GODSMACK have revealed the details on their new album "Lighting Up the Sky". It's their eighth and reportedly final studio album from GODSMACK. It's scheduled to be released February 24, 2023. I traveled to Las Vegas at the end of September for a GODSMACK listening party with the band. I'm here to tell you...This Album MOVED ME!
Sully Erna says of this album - "'Lighting Up The Sky' Is the most important record, I think, we've ever written and recorded. I've never been that artist who says, 'Oh, this record is our newest record. It's our best work ever.' And I'm telling you right now this is our best fucking work ever. And it's because it's emotional, man. This is the last record we're ever gonna do. This is the last run around the mill for us. We put every single ounce of energy and emotion into this album. Especially for me, when I wrote a lot of these songs, it was about my life journey. That's really what the sequence of this album becomes about. Not that it was planned that way, but this really kind of mystical thing happened where I felt like the universe wrote this record."
Sully wants to clarify that GODSMACK does not intend to stop playing live shows anytime soon. "I wanna make sure people are clear about what we're saying here. I'm not saying that the band may be breaking up. What I'm saying is I think this may be the last body of work you get musically from the band. We'd like to be able to enjoy our lives, our family, our houses, the things that we've earned over the years that we've sacrificed. So I think the balance for that, the happy medium, is to be able to just go out there now and continue to do live shows and put the greatest-hits show together. I don't know what we're gonna do after this record. And it doesn't make sense to continue to do music. It really feels complete in a good way, in a positive way. We feel like we've honored our career, our relationships with our fans, and we're always gonna be there for them; we're gonna do shows. But as far as to continue this, after this [album], unless we just decide one day, 'Yeah, one more for the road,' I think this could be it for us with new music."
"Lighting Up the Sky" is GODSMACK's first studio album in nearly five years, since the release of "When Legends Rise" in 2018 making this the longest gap between two studio albums by GODSMACK. The opening track, "You And I" (watch the official visualizer video below), is available to stream now and is the second single from it. Sully Erna co-produced their new album Andrew "Mudrock" Murdock (Avenged Sevenfold, Alice Cooper). "Lighting Up the Sky" tells a story through each song....
"I like when a record takes you on a journey from front to back. I realized there's a whole story here about one man's journey, the ups, and downs. I believe it's a story everyone will connect to, on a human level, because we've all gone through things in life." - frontman/guitarist Sully Erna
"Lighting Up The Sky" track listing:
01 – "You And I"
02 – "Red White & Blue"
03 – "Surrender"
04 – "What About Me"
05 – "Truth"
06 – "Hell's Not Dead"
07 – "Soul On Fire"
08 – "Let's Go"
09 – "Best Of Times"
10 – "Growing Old"
11 – "Lighting Up The Sky"