, “Devon, 1 of 11”. ¿Who are the other 10? We’ll ne’er know. ¿Why does this character have a weird name like Devon? So Draiman could rhyme it in the line, “Devon won’t go to heaven”. See, this song is ’bout how the protagonist’s girlfriend has committed suicide & how the protagonist needs to make a deal with the devil & give his soul to Satan, too, so he can join her in hell. A perfect Halloween spooky song for a Halloween spooky band like Disturbed, made e’en better by the cheesy laugh @ the end. E’en mo’ than “Indestructible”, this song’s chorus is unbearably catchy, especially with its opening line, “Give your soul to me for eternity”, as are, ’course, the equally corny verses.

Weirdly, despite how silly this song is, it’s apparently inspired by someone Draiman actually knew who committed suicide after he broke up with her. I always thought ’twas weird that Draiman would want to rejoin someone he broke up with, but according to Genius.com, who ne’er lie, he only broke up with her ’cause she was threatening him ’cause she was a junky & he thought the devil was actually talking to him. That reminds me o’ when my dad told me as a kid that he thought the devil possessed him when he woke up in the morn, causing him to bonk his head gainst the top o’ his bed. Also, I’m amused by the implications that his parents wouldn’t approve o’ his relationship, — whether ’cause she’s a junky or a dirty gentile, we’ll ne’er know — but would be less aghast @ him shooting heroin.

Fun fact: near after this single joined the radiowaves round 2007, an afternoon show that played on Seattle’s main buttrock station, the cleverly named “99.9 The Rock” — said afternoon show, I shit you not, was named “The Men’s Room” & had the kind o’ boomer bro comedy you’d expect with that name, & I think is still on in this year of our Luigi 2025 — made a parody o’ this song where they changed the lyrics to be ’bout 7-11 stores & apparently played that song for all the band members sans David Draiman during an interview to their amusement. Tragically, I could not find any capture o’ this anywhere online, so it will have to remain a figment o’ my teenaged memory.

Grade: S

Music Video

Sigh. Man, the fact that a real-world suicide was ’hind this song really puts a bummer on how hilarious this music video is. When Draiman sees his girlfriend hanging from the ceiling, he shouts, “¡NO!”, like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. ¿How am I not s’posed to laugh @ that? If that’s the devil’s temptation, he’s good @ his job & I am not strong ’nough to avoid the flames o’ damnation.

The rest o’ the music video doesn’t help: after laughing… for some reason… he hugs his dead girlfriends legs for, like, half a minute while making exaggerated facial expressions & then cuts her down, puts her in a bath, & starts washing her. In addition to the nice suicide warning @ the beginning o’ the music video, maybe we should have a warning not to tamper with the body & to call 911 immediately afterward to avoid getting in trouble with the law & looking suspicious. Afterward, our protagonist finds a convenient machine gun just hanging on the wall — another useful warning for the audience: don’t leave guns, especially big-ass machine guns, just hanging on the wall; lock that shit up — as a blood-smeared version o’ his girlfriend tempts him to just do it. He ends up putting the gun in his mouth, but then we jump to him screaming while wrapped up in a straitjacket in a white padded room. Yes, that’s what this music video will do to you.

Grade: 😈

3. Deceiver

I really like the melodies in this song, especially the chorus, but always found the final line o’ the chorus, “you’ve mastered the art o’ deceiving me now”, really corny & awkward. Like, yeah, someone who lied to you did in fact do a great job o’ deceiving you: that’s the definition o’ “deceiving”. I could say something similar ’bout the bridge: I like the goblin voice Draiman puts on, ¿but what is this ’bout a “little puppet” you keep asking to not die? Those lines sound like they came straight from a different song.

Grade: B

4. The Night

This song is different from most Disturbed songs in that, if anything, it’s the music, particularly the opening guitar riffs, that are nice, while this song doesn’t have Draiman’s best vocals, which sound strained & screechy. This is a song that would really benefit from smoother, smokier vocals, like the kind Adam Gontier from Three Days Grace had. Just imagine this song sung by him — ¡dare tell me I’m not cooking with this recipe! Also with lyrics like these —

¿are you gonna deny the savior
in front of your eyes?
stare into the night

— this sounds like yet another nu-metal ✝-rock band, like Skillet. Tell me those don’t sound like lyrics Skillet would write — ¡dare tell me I’m not cooking with this recipe! I, for 1, am not feeling particularly disturbed by this song.

