GODSMACK Frontman Discusses Solo Album In New Interview

August 26, 2010

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna about Sully's forthcoming solo debut, "Avalon". An excerpt from the chat follows below.

ARTISTdirect.com: Is there one common thread or theme to "Avalon"?

Erna: What ties the record together so well is the fact there is no thread; there's no theme to it. It's made of separate bodies of work that happen to complement each other really well. It's a very intellectual and eclectic record. There are these nine-minute epic songs that infuse so many different influences. Our percussionist Niall Gregory toured with DEAD CAN DANCE. We have a great female vocalist named Lisa Guyer on the record. There's a Bulgarian cello player, and there also some beautiful piano compositions. There are some big world music-style pieces too. It's funny because from one song to the next it really varies, but somehow the album threaded itself together without having any kind of conceptual thoughts.

ARTISTdirect.com: Was your approach especially boundless this time around?

Erna: For me, it's a collection of stuff that I've put to the side over the years because it wouldn't necessarily be good for GODSMACK. I still really believed in the songs. They were beautiful, for what it's worth. I knew that one day I'd definitely do a solo record. This album is something I've never done before. It's my first time treading through this territory, and I don't know what to make of it. I can't even put it in a category. If I was a guy working in a record store, I don't know where the CD would go [Laughs]. It's so diverse from one song to the next.

ARTISTdirect.com: With every listen to "Avalon", it's easy to find something new.

Erna: The record is made of songs I've collected over the years, but it really wasn't until Lisa and I got together and started asking, "What is this record going to be? Are we going to have a direction or are we going to simply go for it?" Everybody has such a different influence. We had somewhat of a direction. We knew we wanted it to be tribal and primitive with hand-drumming and things like that. However, we didn't really have it mapped out in a sense of genre. We assumed it was going to be something with a world music vibe. That might be what it leans towards more. In some songs, you can hear the rock influence. On other things, you can hear the DEAD CAN DANCE influence. Other times, it's beautiful piano compositions with a cello. Everything has its own little personality, and that's the influence of all the members of this project. They're all phenomenal players, but they all come from different worlds. That reflects in the music a lot, and I think that's why this record has become something you can't really categorize. If you took some songs individually, you could probably drop them in categories. However, the record, as a whole, is really hard to categorize.

ARTISTdirect.com: Would you say "Avalon" is more introspective for you?

Erna: Well, yeah. I slit my wrists open and dumped it out with this record. Everything I know in my life up to this point is in this record. Whether it's joy sadness, anger, disappointment or love, it's all in there. Every emotion you can imagine is on this album — you name it. They're true emotions. It was really painful at times writing some of these songs because I was very vulnerable on this album. It was a big risk I had to take because GODSMACK is more closed off. It's just a big, bad monster that goes out there and tours. This was very intimate for me. I still listen to this record and get choked up during certain moments. It's either a line Lisa sings and how she sings it, a beautiful cello or a lyric. It comes from such a vulnerable place.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.

Sully Erna has set September 14 as the release date for his long-in-the-works debut solo album, titled "Avalon". A first single from the disc, called "Sinner's Prayer", arrived at rock radio stations on August 3 and is now available for purchase at Amazon.com. You can also find a 30-second sample of the track at the same location.

"Avalon" track listing:

01. Avalon
02. 7 Years
03. Broken Road
04. Sinner's Prayer
05. My Light
06. The Rise
07. Until Then...
08. The Departed
09. Eyes Of A Child
10. In Through Time

"Sinner's Prayer" 30-second audio sample:

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