** Sugar Ray, “Floored,” Lava/Atlantic.
This metal-pop-hip-hop outfit from Orange County had nowhere to go but up after its imbecilic 1995 debut album, “Lemonade and Brownies.” With “Floored,” the band graduates from idiocy to banality.
Sugar Ray has a knack for catchy borrowing and for hard-rock crunch colored by pop hooks and a deejay’s deft scratch effects. The single “Fly” is a perfect summer confection that’s as irresistible as it is lightweight. That “Floored” offers two versions of the song suggests how heavily Sugar Ray is betting on it, and indicates that the band isn’t exactly brimming with inspiration when it comes to writing beyond a metal milieu.
Mainly, this is a derivative zoom-vroom band that veers from Korn’s growling to Rage Against the Machine’s yowling to AC/DC’s riffing and Vandals-style metalized punk jesting.
Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).
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