Grade: C

Music Video

Also, the music video sucks — apparently so much that Disturbed doesn’t have it on their official channel, for some reason. It’s just the band playing in a garage while Draiman sits in front o’ a car & makes funny faces. Since we ne’er see outside, we don’t e’en know if it’s night time.

5. Perfect Insanity

¡Hell yeah! ¡Now here’s a Disturbed song! Those opening distorted drums; the “¡AH AH AH AH AH OW!”; & the cartoonishly sinister verses; the growling, pleading pre-chorus repeating, “please let me out…”; & the batshit chorus where Draiman switches erratically from shouting & singing melodically, singing slowly & methodically & quicking scatting ( no, not the poop kind ). & then we have the breakdown @ the bridge where Draiman monologues insane ramblings from the back o’ his throat. If this isn’t a spoopy Muertoween song, I don’t know what is.

Apparently this song was originally written before The Sickness, & there exists an earlier 1998 demo version on YouTube when Draiman still had hair. It’s crazy to hear Disturbed sounding mo’ like an early 90s metal band — it has a Megadeth-like sound that is strikingly lacking from their 2000s work. Honestly, I think I might prefer this earlier version — I certainly appreciate the mo’ prominent bassline, bass being the most common casualty o’ o’erproduction.

Grade: 🎃

6. Haunted

Another great spoopy song, with its opening sounds o’ thunder & rain, the bell tolls, whate’er that weird beeping is @ the beginning, & the slowly building drums & riffs, followed by Draiman raspily ranting @ how vaguely mean the world is like the Joker, while singing in a mo’ melancholy & melodic lament during the chorus how “haunted” he is by said world, till the bridge, where the music slows down again & Draiman rants in a deep, throaty voice. Like pulp horror fiction, this song is full o’ imagery-laden spoopy language, talking ’bout “subhuman parasites thrown into a feeding frenzy with the smell of fresh blood”. It’s not particularly original, but neither is pulp horror fiction.

Grade: 🦇

7. Enough

¿What is this sappy shit? The last thing I want to hear from growly monster David Draiman is him in falsetto crying, “when your soul is frozen, ¿is that enough?”. I mean, I am feeling disturbed by this song, but not for the reasons I should. I guess I kinda like the bridge where he puts on this weird imp voice & shouts, “¿HAVEN’T THEY SUFFERED ENOUGH?”, but it’s not good ’nough to make up for the whiny chorus.

“Enough” is written to be a message to the world leaders who partake in war. Showing them all the pain they’ve caused and asking them; “Isn’t death alone a good enough reason to stop all of this conflict?”

Genius

I don’t know what to laugh @ mo’: the idea o’ pretending that the world leaders are going to take advice from a nu-metal band o’ all people or the irony o’ this coming from the guy who would later infamously sign missiles attacking Gaza.

Grade: D

8. The Curse

That’s better. This has a pretty fun opening theme, a pretty fun guitar solo, & has pretty catchy verses — tho I feel the chorus is just kinda average. It’s pretty OK for a deep cut.

Grade: B

9. Torn

In contrast, this song has average verses, but I really like the dragged-out dour melody o’ the chorus. The music might be some o’ the least interesting on this album so far: e’en the guitar solo just sounds like squeaky noodling rather than any kind o’ coherent composition.

Grade: B

10. Criminal

I can remember that these last few tracks are when I would start to lose attention as a teen, as I remember these tracks far less.

