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Who knew that the members of Godsmack were snowbirds?
So they're not old fogies traveling to Florida to escape a Northeastern winter. They still relocated to Miami for several months - not to escape, but to refocus.
A move to North Miami Beach, Fla., in August allowed the band to devote all its time to "Faceless," its third album and, so far, its biggest success.
"We wanted to get away from home, from our family and friends, so that we were focused. We were thinking of going to either L.A. or Vancouver, but Miami's only a three-hour plane ride" from the band's Boston home, Merrill said.
"We all lived together, so we were all focused. It was like a 9-to-5 job. We played, played, played for six days a week," he said. "It was a time to bond again, like in the old days. We rehearsed every night - and had time to do it. We weren't rushed. That helped, too."
Looks like it worked. "Faceless" debuted at the top of Billboard's album charts in April and got, at the least, decent reviews.
Fans of the brash heavy metal band might have pushed it to the top because of more than a two-year wait between albums.
The band's last album, "Awake," was released in October 2000. Tracks from it stayed on radio for months, and the band also maintained a presence because of "I Stand Alone" on last year's "The Scorpion King" soundtrack.
"That helped us take some time so that we weren't pressured to do a third CD too soon," Merrill said. "É It seems like a long time, but it's really not."
"Faceless" is "sonically bigger and badder," Merrill said.
"I look at our type of music as 'groove rock.' Most of our songs are written by our drummer (Shannon Larkin), so all the riffs are very groove-orientated. It's groove rock with an attitude," he said.
The band's show - which comes to the Amarillo Civic Center Cal Farley Coliseum on Tuesday - is also full of attitude, he said.
"We have a lot of gadgets on stage, a lot of little things to make the crowd open their eyes up - pyro, flames, video," he said. "We're doing this percussion thing that I don't think anybody has ever done indoors before. I can't really tell you the whole thing.
"... We're going to knock the living crap out of Amarillo, let's put it that way."