Godsmack - When Legends Rise

On one hand, I’m glad it’s so ineffectually boring and recycled that I don’t have to write very much about this album. But on the other hand, it’s really ineffectually boring and recycled and it sucks.

The single released earlier this year, “Bulletproof”, was an omen for Godsmack turning their hungry mouths toward the supposedly fresh, bubbling brook of the mainstream rock appeal, and it proved to be true, the omen that is. Mainstream rock right now isn’t quite as easy to make a quick killing with as it used to be. But for a band steadily falling off the way Godsmack has been steadily falling off, it’s not really any surprise that this would be the route they’d take musically this year.

I was immediately reminded of the disingenuous, lazy Black Veil Brides album earlier this year and Asking Alexandria’s disastrous mess of an album from last year because of this album’s formulaic and cliché approach to composition and performance. They’re not as desperately trendy as Asking Alexandria and they’re not as cheesily overblown as Black Vein Brides, but Godsmack on this album sound much less excited to be making music in this narrow, radio-friendly mold than they have on earlier albums.

Of the shitty albums I’ve made myself sit through lately, this one was at least the quickest and most painless. At least, unlike those other bands’ aforementioned albums, Godsmack’s new album is over soon after it starts and is easily ignorable and (ironic considering the title of the third track) forgettable. Speaking of that third track though, “Unforgettable”, its committing of the modern anthemic “woah woah” chorus sin is as blatant of an indicator as any of Godsmack’s worried resorting to pop trends to draw attention in leu of their gradual demise. It is a particularly obnoxious moment on the album and it seems to drag on even at only three and a half minutes of lazy focus-grouped pandering.

And on the subject of laziness, Godsmack even recycle down to the level of their own musical motifs on the song “Say My Name”, which reuses the vocal melody found in their 2006 song “The Enemy”. Please don’t judge me for being able to recognize that.

The album of course had to come with a corny piano ballad, “Under Your Scars”, which features a particularly baffling sentimental lyric that inadvertently comes with a confusing message about debate (maybe): “it’s not about who’s wrong / as long as it feels right”.

The rest of the album is just really plain and unremarkable. Sully sounds fine, I suppose, but his vocal stylings tire easily over this album’s format, and it’s clear at a few points along the way that he’s trying to emulate certain other mainstream rock singers. As is the norm for this style, the rest of the band blend in as a mere background of typical rock instrumentation rightfully hidden away, not worth paying much attention to. So, I won’t. I’ll leave it there. Good luck on the charts, I suppose. And while I’m at it I may as well wish them good luck on their “return to form” album that they’ll probably come out with after this one doesn’t give them the results they were hoping for.