& yet, this is possibly the weirdest song on this album, musically & lyrically: this song constantly drops its title, “criminal”, but the “criminal” in question is… ¿the suffering the protagonist feels? & this song is mo’ a generic nu-metal “I want to commit suicide” song. Man, the people who made fun o’ Linkin Park’s “Crawling” — which, mind you, was ’bout drug addiction, not suicidal ideation; but that’s irrelevant — must’ve ne’er listened to other nu-metal songs, ’cause that song’s lyrics seem good in comparison. It seems like the protagonist is implying that it’s criminal that such a mean world imprisons him in keeping him alive, which, granted, isn’t an unheard o’ thought from suicidal people, but despite the word “criminal” just thrown in many times, the lyrics don’t do much to make the connection themselves.

Also, the clinical way the protagonist calls committing suicide, “quickening my end”, is also weird, not unlike the monotone way Jacoby Shaddix described the protagonist’s suicidal ideation in “Last Resort”, another poorly written nu-metal suicide song.

& then you get these goofy-ass lyrics repeated many times in the bridge:

¿you wanna know?
¿you want a name?
¿you want to call me motherfucker?

Like, ¿what does that e’en mean? ¿Why would anyone want to call you “motherfucker”? — Well, other than the aforementioned signing your name on missiles; but that came years after, & I’m hoping Draiman wasn’t planning on doing that for o’er a decade, thinking to himself when he saw the footage on October 7, { Now is finally the time I fulfill what I planned on that deepcut 15 years ago… }.

The music is also odd, starting with a peculiar lethargy for such subject matter, sounding mo’ like it’s going to introduce a spooky game show. ( I should also add that Draiman barks, “¡GET IT! ¡HUH! ¡HUH!”, @ the beginning, which doesn’t help ). & then @ the beginning o’ the 1st verse there’s a breakdown where, I shit you not, it sounds like there’s electronic beatboxing. Sadly, the rest o’ the song’s music is just generic riffs & drum beats that I have already forgotten, despite hearing this song probably dozens o’ times since my youth.

Having said that, I do find the sound o’ the chorus quite catchy, with its speeding & slowing rhythm.

“Criminal” is a song about the vicious and tormenting baggage a person can carry, and must live with it forever.
How a bad relationship can bring out the worst of you, making you do things you shouldn’t. Yet you can’t free yourself from this person, but rather contemplate ending your own life to be rid of him/her.

Genius

I think some o’ these editors are just making shit up & projecting their own romantic angst. Nowhere in this song’s lyrics is there any mention o’ a bad relationship; if anything, the protagonist seems to blame the vague world on his angst.

Grade: C

11. Divide

( Laughs ). Holy shit, I vaguely remember finding this song kinda catchy since I was young, but only now ’pon closer inspection have I realized how goofy this song is. It’s comparable to their underrated magnum opus, “Droppin’ Plates”, in how Draiman scat-sings in a way that sort o’ sounds like rapping & is trying so hard to sound tough, while sounding corny as hell. Just look @ these lyrics:

don’t wanna be another playa losin’ in this game
i’m trying to impress upon you we’re not the same
my own individuality is so unique
i’m 1 impressive motherfucka, now, ¿wouldn’t you say?

This whole song is Draiman bragging ’bout what a tough individual he is & how he’s not like all the other boys & bragging ’bout how “provocative” he is. I mean, maybe to the tiny minority o’ weird fundies who don’t let their kids listen to any music with a parental advisory sticker or listen to any radio but Radio Disney. I feel like metal fans who have probably heard bands like Cannibal Corpse or Aborted Fetus have much higher standards for “provocation”. Hell, e’en a band as mainstream as Marilyn Manson was considered way mo’ provocative. This song is like a prototypical Ronnie Radke song, except it doesn’t sound like complete ass.

My favorite part is when he philosophically asks, “¿so can you tell me what exactly does “freedom” mean if I’m not free to be as twisted as I wanna be”, with him putting on this particularly impish voice @ that last part. To be fair, he is right: there is a reason the founding fathers o’ the US put the right to be as twisted as one wants to be in the Bill of Rights.

I also love how just before the bridge, Draiman sings, “I hear the sirens, but they’re ne’er gonna take me”, & then just after you hear stock sirens o’ police sirens.

