Striking a Nerve: The Drowning Pool Interview
Over two decades in and Drowning Pool are stronger than ever.
Twenty years after their breakout debut album, Dallas, Texas nu-metal heroes Drowning Pool are just catching their second wind. Their latest album, Strike a Nerve, is their third with singer Jasen Moreno— a first for a band on their fourth frontman following the untimely death of Dave Williams and departures of Jason Jones and Ryan McCombs. It’s an album of hard fought victories from a band that truly knows the meaning. Sitting down for a Friday afternoon Zoom, I spoke to founding member and guitarist CJ Pierce along with singer Jasen Moreno about Drowning Pool’s legacy, current status and future.
Congrats on the new album, it's awesome. How did Drowning Pool find themselves back on a major label like Universal?
CJ: A lot of patience, a lot of discussions from the last album [2016’s Hellelujah] to [Strike a Nerve]. This is our fourth label. Most bands want to get on just one. It's part of the evolution of the band. It is the music business and we want to better ourselves and make choices to get our music out there. Universal came up and they're awesome. We're getting the vinyl coming out. This is something else that’s so great, we’ve never had vinyl before. With the Sinner record we made a special edition vinyl, we got the pallet in and it got crushed. So we had to wait another year to get it because it takes forever to make stuff nowadays. But with Universal, the reason why the release date got moved back was because they wanted the vinyl to come out at the same time as digital.
Any chance of bringing back the cassette?
CJ: I would love to. I have a huge cassette collection all the way back from the 70s to now because I'm like 180 years old, part vampire.
Was there any temptation to soften the sound, get a little more commercial when you were signing with Universal?
CJ: There's never been any temptation to change anything that we do at all musically. This band is based on writing what we feel and what we want to do. We've been on certain labels in the past and management has suggested things and we always say no. This is who we are, this is what we write, we're not trying to follow somebody else.
I think it's fair to say that things have really clicked with Jasen Moreno and the band is hitting its stride. Drowning Pool has never put out three albums with one singer before. Can you just reflect a little on how Jasen came to be in the band and how that feels now?
CJ: Jasen was coming up on the scene in a band called Plastic Tongue and then another band called Suicide Hook and we played shows together in the late nineties, early 2000s. For a minute there, [bassist] Stevie was kind of managing the guys, and I was able to record four songs with Suicide Hook so we've known Jasen forever, know he was the man on the scene here. Jasen was just the perfect guy for the right place, right time. We've done more shows with Jasen, written more songs with him than we ever did through the rollercoaster ride and we're still here we’re stronger than ever before and it feels great.
The title of the first record that you and Jasen did together was [2013’s] Resilience. That's like the ultimate Drowning Pool mantra. Sticking with it and remaining a contemporary band, not just a greatest hits band. Like, you guys want to have new records to tour, you know what I mean?
CJ: Yeah, definitely. Jasen brings amazing new material to the table. Same thing with Stevie. We all write together as a band and it's fun to get in a room and just rock out, you know? Drowning Pool is all four of us now and that's what makes the band.
There's a lyric on a “Devil More Damned” from [Strike a Nerve] that I wanted to ask about where you say; “Every sinner has a future, every saint has a past.” That's like a clever nod to the longevity of the band because it could have been over after the first record.
CJ: Obviously, David passed away right in the beginning where we're getting started and a lot of bands are done after that. Mike, Stevie, and myself have been friends since high school. We've known Jasen for 20 plus years and we all love music and are passionate about music. And hats off and respect Dave still. It's yeah it's a testimony, we write from the heart, we're very passionate about what we do. We're an intense band. I didn't realize, with this record, how we were stuck on hold for the last three years and coming back to it now, we can finally play it live. We've been rocking out to “Devil More Damned” in the room and all four of us are just locked in.
It's a killer vocal. It really is. I love that one. Jasen, who are some of your vocal inspirations?
Jasen: Well, Freddie Mercury and Bruce Dickinson, Phil Anselmo, Mike Patton, Jared from (hed)pe. I love music and I love hard rock vocals. Geoff Tate, Sebastian Bach, Layne [Staley].
CJ: Jasen's got a wide range. It's awesome to see him throughout the years because we all do some stuff on the side and some of the stuff Jasen did in Suicide Note was in E-standard/drop-B. I write in drop-C or drop-B. Something we did on this record that was really cool that we've never done before was try different keys and different tunings per song to see which was most powerful and expressed the song the most. We write the song and have the singing and the melody in mind and whichever key comes across most powerful, that's the one we're going to do the song in.
Drowning Pool has had four eras: the Dave Williams era, the Jason Jones era, the Ryan McCombs era, and the Jasen Moreno era. How do you like gather up a career like that and presented in a live format?
CJ: With every tour we like to mix it up, we all again talk as a band and a lot of times it's like, “Jasen, what do you want to sing on, this one or that one?” He's got to think about it. Hats off again to Jasen Moreno. He's doing his own thing. He's bringing his amazingness to the table. But out of respect to our fans of the past records and past singers he’s gotta do Dave Williams, gotta do Jason Jones, gotta do Ryan McCombs. It's a lot on his plate he just brings it every night. I mean, come check it out. You'll see it for yourself.
We were talking about like and I am curious, I would actually be curious as to how Jasen feels about picking from like the different eras of Drowning Pool and what songs you connect to the most.
