DROWNING POOL Recruits THE SUICIDE HOOK Singer

Texas heavy rockers DROWNING POOL have tapped Jasen Moreno from fellow Dallas band THE SUICIDE HOOK as their new vocalist.

Moreno made his live debut with DROWNING POOL this past Sunday, July 8 at Outlawz Night Club in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Video footage of DROWNING POOL performing the song "Tear Away" with Moreno on vocals on July 10 at Club Fever in South Bend, Indiana can be found at this location.

In a radio interview conducted at this past May's Rock On The Range festival in Columbus, Ohio, DROWNING POOL guitarist C.J. Pierce declined to reveal the identity of his band's new singer, but he did offer that the vocalist's first name contained the letter "J."

Regarding DROWNING POOL's plans for the immediate future, Pierce said, "We've been in the studio. DROWNING POOL is recording a new record. We have three weeks left. I've been in the studio all year long and I haven't gone out at all — 12-hour days, seven days a week; I'm not kidding. . . We have our first coming out show with the new [singer], we're gonna be opening up for MÖTLEY CRÜE on July 13 — it's a radio show in Wisconsin, which is great, to get started, again, right where you left off. We were fortunate… Things have been, the last few years… I mean, things are flowing again. It's been great. . . But the new record is heavier, there's more metal on it, there's a lot of double bass, a lot of guitar solos… stepping up a notch."

DROWNING POOL parted ways with vocalist Ryan McCombs late last year, with Pierce telling the 97-1 The Eagle radio station in Dallas, Texas at the time that the singer and his former bandmates simply "grew apart." He explained, "If you're gonna write music together and tour together, you've gotta be hitting on all four cylinders — everybody's gotta be on the same page. . . So instead of going into the studio and trying to force something and just throwing out a record there, [we thought it would be] better if we part ways now while we're still on good terms."

McCombs joined the band in 2005 and provided some stability on the microphone after the group's first two albums featured two different vocalists. Original frontman Dave Williams died on tour in 2002 after singing on the band's debut, "Sinner". He was replaced by Jason "Gong" Jones, who also contributed to one record, "Desensitized", before being shown the door in 2004.

McCombs sang on two studio efforts by DROWNING POOL, 2007's "Full Circle" and 2010's self-titled fourth album.

DROWNING POOL's fifth album is tentatively due in October.