This song apparently goes back e’en further than 1998, back when the band was named Brawl & before Draiman joined &, damn, does this not sound like it’s trying to be We Have Pantera @ Home:

This song’s lyrics are technically better than what we have now: but I think I’ll take my ludicrous cheese o’er Pantera backwash, especially when I could just listen to Pantera proper.

They also remade this song & planned to put it on The Sickness, but didn’t. It’s not surprising that this song was planned for The Sickness, given the cheesy vibes that fit with songs like the aforementioned “Droppin’ Plates” & how edgy it tries to be. All I’ll say ’bout this demo version is that I wish they kept the stock cartoon laugh sound effect after the “twisted as I wanna be” line.

Grade: 🚨

12. Façade

Automatic S grade for putting the cedilla on the “C”.

Being serious, while I kinda like the vocal melody on the chorus, this song is sappy like “Enough”, & I’m not fond o’ the way this song treats its subject matter, discussing the issue o’ domestic abuse by interrogating the victim & asking her why she stays with her abusive partner & hides her misery. Uh, I dunno, ¿maybe ’cause she’s afraid o’ being killed if she doesn’t? It says something when I feel like Papa Roach’s bizarre treatment o’ this issue in whate’er the fuck their “Revenge” song was was better. ¡Fuckin’ Nickelback treated this subject better with their “Never Again”! ( That song is also straight-up funner to listen to ). It’s weird: if anything, you would expect Nickelback to make a weepy, out-o’-touch song like “Façade” & a band named Disturbed to make the song ranting @ what a cowardly bitch abusive men are & cheering on the woman for finally shooting his ass, like “Never Again”. ( Granted, the line “She’s just a wooomaaaan” is out o’ touch, but… I mean, it is Nickelback… ). Hell, a nu-metal ✝-rock band like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus was able to do half that ( without the shooting her abuser part ) in their only hit song ( probably ’cause a band with the name “Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” was doomed to failure ). ¿Wouldn’t it make mo’ sense for a band called Disturbed to make a song that emphasizes the disturbing aspects o’ domestic abuse ( you know, without seeming to be from the point o’ view o’ the abuser, like their song, “The Game” ) & possibly have the woman get her violent revenge? I’m not e’en saying that’s the “moral” way to deal with domestic abuse; but maybe I don’t expect life lessons from a band called Disturbed who wrote the “OH-WAH-AH-AH-AH” “Down with the Sickness” song — but apparently Disturbed felt we needed 2 o’ those songs on this album.

Grade: D

Conclusion

Still a fun album to listen to in the background round Halloween, with a few skips, specially near the end.

Final Grade: B

Nu-metal has many “1-hit wonders” who had way mo’ than 1 hit, but now the normies only know 1 particularly memeworthy song from them: Disturbed with “Down with the Sickness”; Papa Roach with “Last Resort”; System of a Down with “Chop Suey” ( despite System of a Down having many, many surreal songs that would merit being memeworthy ); Trapt with “Headstrong”; &, ’course, Drowning Pool, whose only song it seems anyone on the internet knows is “Bodies”. But like those other bands & mo’, I’d hear plenty of other songs by Drowning Pool on the radio thruout my middle school & early high school days in the mid noughties, like “Enemy”, as well as “Tear Away” from the album we’re going to be looking @ today, their 2001 studio debut ( they technically had some EPs before this 1, but nobody gives a shit ’bout them ), Sinner. Granted, nothing much stuck with me beyond this album’s singles from when I listened to it as a kid, & that doesn’t bode well when the person who remembers obscure bands like Rehab can’t remember much o’ your albums; but I couldn’t remember most o’ that Rehab album, either, & I had interesting things to say ’bout it. Maybe there’s some ( memetic ) gold in this album.

1. Sinner

The title track & probably the least-remembered single, & for good reason. While the music has some fun stanky wrooah riffs & bass, the verses & chorus are just… bland. No cheese @ all. It’s an antireligion song, which… man, ¿do you know how much competition there is for cheesy “sinner” music @ that time when you had Marilyn Manson up on stage wiping his ass with a Bible in a gimp suit?

