GODSMACK Frontman: 'We Play Music For Us And We Hope That People Come Along For The Journey'

GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna spoke to Cameron Buchholtz of Rock 100.5 The KATT about the band's decision to take a slightly different musical direction with its latest album, "When Legends Rise". "We wanted to expand a little bit more and try some different textures and colors and just some things that we haven't experimented with yet," he said (see video below). "And so far, we've been having a great time with it. It's a breath of fresh air for us too."

According to Erna, the response to the new GODSMACK music from the band's diehard fans has been "good. There are always a couple of whiners that you can't satisfy, but that's just the world that we live in," he said. "We play music for us and we hope that people come along for the journey."

Asked what the "initial thinking" was in the way GODSMACK approached the songwriting process for "When Legends Rise", Erna said: "It's really just a matter of, 'What can we do on this record? Where do we wanna go with this? What do we wanna try? What do we wanna mess with?' And ultimately, we just start writing music, and we try to keep it unique as much as we can, we try and not to write the same record every time — that kind of thing — but we do have a certain sound, a signature kind of sound that we've established over the years, and we wanna make sure we don't branch too far from that. But at the same time, we need to be able to explore some different textures; otherwise, it gets boring for us too."

Along with changing up the GODSMACK sound, the band went ahead and revamped its live show in time the group's current U.S. co-headlining tour with SHINEDOWN, which kicked off last month. "We stripped everything down and rebuilt it," Erna said. "When we had this new record and this new sound, we wanted to make sure we had the new production and everything; we wanted to kind of revise everything, and that's what we've done. So I think people are gonna be really excited to see this, because us and SHINEDOWN coordinated this tour to be able to have two big shows but two different looks, and I think we really did a good job in accomplishing that."

GODSMACK and SHINEDOWN recently unveiled a second North American leg to their upcoming co-headlining tour, adding a string of fall dates to the two bands' itineraries after initially hitting the road together this summer. The new dates begin on September 21 in Greenville, South Carolina, ending for now on October 11 in Portland, Oregon. ASKING ALEXANDRIA will take over in the opening slot for LIKE A STORM and RED SUN RISING, who are splitting the summer concerts.