Godsmack – Faceless Aggression!

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Boston based Godsmack are some seriously angst ridden mother f*ckers and may quite possibly be my favorite band on the existing plain of the new metal genre. There is just no getting around their drive for anger invoked rage and in your face Heavy Metal superiority. Having established themselves as major contenders in today’s blistering rock medium, they have no shame when it comes to delivering the goods to an aggression starved generation. Their latest release titled Faceless is one of those statically charged works of brilliance that is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and your fist in the air. Hoping to score some quality time with the band I was lucky enough to pin down a rather unambiguous session with new drummer (& longtime friend of Sully), Shannon Larkin. Like most metal acts these guys are not without controversy and face the never-ending challenge of tapping that ultimate source of staying power, but as anyone who is familiar with the music of Godsmack can attest to: they are at the top of their game. By virtue of their unaltered pattern of intensity they remain a key voice against the pretense of modern music. In this one on one segment you’ll have the opportunity to discover some of the founding principals that the band live by and take a trip through the personal and more charismatic aspects of the band’s inner workings.

OT: So I take it they got ya doin’ quite a bit of press today?

Shannon: Yeah, they got us workin’.

OT: I expect most days you have only to kick back and wait for show time?

Shannon: Yeah we basically play five shows a week and we get up around noon and do phone interviews, then do an in-store or something and then there’s meet and greets… it’s pretty much the whole day until the show. But like two hours before the show, then we can eat and be together as a band and just lock ourselves in the dressing room, stretch out, dress up get ready for the big show, y’know?

OT: I recently read an interview with Sully and he made some comments about the latest Godsmack CD saying it was unlike anything that the current market had heard before and that not even the new Metallica album would compare to it. Now, I’ve heard the new Metallica album, and even though I’m not necessarily a fan of it I appreciate it for what it is, but when I heard the new Godsmack album it was my honest opinion that it really wasn’t anything much different than the previous albums. It sounded like Godsmack to me and I love that, I love the Godsmack sound. It may not be quite as heavy as the last album, but it was very much a hundred percent straight forward Godsmack. So the first question I have for you is, from your perspective, what are the different steps you took in the recording process on this CD versus previous CD’s? And what particular sounds do you find different on this album versus past recordings?

Shannon: Well firstly, I’d like to say on Sully’s behalf, the difference between one album and the next, in the guys’ eyes and hearts that wrote the stuff, will probably be a lot vaster than the difference from the perception of the listener. I’ve heard that before, we’re comin’ out with a new record, everybody’s like, ‘Is it gonna be much different than the last one and we all felt, ‘Well yeah, it’s gonna be a world different. But then when it actually came out people were like, ‘Well, still sounds like Godsmack to us.’, which is a good thing. But to us the main difference was firstly, it wasn’t produced by Sully and Mudrock. We brought an outside producer in, David Bottrill, who worked with like Peter Gabriel, Tool, Mudvayne, and what he basically did, and what we feel sounds totally different from the first two, is he opened up Sully’s ears and eyes to melody and not being afraid to try singing different things and trying different melodies and harmonies in the choruses to make ‘em bigger and more rock sounding. I think that would be the main difference between the records. The second difference would be that I came in as a new drummer to this band so it’s the first Godsmack record that Sully didn’t play drums on. I’d like to think that that made a little bit of difference in the vibe of the band; it’s a lot more family oriented now than just Sully Erna, y’know what I mean? For instance we moved to Miami to write this record where we knew no one, so we isolated ourselves in this house, just the four of us and one assistant. We turned off radio, we turned off MTV and we tried to write this record in the frame of mind of, ‘Look, let’s go back to our roots on this.’ All we hear on the radio are squashed songs that are in the three and a half minute format with basically no lead sections, not much melody on the choruses and usually a rapper, or a scratcher, or a DJ or a programmer and it kind of lost the whole thing that we grew up listening to like Aerosmith, KISS, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin. So we really wanted to try to step up to our roots and go back to being a hard rock band and add melody to the choruses, add f*ckin' lead guitar sections, big drum fills, y’know?

OT: Now that you mention it I actually did notice the harmonies, which I’m a huge fan of, and the guitar solos, which is something that’s not really been a part of the Godsmack sound before.

