While you're counting the days until Shinedown's new Planet Zero arrives, you can count down with the band live.
If you've heard the Planet Zero title track, which also serves as the record's lead single, you know the song features frontman Brent Smith leading a countdown from 10 to one that leads into a heavy guitar riff. While that moment in "Planet Zero" ties conceptually into the album's storyline, Smith tells ABC Audio it was written mostly for the live show.
"We wanted a countdown...live so that the audience, too, knows when the drop is in the song, when the breakdown is in the song," Smith shares.
The countdown, Smith says, is one of several significant "crowd moments" in "Planet Zero."
"There is a lot of crowd response in 'Planet Zero,'" Smith explains. "Live, we're gonna be utilizing that as the audience starts to learn the song more."
Smith adds that the countdown reflects how Shinedown approached putting together the tour in support of the Planet Zero album.
"It was important to have that countdown because of the way that we were designing the production live, how we were presenting everything, how much of the interactiveness live with the audience we wanted to be with on this record, too," he says. "So we thought about that as we wrote the song."
Shinedown's current tour, featuring support from The Pretty Reckless and Diamante, continues Friday in Charleston, West Virginia. "Planet Zero," meanwhile, just spent its eighth week at number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart.
The album Planet Zero is due out July 1. It was originally supposed to drop today, April 22, before being pushed back due to delays in vinyl production.