Drowning Pool

Strike A Nerve T-BOY/UMC

Mardy Texans tread water on album number seven.

We’ve all banged our heads to nu-metal floorfiller Bodies on a club night (don’t deny it), but the thought of sitting through another Drowning Pool album in 2022 inspires more hope than expectation.

Six years on from Hellelujah, the Texan wrestle-metallers arrive at Strike A Nerve, album number seven, with more angsty bilge. Three quarters of the band remain since they formed. It’s singers they’ve had less luck with, and their fourth, Jasen Moreno, is the weakest link here. Guitarist CJ Pierce’s

sinewy riffs barge through Hate Against Hate and Stay And Bleed well enough, but Moreno’s laboured, cartoonish vocals cheapen things. He yaps through the hulking A Devil

More Damned with all the indignation of a grounded preteen, and the lyrics to Racing To A Red Light are staggeringly bad: ‘I’m feeling alright, racing to a red light, chasing my best life.’ More staggering is that people still listen to this stuff voluntarily.