Shannon: Yeah, that’s the funny thing about it, dude, it’s like, Sully’ll be the first to say, we’re not treadin’ any new water and we’re not like the next big thing because we’re not doin’ anything new. But the funny thing is, what we’re doin’ sounds ‘fresh’ right now, it’s not the ‘norm’. Our songs, we’ll have four, four and a half minute songs, not squashed down into a three minute radio hit. And we did it purposely dude, we really wanted to try and go back to our roots on this one. Like we had jams in the studio where we would have tape rolling and just jam a song where the arrangement wasn’t even set in stone and we kinda were just lookin’ at each other, eyeing each other, and lettin’ things happen in the studio like Led Zeppelin would ‘let’ things happen. Sometimes a mistake turns out changing a whole song and makin’ us rethink the arrangement. So I think that’s why, when we were writtin’ this record we were like, ‘It’s gonna be so different, so different.’ But at the same time we definitely didn’t want to alienate all the people that love the band by totally pullin’ f*ckin’ Celtic Frost.

OT: Right, right totally. I recently spoke with Zakk Wylde from Ozzy’s band and he made a statement about certain bands, not to say that Godsmack fits into this category or maybe you do, but I just wanted to get your opinion on it because I thought it was an interesting statement. Bands tend to come out when they have a new album and say, ‘This is our best work ever, this album kicks ass.’ And he made a statement that he doesn’t like when bands do that because he feels it tends to discredit their previous work. What do you think about that statement?

Shannon: What I say to that is, I love Zakk Wylde, he’s the best guitar player on the planet, probably, but he should know better than to say something like that because if you don’t think that your new record is better than your previous record, then you’re not f*ckin’ accelerating in your life, and especially musically. Who wants to keep makin’ the same record over and over again, man? The whole point in life, whether you’re a ballplayer or an architect or a musician, is what you want to do is score more points in this game than you did the last game or design a better building than the last building that you designed. And in my case, make a better record than the last record and if you really don’t believe that… I mean we said that, hell yeah, we said our new record’s gonna blow the f*ckin’ Awake record away, but we really believe that. So I don’t see how there could be anything bad about saying your new record’s better than your last one because if you don’t really believe that your new record’s killin’ your last record, then what the f*ck, man, you better re-write your record.

OT: Right, no I tend to agree because I told him ‘dude, your new album kicks ass and I think it’s your best work to date.’ and he kinda like slammed me on it and said what I just mentioned to you. Obviously, with the sales that it’s doing and the publicity that it is getting, there’s a lot of people that tend to agree that it is his best because people are really pickin’ up on it. I just wanted to hear from another band’s perspective whether this was something that a lot of bands think about and just say in passing not realizing it, so thanks for your input. (Editor’s note – it is interesting to note that when artists look back over a decade of their own music they usually have their favorites which are not necessarily their most recent release…) Now with the new CD Faceless, it kind of follows the same guidelines as past releases in that it’s got that angry approach which has always been something that Godsmack has done. Sometimes in music we see this sort of mentality backfire on the artist. For instance take Nine Inch Nails, because of the way Trent would write, he was always pissed off about a lot of things and it came out in his lyrics. But on the last album he wrote about things in his life that were a bit more on the up swing and it reflected in his music. Fans accused him of being too happy. So the question I would put to you is what happens when Godsmack… suddenly, there’s just nothing to be pissed off about anymore. Do you think it’s gonna really affect the direction of the band and the lyrical approach?

Shannon: I don’t know, we’ve been asked that question before because the first two records, the first one being a demo that was released, it sold millions of records, and then the band was subjected to two years of touring and had to write the next record on the road, took three months, recorded it, went right back out on the road for another two years and basically sold another couple million records. So Sully is at a place in his life where he has nothing to be f*cking pissed off about you’d think, right?

OT: Right.

Shannon: Well there’s a seed there that when you make money and get fame and live your dream, there’s still…, you just trade in one problem for another problem, and there’s always gonna be somethin’ that pisses you off. In the case of the new record for instance, just as an example, Sully finally made it and had enough money to build his own house, build his dream house, right? So the most aggressive song on the record is “I F*ckin’ Hate You” and that was written about the people that built his house, the contractors that built his house. They took him to the f*cking cleaners, charged him double for wood screws or whatever. Just ‘cause he’s a rock star, they added up all these extra costs, it’s goin’ way over budget, the f*ckin’ water stinks, nothin’ was goin’ like he had planned in building his dream house. We had this piece of music and one day I heard him on the phone screamin’ at this contractor guy and he hung up and he says, “I f*ckin’ hate that guy!” And he ran up in his room and wrote that lyric to a song that we had and so I guess my answer would be, y’know what? We’re always gonna be a tough sounding band, it’s just what we grew up listening to, from Sabbath all the way up to Metallica or whatever. There won’t ever be a day that passes that somethin’ won’t piss us off, particularly Sully who kinda has his feelers out about every little aspect of Godsmack, whether it’s the business or all the way down to the carpenters on the tour. He’s in every little aspect of it so there’s always gonna be somethin’ that pisses him off that he can write about aggressively. We will always put heavy records out, I will say that, but in the same breath even from the first record there was “Voodoo”, on the second record there was “The Spiral” on the new record there’s “Serenity”. So we’ve always tried to keep valleys and peaks on our records to where you’ll get a dose of aggression but hopefully you’ll also get the tribal, voodoo part of the band that has percussion, hand drums acoustic guitars and a killer melody you know what I mean? It’s like seein’ the heaviness of a band like Dead Can Dance as opposed to the heaviness of a band like Deicide. To me Dead Can Dance is every bit as f*cking heavy, it’s just a different heavy.

