DROWNING POOL Guitarist Talks About New Album

Sheila Doki of Metalholic.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist C.J. Pierce of Texas heavy rockers DROWNING POOL. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metalholic.com: About the upcoming self-titled album — I listened to the new single "Feel Like I Do" earlier today. How have the fans been receiving that?

Pierce: The fans have been awesome, I gotta be honest. I think it's the first time we've ever had momentum… coming off of "37 Stitches", which did really well. And getting a new song out. Everybody seems to take a liking to it, you know? I'm happy with that song, I'm happy with the whole record.

Metalholic.com: How do you think this record differs from the previous three?

Pierce: We have the same singer, instead of going through the whole switching singers thing here. It's an advantage with Ryan [McCombs]. He's been with us for five years now. Usually when we make a new record, we have to find a new singer, find new management/labels. Ryan really goes above and beyond, he really pushes us to try and be better. He really opened up on this record. We're really comfortable with each other.

Metalholic.com: Did you find that not having the issues of finding a new singer/management gave you the ability to focus more this time on the cohesive songwriting and sound of the band?

Pierce: Yeah, that's something that's definitely affected. For the first time ever, we're all on solid ground and we're all happy and focused.

Metalholic.com: Do you ever do songwriting on tour?

Pierce: For this record, honestly, it's the first time that we've done that. With the other records, it was kind of like, whenever we'd get time off, go to the house, we all get together… the first half of last year, we had some time off, so we hit it pretty hard. That was a lot of fun, working in that environment. We all had a lot of ideas to bring to the table. During Crüe Fest, whenever we would have a day off, we would go into the studio and demo some songs. We would get up seven, eight o'clock in the morning and get ready for an in-store signing or meet-and greet, a radio show. Rock bands get up early and have a full day just like everybody else. But we made it a point to take time to write and work on songs, all of us. This record's half-and-half. We were writing more music than we ever have. Going into writing this record, figuring out which songs would be on there, we could pick and choose. Some songs outshine others.

Read the entire interview at Metalholic.com.