DROWNING POOL's C.J. PIERCE: Reactions To 'Hellelujuah' Album Have Been 'A Hundred Percent Positive'

Australia's The Rockpit recently conducted an interview with DROWNING POOL guitarist C.J. Pierce. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Rockpit: Good to see the new [DROWNING POOL] album ["Hellelujuah"] out, What kind of feedback have you been getting from the critics and some of the fans so far?

C.J.: Shockingly and surprisingly, it's all been 100 percent awesome! We've put out a handful of records in our career, we've had some singer switches and label switches and manager switches and all that stuff, and it never fails. It seems like, especially with the Internet these days, with every record we put out there's always been some positive feedback and negative feedback, but this time around it's kind of weirding me out a little bit. Everybody has been a hundred percent positive.

The Rockpit: Why do you think it's been all positive this time around?

C.J.: Straight up, with us writing and recording this record, we did whatever the hell we wanted to do, we said whatever the hell we wanted to say. It's never been a more true and honest record from this band. With all the music business, labels and management set aside, man, we pushed everybody off and just did whatever the hell we wanted to do, and I think when you make music like that or an honest record like that, I think it comes through the music and I think the fans pick up on that. I'm hoping that's what it is, because that's exactly what we did. I can't really figure it out!

The Rockpit: From a live perspective, do you envision how these songs will play out live?

C.J.: We've already played a couple of shows. One thing that we did this time around recording the "Hellelujah" record that was different than every other record… Most bands lock themselves in the studio for, like, three months then record, so it just happened to fall out this way, but we played shows every single weekend. We recorded Monday to Thursday and played shows every Friday and Saturday, so during the writing and recording process of the "Hellelujah" record, we would go out and play songs live. We had a show in El Paso with SLAYER and played a bunch of new songs. SLAYER fans started slamming around, so we knew we were on the right path. We got the SLAYER fans on fire about our new songs, so they've been field tested before we recorded it, and we never had the opportunity to do that. I think most bands don't get the chance to play the songs live while they're working on them and recording them to see how the fans react to them. I think that definitely helped out a lot during the process, just to see what they react to.

Read the entire interview at The Rockpit.