OT: Yeah I totally hear what you’re sayin’. It’s funny that you say he ran up and wrote this song, it’s kind of ironic in a way, and even though he was pissed off at this guy if it wasn’t for him he wouldn’t have written the song.

Shannon: Yeah. I tell people, ‘Man if you wanta make the next Godsmack record, like if you wanta be on a Godsmack record, just piss Sully off. F*ck him over and you’ll be a lyric on our next record. Like on the second record there was the song, “Greed” and he had written it about this guy who’d screwed the band over or whatever. And y’know what? It doesn’t matter, if we’re as big as f*ckin’ Metallica selling gazillions of records and we’re all big, fat rich rock stars, there’s always gonna be somethin’ that’s gonna piss you f*ckin’ off and that’s the world as we know it. Even if you’re in the lap of luxury you just trade one problem for another. Like we’re out here on this tour, and I’m the new guy in the band, and people ask, “What’s the best thing about bein’ in Godsmack?” For me I always answer ‘the travel accommodations’: we have million dollar tour buses and killer hotel rooms and great dressing rooms, but do I still get f*ckin’ pissed off once or twice a week about some bullshit? Well, yeah I do and it will always come out in the music.

OT: Anybody that’s human is gonna find some fault in something.

Shannon: No matter how old and rich and soft and fat you get I think there’s always gonna be something that can inspire you to write aggressive music, if that’s what you love and have listened to all your life like Sully and Tony and Robby and myself. So there will always be Godsmack toughness to our records, but we’re definitely not opposed to exploring the more dark side of us with the hand drums percussion and dark melodies, Dead Can Dance style rhythms. It also helps that there’s two drummers in the band.

OT: Is he ever critical of some of your playing, like trying to get you to do something different that you normally wouldn’t do?

Shannon: Yeah, y’know that’s the thing, our styles are very, very similar and back in the day I was an influence on his playing, so when I joined this band he would come up with a guitar riff and I’d throw a beat to it and he’d be like, “F*ck yeah!” We always joke between him and I, we’ll never have bad drum beats in this band. You can not like the band, not like the new record, not like the songs, but you can’t say we got bad whack drum beats.

OT: Right, right. Now one point of contention that’s remained throughout each album are Sully’slyrics and his spiritual beliefs; being of the Wiccan religion. There’s a lot of kids out there who are not allowed to own the records because of the parental warnings they carry or because their parents are aware of Sully’s involvement in Wicca. Even though we’re a fairly liberal society these days, there are still a lot of people out there who won’t subscribe to that train of thought. Obviously when a band says they’re ‘a family’ parents may be concerned as to what is being portrayed on all fronts, to protect the family name so to speak. What do you think of the spiritual side of what Sully voices? Even though he may not push Wiccan ideologies through his music he is very forward about being against other forms of religion, especially Christianity which is still the dominant religion in this country.