Jasen: I just suggest songs to play in the sense that I like because it's a unique perspective. I can come in from a fan's point of view. So I'll bounce songs off of them and if they're into them, we play it and if they're not, we don't. [Laughs] It's pure like there's no there's no deeper thoughts. When I first joined, I wanted to play “Children of the Gun” and I wanted to play “Sermon,” “Love and War,” and the guys did all that and busted out a lot of the back catalog. It was great because it's made me a fantastic version of myself. I can definitely say there's a lot of singers out there but man, singing those guys’ material every night with the band as awesome as they are it’s like trial by fire. You got to be good.
CJ: And we rotate songs out, which is fun every tour. Want to keep it fresh and we're going to pull out a couple of other tracks, and I can’t say what they are because it's a surprise, but it's fun to go back and play some songs we haven’t played in ten years. We love this new record and the songs. You may not be familiar with it yet but they feel great and they fit and they are jammin. We've never been a new song heavy set because a lot of people come out, they want to hear their favorites and you’re going to hear all that of course, but we work a lot of new songs into this one because they just feel great. There’s no way you’re not going to be banging your head to it.
What's great about Strike a Nerve is it's like you definitely wrote it with the intention of performing it. I think some bands, once they have enough years put in, it's like, “Let's get the new album out there so we can tour the hits.” Whereas with this one you guys were like, “Let's write our best album.” You know what I mean?
CJ: Yeah, a lot of people get caught up in the machine like; write, go; write, go; write, go. With this, we did the first two records with Jasen and spent a lot of time writing and working on the songs in this record. We wanted solid songs about ideas and were real from the heart. True life situations. And we have a lot of influence from that, even within the band ourselves. Never worked harder on anything my entire life, never worked harder. I listen to a lot of music, bands back in the day and bands that come out now, I'm always like, “I'm in this mood. I want to hear something. I want to feel something” and not hearing that song. Sometimes I have that in mind when I'm writing. Then for the most part, it just comes out naturally. Get in the room, hammer it out man.
Speaking of legacy, I was wondering about this. When I think of wrestling, the WWF, I think Limp Bizkit, I think Saliva and I think Drowning Pool. It's like you can't get away from that. I was wondering how that connection initially came about.
CJ: We were on Wind-Up [Records] and came out swinging. Next thing you know, “Bodies” is everywhere and WrestleMania was awesome with WrestleMania 18. That's when I first met Saliva. I’m glad they're still on, we still get shows together every now and then, and that was one of the key moments in our life. I love wrestling. I’d love to do something else with them. I just don't know who to call right now.
Speaking of “Bodies,” the legacy of that song, it's like you guys have a career and then you also have “Bodies,” which is its own career. This deathless, huge song that happened to drop right before 9/11 and was pulled from the radio but is somehow everywhere, like you can't get away from it. So I was curious, what is the weirdest place you've ever seen “Bodies” used?
CJ: I think it was a cereal commercial? [laughs] It was used for a lot of stuff, at least one or two things come up a year where they want to use the song. It's another thing where we were in the room, having a couple cold beers, wrote the song and now its got a life of its own for sure. It's a fun song to play. I know a lot of bands get weird about playing, you know, “everybody knows us from this one,” but we love playing it every night. I'll sit around and just play “Bodies” and do different crazy versions of it. I have a version I do on the mandolin that's fun. It's rocking on the mandolin like a Zeppelin version and a reggae version.
I'm curious to get both of your takes on the on Drowning Pool’s relationship with nu-metal and nu-metal music. How do you feel about the genre?
CJ: That's the era when we came out. That's what they were calling music at the time. I mean, it's metal to me, you know. There were a lot of nu-metal bands where guitar solos kind of went away for a little bit, but I stayed up on my job and we kept it metal and there's so many bands, especially on your list. I was looking at the Top 100, I mean, we played with almost every one of those bands at some point.
Did you ever feel like there was pressure to, to say, “Oh, we're not nu metal, we don't do that?”
CJ: I mean, call it what you want now. It doesn't bother me at all. A lot of great bands came out at that time - Linkin Park, Papa Roach, System of a Down - and that’s what they called it. Call it what you want, we’re still rockin’ it.
Were you ever tempted to hire a DJ?
CJ: Only at a wedding, maybe? Yeah, we never went down the DJ path like Limp Bizkit. I do have some stuff in the background, programmed stuff to accent the song not as much at the forefront like we need somebody playing these parts live. If that stuff isn’t there it doesn't affect what you feel and what you get from the songs.
Do you guys feel any pride being associated with nu metal?
Jasen: I feel a ton of pride being associated with some hard rockin’, ass kickin’ music that’s for sure. Do I feel a brotherhood with other musicians? That's a trippy question because I went from being the fan to playing with Mötley Crüe. “Hey man we’re going to go play with Mötley Crüe, you good?” No, man I’m not good! [laughs] So is there pride? Hell yeah, there's pride. Earned this shit.
Drowning Pool 2022 new album on the way. Tour coming up. Is there anything else you want to say to the fans?
Jasen: I was just going to say thank you to the band. You’re the guy with the guitar, I’m the emotions guy. I love all the fans. Thank you for sticking it out.
CJ: Yeah. We spent so much time on this record and then we had to sit on it and wait. I'm excited that we have it out to fans. There's a lot of people working out at the gym that put on the Sinner record and they get the best workout ever. So with the new record, Strike a Nerve, you're going to get an even better workout. It's an intense record through and through. Start to finish. Promise you won’t be disappointed.
Drowning Pool is CJ Pierce, Jasen Moreno, Mike Luce, and Stevie Benton. Their new album - Strike a Nerve - is available September 30th on Universal Records.