FACEOFF

Armed with a deadly new disc, Beantown bruisers GODSMACK prepare to administer a punishing beatdown to the competition.

”The pink DJ booth has got to fuckin’ go!”

Godsmack’s Sully Erna is sitting in Dorsia, one of New York City’s newest—and most exclusive—nightspots. Named after the fictitional club in the Bret Easton Ellis novel, American Psycho, the venue’s a three-tiered adult playground equipped with high-end East Indian décor and mirrored ceililngs. And then there are the celebrities: Recent Dorsia sightings include Cameron Diaz, Sting, Lennox Lewis, Brittany Murphy, and the most A-list celeb of ‘em all, Leonardo DiCaprio. But even with those glitterati milling about, it’s Erna who reigns supreme.

Probably because he owns the joint.

Or co-owns it, at least. For Erna who’s in Manhattan to mix and master his band’s third album, Faceless (Universal), Dorsia is a way to invest some of the proceeds he’s reaped from Godsmack’s multi-platinum sales. But as he admits, his ownership is a rather ironic lifestyle choice—Erna has opened the kind of club he probably wouldn’t be welcome in were it not for his rock stardom. “Why should I own a biker bar or a tit club?” he asks. “This is a place you have to know someone to get into. And I think it’s awesome to be attached to something like that.”

Has Sully Erna lost his Boston-bred, up-from-the-gutters edge and gone soft? Hardly. Faceless may be Godsmack’s most punishing collection of songs yet. On it, Erna, guitarist Tony Rombola, and bassist Robbie Merrill unveil a Godsmack that’s ultimately much heavier and more cohesive than the band that recorded 2000’s Awake.

For Godsmack, Faceless is the product of not only intensive labor but also a keen survival instinct. By all accounts, Godsmack’s internal affairs were terribly out of order before last summer’s dismissal of original drummer Tommy Stewart. And while they say they couldn’t be happier now that Stewart’s replacement, Shannon Larkin, is onboard, Erna says summoning good old-fashioned anger for Faceless wasn’t tough. “There’s always plenty to be pissed off about,” he growls.

As if to illustrate that very point, Faceless includes “I Fucking Hate You,” the angriest tune in Godsmack’s catalog, if not the entire nu-metal cannon. The song grew out of a conflict between Erna and a contractor he’d hired to build a dream house—a project that quickly became a money pit. “We had this aggressive piece of music that I just couldn’t find the right lyrics for,” says the singer. “And then I slammed the phone down on my contractors and said, ‘I fucking hate them.’ It was written purely out of aggression and impatience. And I think it’s going to be the most popular answering machine song in the world. It’s lyrically vague enough that if you break up with someone this is what you’ll want to leave on the machine for when they call.”

While it’s doubtful that “I Fucking Hate You” will make many radio playlists, Faceless’ first single, “Straight Out Of Line,” has all of the trappings—sledgehammer riffs and big hooks—of a radio hit. And opening of wartime sound effects quickly introduces an unapologetic open letter to friends Erna believes have sold him out. “It’s about people that have changed around us, but who say we’re the ones who’ve changed,” he says. “They say we’re acting like rock stars.

”Maybe we don’t have the time to hang in the bars like we used to,” he continues. “But we work really hard at delivering great music and a kick-ass show with cool video and pyro. And what’s aggravating is the people that don’t acknowledge the hard work that goes into it. They’re what I call drive-bys—people that judge you right out of the box. Some of them, I want to knock their fucking teeth down their throat. I want to say, ‘You yhave no idea how fucking hard this is. You work nine to five and go home. You’d never be able to do what we do 24/7.’”

Yet even though Erna finds his work so demanding, the singer is quick to point out he’s 100 percent appreciative that he gets to fully immerse himself in Godsmack’s day-to-day business. He says the last thing you’ll find on Faceless is the venting of a bunch of whiny rock stars unhappy with their multi-Platinum fate.

I am so tired of hearing bands whine and bitch about being fucking famous,” Erna says. “If you’re not prepared to do the work, shut the fuck up and quit. What is there to bitch about? We make great money and get to see the world for free.”

