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Godsmack and acoustic instruments would seem to be as mutually exclusive as Britney Spears and clothes. But the Boston hard-rock quartet has indeed done the unplugged thing for "The Other Side" (Republic/Universal), a seven-song EP that mixes old favorites and new songs.
"Before we were signed, we used to play smaller clubs and play some songs acoustically," says bassist Robbie Merrill. "They always worked well. And then we did 'Faceless' [the group's latest album]; we did a few songs acoustically, and they worked well, too.
"So we said 'Hey, let's go in and do a couple old songs, a couple new songs and see what happens. Plus, we did it in Hawaii; because it was an acoustic setting, we wanted it to be relaxed."
Merrill says that the songs on "The Other Side" - both new and old - were generally "just real strong acoustically . . . you know right away if it works or doesn't work." But in the case of "Awake," Godsmack decided to reinvent the song and turn it into an almost entirely new piece called "Asleep."
" 'Awake' really wouldn't work this way [acoustically] because there's too much chugging going on the way it's originally done," Merrill says. "We just tried different versions of it and came up with something that works, so it's like having a new old song."