In a new interview with Thomas S. Orwat, Jr. of Rock Interview Series, DROWNING POOL guitarist C.J. Pierce spoke about the band’s recently released two singles, “Madness”, which came out earlier this month, and “Revolution (The Final Amen)”, which arrived in September 2024. “Revolution (The Final Amen)” was the first piece of music Pierce, DROWNING POOL drummer Mike Luce and bassist Stevie Benton completed with singer Ryan McCombs in 13 years.
“It’s been great to write with Ryan McCombs again,” Pierce told Rock Interview Series (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). “It’s been two years now. I can’t believe it’s been two years since we’ve been rocking out [with Ryan back in the band]. It was gonna be a couple of reunion shows. We had a big show with PANTERA May 5th two years ago. And that was like the thing that was, like, ‘Yeah, let’s bring Ryan back in.’ And next thing you know, man, everyone’s calling. They want us to play shows and do tours.”
Regarding DROWNING POOL‘s plans to release a new full-length album, C.J. said: “We’ve been writing a lot of new songs together. It’s just the fact that we’ve been touring so much, we haven’t had that much time to get it together. So, we did put out ‘Revolution’ first, and then we didn’t wanna make people wait too much longer, so we put out ‘Madness’ now. But what I’m doing now, I’m home from tour and these next couple of weeks I’m gonna finish putting together all the songs that we have and try to get everything else done so we can get a record out there before the end of the summer. It’s kind of the goal right now — loosely based goal because life is life and things happen, but I actually have a block of time for the first time in two years to put together all the awesome ideas we’ve been all working on together as a band.”
Asked what record label DROWNING POOL is on at the moment, Pierce said: “It’s SBG Records, [founded by] Shan Horan. It’s an independent label. We’ve been slowly working towards being independent. We are self-managed. Each one of us in the band take on a different role. And you’ve gotta take a hold of your career, man. A lot of stuff happened before COVID. I know COVID messed up a lot of stuff for a lot of bands and people, and us coming out of it, we just had to clean house and take control of our career, man. So it’s been great, dude. It’s been so awesome working with Shan, SBG, just everybody that’s in our corner. We have a great team of people that we put together ourselves versus doing the label route. Again, SBG [is an] independent label, but we outsource all the pieces [and] parts to make it happen.”
He continued: “There’s different facets, major labels, independent labels and what they all entail in house and stuff like that. We’ve just been on major labels. The last one was Universal. And all the stuff, all the pieces and parts you need are in-house, but you never know how much love you’re gonna get or not get within it.
“I hate talking business, man, because it’s all about the rock and roll and music, but since we are independently managed, business is on our brain,” C.J. explained. “You have to keep an eye on it as well, if you wanna get your music out there and your art out there. And that’s all we wanna do, man — we wanna get our new music out there, we wanna put on shows and hang out with the fans and have a great time. That’s exactly what we’ve been doing, and more of it so much so, because we’re running the show now. So it’s been great, dude, in partnership with Shan with SBG. They’ve been awesome. So, we finally have the right mix of people working with us.”
Pierce went on to confirm that DROWNING POOL is planning to tour in 2026 in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the band’s debut album, “Sinner”, which was certified platinum within six weeks of its release in 2001, while the CD’s first single, “Bodies”, was one of the most frequently aired videos on MTV by a new band.
“We definitely wanna start [touring] here in the States and do all next year, promoting a lot of that,” the guitarist said. “And hats off to [late DROWNING POOL singer] Dave Williams and do him right and do a lot of things that we haven’t done that fans haven’t heard. We have a lot of stuff we’re putting together for the package and a lot of material that we still have with Dave Williams — and, again, respect to him — to get to the hardcore fans that like to hear it, just all that stuff out. So we’re putting that together now. The solid plans haven’t been laid out yet, but we will be doing the anniversary tour next year in the States, and then probably the following year go back to Europe and do it there as well.”
Asked if DROWNING POOL would consider playing the entire “Sinner” album for the 25th-anniversary tour, C.J. said: “We’re definitely gonna be doing that, and then more songs on top of that. The last song that we wrote with Dave was a song called ‘Heroes Sleeping’. We’ve been talking about playing that live. We have a song called ‘Break You’, that song on ‘The Scorpion King’ soundtrack and stuff. So there’s different things. We did [a cover of] ‘The Game’ for Triple H, MOTÖRHEAD‘s ‘The Game’, and it’s something else we hadn’t played live. So things like that that we haven’t been able to do, all Dave Williams-oriented.
“I’ve been going through storage lately and there’s a bunch of songs that we have that were finished demo-wise, but we never like got to like record ’em for real,” Pierce revealed. “So I have a lot more material than I thought I had. So it’s also gonna be fun to get out… We’re gonna go through — Mike, Steve and myself — and pick out some choice songs that we think would be worthy to get out to the hardcore fans and maybe even possibly play those live. So, again, this is my dream list of what I’d like to do. We’re gonna get together as a band, and we’ll see all what works best for us for the tour.”
The release of “Madness” came on the heels of DROWNING POOL‘s European tour with GODSMACK. The trek included stops in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Germany, the U.K. and more.
DROWNING POOL will play Inkcarceration festival 2025 on Friday, July 18 and Alcatraz festival in Kortrijk, Belgium in August. In addition, DROWNING POOL has announced a U.K. and Ireland tour with SPINESHANK and special guests (HED) P.E. in November.
McCombs played his first shows back with DROWNING POOL in March 2023 at Club L.A. in Destin, Florida and at the inaugural Throwdown At The Campground festival in Fruitland Park, Florida.
The longtime SOIL frontman, who has lived in Swindon, England since 2018, originally joined DROWNING POOL in 2005 and appeared on two of the band’s studio albums, “Full Circle” (2007) and “Drowning Pool” (2010),as well as a live album, 2009’s “Loudest Common Denominator”. He rejoined SOIL after exiting DROWNING POOL in 2011.
McCombs is continuing to front SOIL and will carry on recording and performing with both bands.
After the release of “Sinner”, DROWNING POOL reached out to an ever-greater audience with dynamic performances at Wrestlemania XVIII and Ozzfest during the summers of 2001 and 2002. Unfortunately, their streak of success was not to last. Shortly after rousing the crowd at Ozzfest in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 3, 2002, vocalist Dave “Stage” Williams was found dead of natural causes on the tour bus.
Photo courtesy of O’Donnell Media Group
Source: blabbermouth.net
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