Get ready for an "evolution of sound" from Shinedown.
That's how frontman Brent Smith describes the band's upcoming seventh studio, the follow-up to 2018's ATTENTION ATTENTION.
"It's not like any of the other six," Smith tells ABC Audio. "This is a new thing."
Smith adds that the record is "super dense, but everything is upfront."
"There's not tons of layers of soundscapes," he explains. "Not a lot of orchestration, not a ton of synthesizers, not a ton of layers and layers and layers of guitars and these operatic vocals and putting all these vocal parts together."
Should you fear that Shinedown is straying too far from the path, Smith assures that the record is "still us, one thousand percent," while adding that it features "a lot drier of a mix overall."
"It's got a lot of force upfront," Smith says. "So vocals are super in-your-face, guitars are super in-your-face, bass textures are super in-your-face, drums...everything's really upfront."
He adds, "It's definitely not a sound that we've done that I can think of that's necessarily close to any of the other records. The song structures are still there with us, like, how we do things, but it's a lot more punk rock."
The new album is due out in 2022. In the meantime, you can watch the newly released ATTENTION ATTENTION film, which strings together videos for each of that record's song into a narrative movie.