Shannon: Well first, if you know anything about the Wiccan religion, it’s all good and it’s all about a god and a goddess and mother earth and ‘don’t litter’, ‘save the ocean’ ‘save the forest’, ‘be a good person, if you do something wrong it’ll come back to you threefold.’ ‘Keep your karma light, keep your karma good,’ ‘don’t f*ck thy neighbor’s wife,’ all that shit. There isn’t any black magic to the Wiccan religion whatsoever. People think Wiccan=witch. This is a religion that’s all good, there’s no dark side to it, but with that being said, there’s no talk about religion on any of our records as far as the Wiccan religion. You’ve got “Black Magic” the song, and “Bad Religion” the song, but both of those songs are about the struggles of belief and the struggles of faith, they’re not in anyway preaching the Wiccan religion on any one. Sully, from being a witch, a Wiccan, went through all of the shit in the early days of the band when every interview was focused on that. Y’know the press has to find something interesting about f*ckin’ rocker guys and it is an interesting religion. He’s pretty much over, like he won’t even talk about it anymore, to him it’s a dead issue and he’s already said everything he can say about it. Me comin’ in, all I know is, he’s just a normal guy and I’ve never ever…, ‘cause I’m not Wiccan and neither are Tony or Robby but yet there’s never been a time where he tried to sell us on being Wiccan. He’s a totally private man about pretty much everything except for his personal feelings on love, life and the universe, lyrically. But as far as his home life or what he does at home and his wife and kid or whatever, he doesn’t talk to the press about it y’know? I don’t think that being Wiccan should change any parent’s mind about their child buyin’ this record, there’s not even any reference particularly on Faceless to any kind of religion. And since the band’s called Godsmack you’ll never believe how many times people want to take our pictures and they bring props: they’ll bring a crown of thorns, ‘here, put this on.’ I’m serious, and Sully’s like y’know what, that’s not f*ckin’ comin’ near my head or whatever. ‘Hold this cross.’ or ‘hold this pentagram.’ It’s kind of like, who cares what Michael Jordan’s religion is because he shines on the basketball court, but when you’re a rocker, I guess, with all the satanic imagery from people like Manson or Cradle of Filth or whatever, the parents seem to get concerned that their kids are gonna go off and turn into devil worshipping glue-sniffers or something y’know? I personally can’t talk for Sully, but I can say the Wiccan religion is all good and there’s never any hocus pocus or witchcraft that goes on around us and I don’t see how that would make parents make their kids not want to buy a Godsmack record y’know?

OT: Right, right. A lot of what I’ve found does fall in the imagery category, obviously with the pentagrams and the symbolism and from what I’ve studied of the religion it seems to be kind of a esoteric religion where it’s not all entirely up front you have to really delve in deep to really know what it’s about and there’s a lot of things hidden within the religion that you don’t find out until you follow it for a period of time. That’s always been the thing about witchcraft and stuff like that, it’s something that’s done behind closed doors in secrecy and so there’s that vibe that goes along with it. A lot of parents find out and they’re afraid of what actually might influence their kids even subliminal type stuff, not that Godsmack has any of that because obviously that’s bullshit stuff anyways, but those are just some of the fears. And I think a lot of it comes from being uneducated and not knowing because people tend to slam religions of every faith out there.

Shannon: And also what you gotta understand about the Wiccan religion and witchcraft in general is, just like Christianity, there’s about 30 different types of witchcraft, you know what I mean? Just like in Christianity you’ve got your Lutherans, your Protestants your Baptists, your Catholics and a million others that I can’t rattle off right now. It’s the same thing with witchcraft, you’ve got black magic, white magic, gray magic, Wicca, Satanism, there’s a whole plethora of different ones.

OT: A lot of splinter groups.

Shannon: Yeah, totally. And like I said, Wiccan is the softest one that delves totally in the white, never even goes into the gray magic; which is magic that is basically used for good, but you have to use a little black magic to get it done, which will come back to you. I myself practice white magic in the vein of Tree of Life, Israeli Rigardi and Donald Michael Craig. That’s personally what I do and it’s another way of having something to believe in, man. And I really think that no matter if you’re a Jesus Freak or if you are in the church of Satan, you should have something to believe in that gives you and your children some kind of guidelines.

OT: It’s interesting that you say that because one of the questions I’ve always wanted to ask Sully, and now based on what you said about your faith, this is a question I throw out at people from time to time just to see what they might come up with. There’s a term called ‘epistemology’ which asks the question, ‘how do you know that you’re right?’ How do you ‘know that you know that you know?’