It’s not e’en good religious criticism: the main criticism is that all judgy religious people abstractly sin sometimes, so it’s “hypocritical” for them to criticize people for abstractly sinning when “we are all sinners”; but this is just a conflation o’ magnitude that leads to nihilism & could be used to justify “sins” that any sane person would be opposed to. As an atheist, I don’t feel any mo’ hypocritical for criticizing people for, say, murdering random civilians, as any sane Christian would, e’en when I sometimes commit the sin of only paying the medium tip on Door Dash. I’m pretty certain most judgy religious people don’t commit murder. No, the real problem with judgy religious people is that what they consider to be “sin” — or a’least the controversial elements — are stupid & frivolous, like laws against eating shellfish or a man sticking his dick in another man’s ass. I feel much less bad ’bout sticking my dick in another man’s ass — damn proud o’ it, actually — than I do paying a smaller-than-maximum tip, & that has nothing to do with how much I’ve done bad things.

Grade: C

Music Video

I do find the music video mo’ inspired, tho, with the band & their fans breaking into a skatepark to play music @ night ( I’m pretty sure they don’t lock those up, so I’m not sure why they needed to break a lock to get in ) contrasted with the 3 carnal sins: whoredom, gluttony, & tanning. I particularly like the part where the glutton gets so engorged that he just spits up his food, followed by it starting to rain in the skatepark, implying that the glutton’s chip spittle is falling all o’er the band & fans while they’re singing & partying.

Grade: A

2. Bodies

Ah, here we go: the ultimate nu-metal machisimo song, with its chorus repeating the shouted slogan, “LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR”, with “floor” sounding like “flow”, only to growl the ending “floor” as just “RRRRRRRRR” & the pre-chorus, with different slogans repeated after counting — “1, nothing wrong with me; 2, nothing wrong with me…” — as if coming from a madman. This song is a certified suburb classic.

Grade: S

Music Video

The music video, with the lead singer shouting @ an insane asylum patient just gazing forward, only mouthing the lines, “nothing wrong with me” in response to the lead singer’s counting, is similarly iconic, tho it gets repetitive by the end. I do like the visual o’ the band jamming in a tiny white room, as if they’re patients as well.

Grade: B

3. Tear Away

We looked @ this song when we looked @ that bad divorced dad rock album a couple months ago, but let’s go o’er it in mo’ detail here. As I said in that article, I love this song’s cooly-crooned chorus o’ “I… don’t care ’bout anyone else but me…”, especially the ending o’ the chorus just before the bridge with the mumbled, “God damn I love me”. This song also has some fun musical flourishes, like the guitar solo during the bridge; the muffled, crunchy opening riffs; & the weird muffled notes that they only play during a weird drop after the 2nd verse. If this song isn’t a certified suburb classic, well it damn well should be.

Grade: S

Music Video

The visual o’ the band jamming inside a bunch o’ cracked mirrors works well with this song’s theme. I’m not so sure ’bout the lead singer singing to a bunch o’ hanging pictures o’ parts o’ his face in an ol’ manor with tacky floral wallpaper. 2000s bands loved dusty ol’ manors, for some reason; Papa Roach recorded an entirely album in 1.

Grade: B

4. All Over Me

This song has interesting opening notes, & then e’erything afterward is stale nu-metal backwash, from the stiffly-sung verses, the whisper-shouted bridge lines like a store-brand Papa Roach, &, dear god, the repetitive chorus that is just shouting, “ALL OVER ME”. Snore.

Hell, it says something bad when the “meaning” officially bequeathed ’pon this song by the gods o’ Genius.com is mo’ interesting than this entire song: just the enigmatic line, “There’s something changing and growing in him”, with no period @ the end. I have no idea why this poetic masterpiece has a -1 rating.

Grade: D

5. Reminded

God damn it, this is the same as the last song: we start with e’en mo’ interesting muffled guitar twanging & some stanky, funky bass picks thruout the verses, but then we get mo’ stiff generic verses & shouting the same line repeatedly for the chorus. This 1 has mo’ interesting music than “All Over Me”, but not ’nough to bump it up much.

