![]() "Lyrically, these songs are the most blunt that I've ever written," says Smith, who formed Shinedown with drummer Barry Kerch in 2001 in Jacksonville, Fla. Where THE SOUND OF MADNESS differs most is in its growth it’s the product of a group that has developed an even clearer vision for how it wanted to impact an audience. However, after one listen, it’s clear that the band didn't shrink from the task. Smith and company began the recording process for THE SOUND OF MADNESS with the formidable task of following up two massively successful albums that yielded a staggering seven consecutive Top five rock and alternative radio hits that included "Fly From the Inside," "45," the chart topping "Save Me," and a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man," along with a reputation as a hot live band with an insatiable appetite for the road. Like its two predecessors, 2003's Platinum LEAVE A WHISPER and 2005's Gold US AND THEM, THE SOUND OF MADNESS offers a brave and unsparing look into the soul and psyche amidst a fierce musical attack that, even in its quieter moments, vibrate with the passion, energy and focus of a band with high-minded ideals and limitless ambitions. Welcome then to THE SOUND OF MADNESS, Shinedown's third album - and the Florida rockers' boldest effort to date. "And part of the reason it took so long to make!" "That was the motivation behind this album.” "I said, 'You know what - when I'm dead and gone, when everybody in this band has passed or what have you, I want the world to remember this as a record that needed to be made, and that there was a reason for it,' " Smith says. Some of those fans - the ones who like to see them on the WWE, where "Devour," the first song on The Sound of Madness and its first single, is 2008's Night of Champions theme song - may carp slightly about that slight increase in gloss and almost imperceptible uptick in power ballads, but most won't notice these subtle shifts as Shinedown serve up what they always have: active modern rock embodying the sound of post-grunge in the new millennium without offering much that is memorable, either for better or for worse.Early in 2007, producer Rob Cavallo asked Shinedown frontman Brent Smith about his goals for the band's new album. Nothing is left to chance so nothing surprises, which is not only the way Shinedown like to play it, but that's the way their fans like it. They doggedly hit every mark - winding up their guitar riffs with thin, flattened distortion, pumping up rhythms with steroids, punctuating melodies with familiar fills, writing vaguely inspirational lyrics that come close to confirming the group's rumored Christian rock origins - and their precision is accentuated by producer Rob Cavallo's pristine production, digitally designed to push Shinedown over into the big leagues where they can have the occasional adult rock power ballad hit without losing their testosterone-fueled audience. Few bands have embraced convention quite as enthusiastically as Shinedown, who play every post-grunge cliché as if it were dogma, something never to be questioned or debated, something that is incontrovertible fact set in stone. Those expecting a dash of insanity from Shinedown's third album, The Sound of Madness, will have their hopes crushed, but chances are that fans of the Jacksonville-based active rock band not only don't expect madness, they'd recoil if that's what the quartet offered.
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