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