Grade: D

6. Pity

OK, this is a bit better, with its goofy opening lines o’ the singer crooning, “My life… served on a plate…”, & then shouting, “FOR ALL OF YOU TO EAT”. That’s funny & I like the sound o’ the contrast. E’en the chorus, which is still repetitive, a’least has a rhythm & flow & isn’t just stilted shouting. I also like the gnarly held note that pops up during the verses & refuses to leave for a while. That being said, there aren’t any mo’ funny or interesting lines & I still begin to lose interest halfway thru — I feel like I get the gist already & the rest is just more o’ the same.

Grade: B

7. Mute

¿Would it kill this band to have a chorus that isn’t shouting the same line repeatedly? It’s impressive when a band is so lazy @ lyricism that they make “Disturbed in the House We’re Droppin’ Plates” look like Leonard Cohen in comparison. This 1 e’en has a pre-chorus where the singer shouts a different line repeatedly. It’s especially absurd when the line in question is “there’s nothing left here to talk about”. I guess that must be true, since you ain’t sayin’ nothing else. E’en the opening weird notes are just a less interesting version o’ what “Reminded” starts with. The closest thing I could find that could be called interesting in this song is, like, 1 stanky note during the bridge, & it just sounds like a worse version o’ a note you can hear in the bridge in Disturbed’s “Want” — & that’s 1 o’ the weaker songs off that album, mind you.

I also have to bring up this amazing “meaning” from Genius:

Mute is about staying quite from everything around because of how much you’ve changed.

Ignoring the “quite” typo, ¿what does that e’en mean? ¿Could “everything around” be any mo’ vague? ¿Why would changing a lot make you mo’ likely to be quiet? I’m pretty certain this is just your typical antiromance song ’bout how the singer’s relationship with some partner is doomed ’cause o’ the “demons” inside, or whate’er. Then again, this “meaning” is as vague as Drowning Pool’s general lyrics, so it fits, a’least.

Grade: D

8. I Am

You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear a song start with drum beats instead o’ another batch o’ weird, distorted notes that sound like the start o’ another song off this album. Clearly, they were proud o’ this opening, as it goes on for nearly a half hour. In fact, this song is stretched agonizingly slow, with long pauses ’tween e’ery line in the verses, as well as an extra pause before the last word o’ the last line for extra measure. &, yes, the chorus is just shouting the same lines repeatedly — ’cept this time we get the slightest o’ twists halfway thru the chorus when “I” is changed to “you”. ¡Oooo! These lines are contradictory, too, claiming “I could’ve been”, implying that he’s not, but also “I am” @ the same time; but this song is ’bout unironically making up excuses for being a fuck up & how “that’s just the way we are”, — not a sentiment I can get behind, having some shred o’ the capability o’ self-improvement — so I think it’s an intention contradiction ’tween this lofty idea o’ what one could be & the s’posedly unchangeable fact o’ what one is. That would be kind o’ clever if it weren’t wrong.

What isn’t clever are these lines, which I think must’ve been cribbed from somebody still in a crib for their preschool “words class”:

¿does it make you feel good?
¿does it make you sick
that you knew that i would
be the one to trip?

Again, we get this sentiment o’, “Ugh, it’s society’s fault that I’m a fuckup; it’s literally impossible for me to learn how to walk without tripping”.

Grade: D

9. Follow

It only took till track 9 for Drowning Pool to have a chorus that isn’t just repeating the same line o’er & o’er. Too bad both the chorus & verses are slow, stilted, & boring. The only interesting parts o’ this song are the guitar solo &, mo’ importantly, the weird goatlike effect the singer does to his voice when singing the 1st & 3rd lines o’ the bridge.

Grade: C

10. Told You So

& now we’re back to the repetitious choruses — & with the generic “shut up”, too. In contrast, I have no idea what kind o’ rhythm & melody the verses & pre-chorus are s’posed to have, nor what “a penny for your thoughts would make me sick”. I’m guessing he means that knowing what the antagonistic “you” is thinking would make him sick, but the implication is that the price o’ knowing what they think would make him sick, which is just absurd. I’m mixed on whether to rank this a C or D considering the absurdity o’ this song’s singing & lyrics make it a bit mo’ memorable than most o’ the other songs, but I already forgot how this song actually sounds musically after having just heard it. Luckily, I found out there’s a coin emoji, which is close ’nough to a penny emoji, so I’ll just go with that.

