DAMAGEPLAN - New Found Power
February 19, 2004, 20 years ago
(Elektra)
Well, this can be summed up pretty simply (and I'm about the 120th guy to say it): Pantera meets nu-metal. By far the best thing on this album is that vicious modulated riff that breaks out on track one 'Wake Up'. From thereon in, what you get is a wetter, sludgier, bassier, lower version of Pantera, basically hard doomy nu-metal, oddly, with evocations of Superjoint and Down included (and if not Down, how about Crowbar,or the drinking buds in BLS?). Let's not forget, there's a lot of Pantera in nu-metal, as there is in a lot of thriving yet underground metal styles. That damn band is incredibly influential; an infection, really. So it's not surprising. And then Pat Lachman reinforces Dime's new murk and Vinnie's phat grooves with a full deck of vocal styles and sonic treatments which have all become clichÈs of nu for the past five years. Still, with 14 songs on the thing, gems emerge, such as the aforementioned and Sep-styled 'Wake Up', 'Crawl', 'Blunt Force Trauma', 'Moment Of Truth' and AiC-ish ballad 'Soul Bleed'. I dunno, a lot more people are digging this than I would have thought (and some dismiss it, with justification, as a third-rate Pantera), and truth be known, it gets better toward the back half. Still, I'm sorta on the fence, not ready to gleefully headbang, all caught up in the idea of old guys (or at guys from a weird metallic 'tween generation) trying to play angry young music or sumthin'.
