Hinder's forgettable rock a hit with the ladies

10/24/2006 5:30 PM, Reuters


Austin Winkler stood atop the monitors like Creed's Scott Stapp. He sang in a forced gravel voice like Nickelback's Chad Kroeger. He looked like a less-tattooed-and-worn Josh Todd of Buckcherry. He spewed gratuitous F-bombs like, well, anybody.

He misses his girl. He hates her. He wants to party hearty with his boys. He wants to be loved, used, pitied.

Oh, please.

Winkler and his band Hinder played its unoriginal and painstakingly generic rock to a sold-out crowd of whooping females and their embarrassed-looking boyfriends Monday at the Anaheim House of Blues. The Oklahoma City quintet is the latest winner of the MySpace lotto and boasts the No. 1 digital track in the U.S. And a platinum album lodged in the national top 10. And a knack for recycling elements of the most familiar rock, both classic and current.

Playing songs from its 38-minute debut, "Extreme Behavior" (Universal Republic), Hinder wanted to be seen as bad-boy rockers with a lurking danger; hence the repeatedly flashed devil horns and Winkler's precisely unkempt hair and sleeveless look. But its midtempo retro-grunge sound and structured, colorless songs belie those aspirations.

The first-person characters on display in the band's hourlong set were alternately pitiable and pathetic, and the lyrics suggest that they hate women as much as they want them. "I walked in and saw her on the bed/There was nothing to be said," Winkled sneered in "Room 21." "The sex is so much better when you're mad at me," he sniped during the show-ending "Get Stoned." During "By the Way," a Nickelback-like powerless ballad with a typically giant chorus, he sang of "watching you scream in the middle of a breakdown."

Then there was the left-field cover of Eddie Money's 20-year-old hit "Take Me Home Tonight." Winkler teased the crowd that a cover was coming, and he urged them to yell out as soon as they recognized it. Many never did.

Hinder is -- and likely always will be -- best known for its pity-the-cheater anthem "Lips of an Angel." The smash single recounts a late-night phone call from a would-be squeeze, but there's a catch: The dude's current chick is there when the call comes in. Ultimately, Hinder's sincerity can be tied to the chorus of the most popular rock track in the country today: "My girl's in the next room/Sometimes I wish she was you." Just sometimes, mind you.

As female voices drowned out the formulaic ballad, one guy in the crowd leaned over to another and lamented, "I shoulda been in a rock 'n' roll band."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter