Drowning Pool review

Download Festival 2004

By Guy Powell | Published: Thu 10th Jun 2004

Download Festival 2004

Saturday 5th to Sunday 6th June 2004
Donington Park, Leics, England MAP
£80 for both days, camping £15 extra, camping upgrade

When a band have to replace their front man it always leads to curiosity over the success of the band. It inevitably means that the band end up a year or two on by splitting up and fading in to oblivion.

None of this seems true for Drowning Pool – with a crowd who accept the new front man as if he had been there with the band for years. This is possibly because he has the stage presence of someone that has been with the band for years.

Running through songs from the old and new albums, Jason seems to fit right in. It’s almost as if everyone thinks and knows that he has been in the band since day one – even if its not the case. It certainly doesn’t hurt things that he has a very similar vocal properties to the now-deceased Dave Williams (to whom a song is dedicated and the crowd asked to ensure that he hears it all the way “up there”).

As ‘Bodies’ begins – SoiL vocalist Ryan McCombs comes on stage to take part in a duet. This is followed by the rest of SOiL coming on stage for what turns out to be the only surprise set of the weekend. The DP boys walk off and leave SOiL to do their business – as they pound through ‘Halo’. The crowd love every minute of both these songs and not a single hand in the room is not pounding the air at some point.

It seems fitting that their last UK performance was at Castle Donington during Ozzfest 2002. Singers may change – but good bands quite clearly don’t.
review by: Guy Powell


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