Genre: Post Grunge
Label Number: 511244-2
© 2008 Atlantic Records
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
© 2008 Atlantic Records
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
tags: shinedown, shine down, 2008, the sound of madness, flac,
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