Three years ago, Godsmack recorded their sophomore albut, Awake, in an abandoned warehouse located in what Erna describes as “Crackville, Massachusetts.” After the triple-Platinum success of its debut album, the band wanted to stay close to its hometown roots. But for Faceless, Erna and Co. decided on a different approach: They’d write, rehearse, and record in Miami, getting as far from those same hometown roots as possible. Although the idea was to avoid the distraction of friends and family, the band quickly found its isolation provided some additional advantages. “For Awake, we wrote a lot on the road,” Rombola says. “So you’d come up with a riff or a song idea, rehearse it onstage, and probably not hear it again until you got to the studio. This time we got to write together from start to finish, six days a week, eight hours a day. We found that everything gets so much better when everyone has the time to really tug and pull on their ideas.”

Of course, the biggest advantage of holing up in Miami was the ability to spend quality time working Larkin into the Godsmack lineup. In August, the former Amen and Ugly Kid Joe drummer officially replaced Tommy Stewart in an exit chalked up to “artistic differences.” Erna admits that he had a hard time convincing Godsmack fans that a switch behind the kit was necessary. In August, Erna wound up having to address the personal change in an eight-page letter to Godsmack fans that he posted on the band’s web site. (“[Shannon] will pay his dues in the band just as we all have and he welcomes it with open arms,” Erna wrote. Oh my God, did I just quote a Creed lyric?”)

I felt obligated to explain it to the fans and welcome Shannon,” he says of the note. “I needed to say to them, ‘Listen, we made a change that we thought was the best thing for the band. Enough of the drama.’ We made this change to grow, and Shannon’s the drummer until the death of the band. We knew it was a roll of the dice. Sometimes bands fall apart after shit like this. But we feel like the band is still young and we’ll put out 12 or 15 records before we’re done. And it’s not like we changed our sound. I played drums on the first two records.”

Erna insists the current Godsmack lineup couldn’t be any closer. He and Larkin are kindred spirits in their hard-partying, out-in-the-clubs way of life, while Rombola and Merrill are bonded in that they’re both happiest spending whatever little downtime they have at home. “We’re all team players, even if we don’t necessarily live the same lives,” Merrill says. “I’ve been with Sully eight years and maybe had two serious arguments with him.”

It’s midday at Dorsia and Erna couldn’t be more excited about the contents of an oversize UPS shipment that just arrived. Inside are a half-dozen Gold and Platinum plaques celebrating the success of Godsmack and Awake. They’ve been special-ordered for placement in the club’s upstairs VIP lounge—with a spot being held for the yet-to-be-shipped plaque for the Scorpion King soundtrack, from which Godsmack’s chart-topping “I Stand Alone” earned a pair of Grammy nominations. While the plaques nicely tell the story of Godsmack’s commercial success, Erna insists they tell only half the story. He’s been using whatever free time he has to work on Releasing the Demons, an autobiography that traces his life from birth to the signing of Godsmack’s record deal with Republic/Universal.

”I want people to know that if they’re stuck in the dumps and ghettos, there’s still light at the end of the tunnel,” says Erna. “I don’t want them to think that because I live a certain lifestyle now I was born with money. Anyone can be successful, wheter it’s as a fireman or rock star.”

If Erna occasionally comes off as a true believer in a “rock and roll saved my life” way, perhaps it’s because he came so close to spending his life in prison. He’s hesitant to discuss his youthful indiscretions in detail but says that growing up poor in Boston, he wound up with more than his share of short jail stints. Erna believes that, like his music, the book will offer him a therapeutic way to shed some of the skeletons haunting his closet.

”There’s a lot of fucked-up things I did as a kid that I feel guilty about,” says Erna. “Kids are kids, juveniles are juveniles—there’s not much guilt when you’re younger. But I was out of line a lot of the time and it helps to be able to apologize for things.

”The whole book is filed with shit that I might not believe if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I’ve seen some wild shit—and been involved with some shit that makes me feel I’ve almost lived two different lives. It was part of my heritage. And the book is for people to see that we’re all just normal people that do stupid things that get us beat up or arrested. No one should feel like they’re not as good as anyone else because they did fucked up things.”

While it’s too soon to tell how Faceless will fare commercially, Godsmack insists that they’re too preoccupied laying out plans for two years of solid international touring to worry about how the album will fare when it hits the shelves. “We were very intimidated as a younger band because we wanted to be as big as Korn or Metallica,” says Erna. “But now we’re like the little train that could: We keep chugging along and taking another step down the tracks. And I think the end result is better for us.