Live at The Rex: 2001 Called, Drowning Pool and Saliva Answered
Sunday night, Drowning Pool and Saliva’s 25th anniversary tour of Sinner and Every Six Seconds shredded through The Rex Theatre in Southern Maryland, alongside local band Shallowdeep.
If it weren’t for the smartphones occasionally dotting the crowd, you’d never know that it wasn’t the early 2000s. The night was hot, heavy, and as authentically rock as they come.
Anniversary tours can sometimes feel like museum exhibits, merely celebrating what the band once was and the songs that defined that particular moment in time, but Sunday night was different. While Saliva and Drowning Pool both drew heavily from the records that established them, neither treated the evening as simply recreating the past.
SHALLOWDEEP
Shallowdeep, a local, Southern Maryland hard rock band, set the tone for the night. Although I missed a majority of their set while conducting an interview, the portion that I caught made it clear that the band has a distinctive sound that carries the weight you’d expect from this type of show while keeping the rawness, authenticity, and personability that makes a local act feel exciting in the first place.
By the time I joined the room, with their set already underway, the band had established a connection with the crowd, giving everyone a reason to get loud for these musicians fighting to keep guitar-driven rock alive in the Southern Maryland music scene.
SALIVA
I’ve seen Saliva live three times now and the band never fails to disappoint. They always deliver a unique, explosive energy and throw their all into the performance. The crowd naturally picks up on this and immediately mirrors it. Hands (and bottles of liquor) were in the air nearly as soon as Saliva’s set started.
Frontman Bobby Amaru has no shortage of commanding presence, but he stands out truly through how naturally he interacts with the people in front of him, repeatedly making the performance feel personal. This almost familial feeling compounded when he invited his daughter, Veda Amaru, onstage with him to sing a song. She is incredibly talented for someone her age and has been making her own music and recording covers with Bobby for years, immediately winning over the hearts of TikTok viewers and live audiences alike.
In the middle of an evening celebrating rock legacy, he offered a flourishing example of how music is passed on to subsequent generations. Amaru later put this idea into words, telling the audience: “Music means the world to us and it is the one thing in the universe that can connect and unite people. But it’s because of the fans that music carries on. You all are the reason we’re here tonight.”
And to me, this was perhaps the most important sentiment of the night, because looking around The Rex, it was obvious that these songs, namely “Click Click Boom,” had traveled so far beyond the time that they were released and had become something bigger to both the people who grew up with them and newer generations who were hearing them live for the first time.
DROWNING POOL
Then came Drowning Pool, whose legacy is impossible to separate from their defining rock hit “Bodies.” But to reduce Drowning Pool to just that song would do a disservice to what the band brought to fans over the past 25 years and on Sunday night. Even with the tour specifically celebrating Sinner, the set never felt like just a nostalgia act.
Drowning Pool’s performance hit with the aggression fans hoped for but there was a looseness to it. You could tell that the band was having fun and truly enjoying playing music. Between the band’s attitude and the size of the sold-out show, it felt more like a house party than a big rock show.
Frontman Ryan McCombs embodied the infectious energy of the songs, twirling a mic stand that did anything but stand. In fact, it almost took me out a couple times in the pit. McCombs brings a fresh reinvention in his performance of songs from Sinner.
Despite the metal barricade standing between the crowd and the stage, the line of distinction felt blurred. Guitarist CJ Pierce embodied that attitude offstage as well. Rather than disappearing into the green room immediately after the performance, Pierce hung around, chatting with bartenders, taking photos with fans, and signing merchandise — he even enjoyed a couple drinks in the middle of the crowd.
The easiest way to describe the show would be to call it nostalgic, but that doesn’t fully capture the essence of the evening. The early 2000s may be gone, but the desire for loud guitars, sweaty rooms, and music that begs to be experienced rather than streamed hasn’t changed and that’s what made the night special. It was the people. The collective of fans gathered to have a good time under a Shared love for these bands.
As Saliva’s Bobby Amaru said, the music isn’t still alive 25 years later just because people remember it, but its alive because they keep showing up for it.