Album Review: Godsmack - Lighting Up the Sky

By BRIAN GIFFIN

AFTER almost 30 years and seven previous albums, Godsmack have announced that they will no longer be making new records and have essentially decided to live out the rest of their existence as a heritage act. It’s rare for any band to be so honest with such intentions, but when you’ve been one of America’s biggest rock acts for two decades, I guess there comes a time when you can basically do whatever you wish.

The band’s eighth album will no doubt keep them on the road for another couple of years before they become a stadium-filling greatest hits act and will no doubt add to Godsmack’s embarrassment of hit singles. Lighting Up the Sky doesn’t really contain any surprises or push Godsmack’s creative boundaries too far, but it does feature plenty of meaty arena rock and nothing as intrinsically annoying as Unforgettable from the last album, and that’s a good thing.

For an album that the band has declared is possibly the last, Lighting Up the Sky doesn’t wallow in maudlin power ballads or mawkish emotion. Instead, the mood is almost celebratory, Sully Erna’s earnest, yearning croon always in full cry through one upbeat rocker after the next, each full of soaring choruses and shiny production. The songs are built on a steady foundation of solid, catchy rock riffing that occasionally strays into metal territory on tracks like “Red White & Blue” and “Hell’s Not Dead”, and Tony Rombola steps up his game with some searing lead guitar across the album. Indeed, this is one of Godsmack’s most consistently hard and heavy releases, with a couple of expansive tracks like “You and I” that allows their music some breathing room, and is overall much more of a belter than the obvious hit-pandering effort “When Legends Rise”.

There will no doubt be hits from this one – it’s a Godsmack record, after all – but even without them the band has made quite a strong effort with which to sign off this part of their career.

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