Album Reviews : Shinedown – The Sound of Madness

The first thing i did when i received ‘The Sound of Madness’ to review was open the booklet and start reading the lyrics. Not the best introduction to ‘Devour’, the lead single from the Shinedown‘s third studio album. The Band from Jacksonville, Florida, have found their popularity in the US increase with each release. After listening to the album, you can understand why. The album is full of generic American hard rock, although a little ‘harder’ than the likes of Nickleback. A formula for success.

The album kicks off with the aforementioned devour, the fastest track on the album, and ignoring the terrible lyrics, is a decent slab of hard rock setting up the rest of the album. The title track continues with the riffs, but this time vocalist Brent Smith changes to a southern drawl, which, if you can put up with, will allow you to find this album enjoyable. Excluding the token ‘ballads’ the music on the album, although far from original, is well written rock, and with choruses easy to sing along to, demonstrates why they have such hyped live shows.

As for the ballads, taking up half the album, they appear to be written straight for the radio, and are far from memorable.

Smith commented prior to the albums release “We want to do a huge hard rock record that has a lot of crossover potential, but also some of the most insanely intense and heavy material that this band has ever tried”, which sums up the album well. It has some enjoyable hard rock songs (Devour, Sin With a Grin, Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide), but is let down by the all too generic ballads. 5/10

Band: Shinedown
Album: The Sound of Madness
Year: 2008
Genre: Hard Rock/Metal
Label: Atlantic Records
Origin: USA
http://www.myspace.com/shinedown

Tracklist:

1. Devour
2. Sound of Madness
3. Second Chance
4. Cry for Help
5. The Crow and the Butterfly
6. If You Only Knew
7. Sin With a Grin <- reviewers choice
8. What a Shame
9. Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide
10. Breaking Inside
11. Call Me