This album is not a bad listen. 'Life On Display' reminds me of Staind's album '14 Shades Of Gray'. But then where Fred Durst is concerned, what would one expect? This album is great for it opens its 13 track listing with a gem of a song called 'Away From Me', that easily became a hit. Three other songs for me set this album apart from the nu-rock scene and the offering of albums daily and they were 'Change My Mind', 'Spin You Around' and 'Freak Of The World'.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this particular album recieved so many bad reviews. Puddle Of Mudd is a highly inventive band that does not sound the same or mundane. And each song has its own particular sound and theme. The lyrics to 12 of the 13 songs, anyone listening can at least find some common ground with the lead singer.

Give Puddle Of Mudd a try....you won't be disappointed.

After I saw Puddle of Mudd in concert, I picked up their first (and then only C.D. "Come Clean") and gave it a listen. I didn't like it very much, I thought every song sounded the same and was overall nothing special. Then, it got great reviews (Hit Parader magazine even listed POM in the best 100 bands of all time). This drove me batty. I had no idea why they were so popular (selling more than 4 million albums and even releasing a rediculous "Tribute" album). I tried to express my opinion with everyone who'd listen, but everyone still seemed to like them.
Now, two years later, they release their second C.D. It should be a hit, right? Wrong. A band's second album is a significant time in a band's career and "Life on Display" is a flop. Rolling Stone, Spin, Blender and Hit Parader all pan it. And why are they not popular this time around? Aside from a few "wah wah" and acoustic guitar moments, it's the exact same as their debut! The lyrics consist of "drowning in a sea of misery" (which is whailed only seconds into the first song), girls who won't understand them, and other "heart wrenching" pain. Only there's no tear in my eye; Puddle are millionaires, they can't be complaining about the same stuff. The music and songs always follow the same structure (soft verses, hard choruses--which get old quickly), and the vocal range in the singer is exactly the same as it was during "Come Clean" (singing and then yelling over the hard choruses.)
The world is finally coming to its senses and are also realizing the strong resemblance of Puddle of Mudd compared to Alice in Chains and Nirvana. The same "garage grunge" sound, song structure and depressing lyrics. PoM fans defend them as "a modern-day Nirvana" (a continuation of that legacy), but in more likeliness, they are simply copycats. Either the case, they have very little originality, innovation, imagination, creativity, and (I think) very little talent.

I'm going to get straight to the point. Puddle of Mudd sucks. They suck very badly. And ironically, their band name describes them perfectly: a Puddle of f*cking MUDD! Although SH*T would probably be a better word.

Do I have to review this cd? Do I really have to? Okay I will: it sucks ***, this band sucks ***, and they should be shot for sucking so much ***, especially the singer who's trying to be Kurt Cobain. Puddle of Mudd can lick my a**-crack. How did these jokes make it to television anyway? They are the epitomy of crap; make that bull-crap. Thumbs way f*cking down.

In this day and age, we don't expect rock and roll bands to reinvent the wheel. As long as they're competent musicians and songwriters and have maybe a trace of originality, I'm content with that. Which brings me to Puddle Of Mudd.

You want to talk about getting a lucky break? Frontman Wes Scantlin approached music industry impresario / reviled Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst with his demo tape, and evidently Durst liked what he heard enough to sign Puddle Of Mudd to his Flawless label. Come Clean came out in 2001, and let's put it this way - if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then these guys are clearly enamored with Nirvana and Alice In Chains. Musically they pretty much paid homage to these bands throughout the whole album, and went multi-platinum with their derivative sound.

Now comes their follow-up effort, Life On Display. Sophomore jinx? If you liked Come Clean, absolutely not - this much is true: They aren't fixing what isn't broken, hoping that they'll hit paydirt once again. I suppose you could call them consistent, and that's true to a degree.

But in all of their mimicry of the Seattle-area rockers, they forgot one important element that was great about those bands - the conviction and depth of the songs themselves. Say what you will about those bands, but they addressed song topics that were seldom covered before - they were a breath of fresh air when radio stations were mostly playing hair-metal bands and their songs boasting about partying and their prowess with the ladies.

Puddle Of Mudd's biggest flaw comes to light when you listen to the lyrics - with only a few exceptions ("Spin You Around", "Sydney"), they're all one-dimensional rants about ex-girlfriends that did them wrong., and they're all written in the banal prose of a high school dropout. The best lyrics can be a window to the writer's soul, and to that end we are to believe that Scantlin is "drowning in a pool of misery", that he is "the freak of the world", and that he's "gonna sink in the ocean". Sure Wes, but obviously that's nothing that wads of cash and an actress girlfriend can't fix, right? And we haven't even covered vacuous songs like "Think", "Spin You Around" (with the irritating chorus "If I saw you dancing / I would spin you around" repeated incessantly), or "Cloud 9" ("Trash, bash, kill myself, eat a bunch of trash / Trash, bash, get some cash and spend it on some drugs" - yeah, Wes, we can really feel your pain now). Scantlin tries to convince us that he's a tormented individual, but the lyrics are more likely to induce laughter than sympathy.

In summary: An unoriginal band that compounds it with ridiculous lyrics, Puddle Of Mudd are a band that borders on self-parody. They would be tolerable if they spent more time on their songs, but they sold so many albums before using the same lazy approach to songwriting, so why change now? You can do worse than this album, but you can also do far better.

Ok I know they had strong links to Fred Durst and the fast dying genre that is nu-metal but I never expected this. Whilst some of the material on Come Clean was poor, there were obvious standout tracks such as Blurry and P*** it All Away plus more that were very listenable to.

There is not a single track on this album that I enjoy listening to. It's all the same, the same whiny 'I hate my girlfriend' theme all the way. It's absolutely abysmal unlistenable to bilge.

What were they thinking when they recorded it who on earth could enjoy this. Listening to it makes me feel ill and confirms my suspicions that Puddle of Mudd could well be one of the worst bands on the entire earth. The only reason I haven't given it no stars is because I can't.

Avoid this like the plague.