Shannon: It obviously takes education and study and if you’re really searching go to the library or go to the bookstore and read up on it. Try an Israeli Rigardi book, try an Alistair Crowley book read the Bible and just see what hits you and in your heart of hearts you’ll know what you believe and what you can take and what you can’t take as far as faith goes. The Bible to me, I read the Bible front to back and I was raised Roman Catholic: I’m a hundred percent Irish. By the time I was 16 I went to Sunday school and all that sh*t all the way up ‘til I was 16 and there’s just too many contradictions for me to have belief and have faith in the Bible and also live a happy life. So at the age of 16 is when I started educating myself on different religions and Eastern religions: The Dao the Buddha all the way to the satanic church, I basically did a little bit of everything - research wise - until I picked up this book by Israeli Rigardi regarding the Tree of Life and his belief on that. And it was something like I knew at that point that I totally believe this and I can actually have faith in this. Just educate yourself and don’t be shy to take steps to find faith, because it’s out there and it’s out there for everybody; it’s just a matter of being smart enough to read books and try and find what clicks with your heart. And like I said, to me it was a matter of picking up one book after probably years of reading and delving into other kinds of spirituality. And then this one book, man, I just felt like it was written for me, it changed my life drastically. And when I found faith, even though it was in magic, it was still faith and it made me a better person. I basically cut drugs and hard liquor out of my life and it makes you more focused. It gives you a better goal to achieve the things in life that you want to do and to be a good person, y’know?

OT: Right, totally. Well it’s interesting to hear because there are a lot of musicians out there that wouldn’t encourage anybody to read anything or to follow any sort of faith. Now getting back to focus here, what’s happening with the band and the current tour you’re on?

Shannon: Yeah, we’re comin’ in three days to Irvine Meadows, playin’ the KROQ Weenie Roast out there and then in Santa Barbara we play the County Bowl and then we play Spokane. Where are you at?

OT: I’m actually Southern California near L.A. But the Weenie Roast, that’s a KROQ thing and it’s always a pain in the ass to get into as far as media goes.

Shannon: Tell me about it, man, we get no guest list and if we want a guest in we gotta pay 80 bucks for a ticket just like everybody else - for our guests.

OT: They sound like fun gigs, but I’ve never been to one and I probably never will be.

Shannon: Well, Santa Barbara dude, that’s where I live and if you wanted to see the band, the show, we have production out here bigger than Janet Jackson, it’s a f*ckin’ huge show and it’s very interesting for young and old. And everybody that I’ve talked to after the show, they’re all, ‘Wow, a great show.’ The Santa Barbara County Bowl is one of the most amazing venues to see a band play because it’s a natural amphitheatre cut out of the rock.

OT: That’s cool.

Shannon: And it’s just a beautiful venue with great sound so if you wanted to come to that show I could definitely hook you up.

OT: Yeah, that might be a plan, I’d appreciate that. I didn’t know about the Santa Barbara show and it’s a little late to put in a request through proper channels. I’ve seen the band a couple times and I definitely know it’s a hell of a show. I hear you may hit a few festivals this summer, which do you prefer; the big festival shows or the smaller more intimate shows?

Shannon: Man, it depends on the day, dude, really. Sometimes the festivals are the best shows ever and then you’ll be like, ‘That was so awesome, there were 50,000 people.’ And then you’ll go and play a f*ckin’ 2,000 seat theatre where you can see the face of everybody from the front to the back row and after the show you’re like, ‘That was twice as good as the festival.’ But then you’ll play a festival a week later and you’re like, ‘Woah sh*t, that was the best show I’ve ever had!’ It really depends on your frame of mind and how well you play I think, ‘cause I’ve gone up in front of 80 thousand people and not had a good show, but the crowd’s goin’ f*ckin’ mad, it’s loud as hell you can’t even see the end of the heads. But if you’re not on top of your game, ‘cause sometimes you’ll have those shows where you’re just tired or you got a cold or you’re simply not in your groove where you play and 90 percent of the crowd would never even notice, but your good friends and musicians can tell, ‘Well yeah, played great but it wasn’t your hundred percent, huh?’ I’m like, ‘You’re right.’ So if I have a hundred percent show in front of 500 people that’s gonna be my favorite venue. Like for instance, a great example, last night we played Red Rocks, which is in Denver, Colorado, the most beautiful place - bar none – that I’ve ever played. It’s cut into the mountain and there’s giant red rocks up around the whole crowd, the stage. The “Sunday Bloody Sunday” video from U2 was shot there. I played great, didn’t make any mistakes, but I’d just gotten over a cold and whatever and I just was kinda spacey so it just wasn’t my greatest show and the last time I played Red Rocks it was. So that will just go to show you, sometimes it’s not the size of the crowd or the size of the venue, it’s about just how you feel on stage.

OT: Right. I totally hear where you’re comin’ from, I agree. Well I’m lookin’ forward to seein’ the show on Sunday. Thank you so much for your time, dude I appreciate it.

Shannon: No problem, man. If you come to Santa Barbara I’ll also put backstage passes for after the show, we can hang out.

OT: Cool, dude, lookin’ forward to it. Talk to ya later.

Shannon: Alright man, see ya.