Grade: 🪙

11. Sermon

Thank God this album is only 11 songs — & thank God for how hilarious this song is. Musically, there’s nothing to talk ’bout, but lyrically this is the goofiest shit on this album. I don’t e’en know where to start:

The verses have this inane pattern o’ “where was [blank]” on e’ery odd line while the e’en lines have whate’er goofy ideas they thought o’ 1st to rhyme — the kind o’ nursery school rhymes I would do with my melodramatic poetry to be funny, like “You were wrong since the beginning o’ the bomb”. For instance, the 1st verse has the pattern o’ e’ery odd line being “¿where was God?”:

¿where was God
when i needed a friend?
¿where was God
when i came to an end?
¿where was God
when i lost my mind?
¿where was God
when i couldn’t find?

¿Couldn’t find what? ¿A better line that ended with a word that rhymes with “mind”? ¿Where was God when he let you write this song?

Meanwhile, the 2nd verse starts with this pattern:

¿where was love
when i felt like hate?
¿where was hate
when i felt like love?

I could understand wanting love when you “feel like hate”, whate’er that means; ¿but why would you want hate when you feel like love? & then this same verse ends with the lines, “¿Where was the fear / when i said i was scared?”. I dunno — you were the one apparently claiming you were scared when apparently there was no fear where you could find it. ¿Why would you want fear, especially from a god who’s known for being good @ making people fear his s’posed wrath? ¿Isn’t the Abrahamic God usually criticized for inspiring fear, not failing to inspire fear well ’nough? “¿How am I s’posed to worship you if you fail to inspire in me the fear o’ spending an eternity in hell?”.

Then we have the prechorus, which repeats the line, “I don’t wanna be up or down”. See, it’s like heaven & hell, but much stupider. ¿Are heaven & hell e’er described as “up” & “down” in the Bible? ¿Aren’t they in completely different dimensions that can’t be accessed thru any 3D directions? I’m pretty certain the only thing “down” is the earth’s solid core & the only think “up” is outer space.

The chorus, believe it or not, is not just 1 line repeated o’er & o’er again, but it does end with these amazing lines:

i don’t know who to trust;
my heart is filled with disgust

Hint: don’t trust whoe’er fills you heart with disgust.

As if this song couldn’t get any goofier, just before the bridge the singer tries to just sing this song’s title repeatedly, for whate’er reason, but his doglike panting smothers it. Then he randomly shouts, “¡whoa!”. All right, ’nough o’ this dour moping ’bout existential thoughts o’ “what to believe” & how my heart is full o’ disgust: ¡it’s time to party!

& then in the bridge, we get this amazingly acted sermon:

ladies & gentlemen…
¿may i have your attention?
¿are you ready for the joke?

Well, I received the joke in the form o’ “Sermon”, whether I was ready or not. By the way, that last line was followed by an impish laugh in the background to really sell you on this joke.

& then while background voices chant, “tell me what to believe”, the foreground singer shouts, “¡God!”, & then, “¡whoa!”, & then some random murmuring.

& then, when you thought the song was o’er & there would be no mo’ randomness, you get some backmasked version o’ “ladies & gentlemen: tell me what you believe”, which is… so important it needs to be backmasked, I guess.

Grade: S

Conclusion

This album was surprisingly & disappointingly boring. It turns out there’s a reason this band is mainly known as the “Bodies band”: other than “Tear Away” & the unexpected closer, “Sermon”, hardly any o’ the rest o’ the album is e’en funny bad; it’s mostly just repetitive & generic nu-metal that sounds like too many other nu-metal bands with much mo’ personality. O well, we still have 1 mo’ album to look @ on Muertoween proper, & you know it’s going to be from a band that knows how to bring the cheese.

Final Grade: C