Drowning Pool: Hellelujah

Nu metal knuckledraggers take the Devil’s name in vain

Drowning Pool

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Think Drowning Pool and you think of one song. Bodies is great to get hammered to, but that was 15 years ago, and now they’re five albums down the line and still trying to find another song of that magnitude in the maze of wrestlemetal chuggery.

With guitars stripped straight out of All Hope Is Gone, Hellelujah is an antagonistic stick-it-to-the-man record that tries its best to stir something inside you. Through the power of repetition, vocalist Jasen Moreno powers through some of the most basic chorus lines so far this year, like ‘We are the Devil and life is hell’ and ‘We’re all sinners on All Saints Day’.

It’s so formulaic, but if Drowning Pool released a Keats-esque epic it would feel as out of place as Donald Trump’s hair. No, they’re not musical geniuses but that’s not what you go to a DP record for.

There are a few hidden earworms that can’t be washed away easily, but that said, the obligatory ballad Another Name (complete with ‘La la la la’s) is torturous.

Luke Morton joined Metal Hammer as Online Editor in 2014, having previously worked as News Editor at popular (but now sadly defunct) alternative lifestyle magazine, Front. As well as helming the Metal Hammer website for the four years that followed, Luke also helped relaunch the Metal Hammer podcast in early 2018, producing, scripting and presenting the relaunched show during its early days. He also wrote regular features for the magazine, including a 2018 cover feature for his very favourite band in the world, Slipknot, discussing their turbulent 2008 album, All Hope Is Gone.