SULLY ERNA: 'Saying That MIKE MANGINI Is Overqualified To Play For GODSMACK Is Just Like Saying That SHANNON LARKIN's Overqualified To Play For The Band'

In a new interview with Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece, GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna spoke about the band's current lineup, which consists of Sully, bassist Robbie Merrill, guitarist Sam Koltun and former DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Mangini.

Mangini made his live debut with GODSMACK on June 12 at the Morton Amphitheater in Riverside, Missouri following the abrupt departure of Wade Murff. Wade stepped into GODSMACK in early May as the replacement for longtime GODSMACK drummer Shannon Larkin, who quit the band in late 2024, along with guitarist Tony Rombola, because they didn't want to tour anymore.

Asked how it feels to be playing with the new GODSMACK lineup compared to how it was during the band's earlier years, Sully said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, actually, that's a good question, because, first of all, to answer in short, right now it feels great because we have the right people that we replaced Tony and Shannon with. They're great players, they're great people. They're good human beings, but they're very qualified, and they make it all feel very natural for me and Robbie.

"When you're used to playing with two other people that you've been with for 30 years, that's hard to replace sometimes, 'cause there's a natural chemistry that happens that you can't just acquire quickly," Erna explained. "When you play with three other guys for 30 years, you just develop a natural chemistry. So to replace that was not easy to do. But we got very lucky and we found two people that are doing a great job. It's taken a lot of work and some patience, but we're in a really good place right now and I think, for once, I'm feeling that GODSMACK has a second life and that we'll be able to continue for as long as we want to. Now, that being said, is it the same feeling as [it was with] Tony and Shannon? No, it will never be that. You can't replace that part of it. There's an emotional attachment to people that you consider are brothers than there is to the new guys. But the new guys are also great, and we have a different relationship that we're building with them. So it's not the same, but it doesn't mean that it's bad."

Asked how late RUSH drummer Neil Peart's quote that "nothing great lasts forever" came into play as he navigated GODSMACK's latest lineup changes, Sully said: "Well, that got me through, I think, how to navigate and tackle this new chapter. Because when I heard Neil say that, I'm, like, 'You know, he's right.' There's no way around it. That's how life is designed, that nothing great lasts forever, at least not while we're in a human form on Earth. We're not designed that way. There's a beginning and there's an end. And so I had to accept that at that point and realize as much as I wanted the original members to be together forever… And I even felt betrayed at one point. I felt like I spent my whole life building this band and giving other people an opportunity to accomplish their own dreams, and then they left me. So there's a sense of abandonment there, and there's a sense of betrayal. But I really sat down with it and I'm, like, 'No. No one abandoned anyone and no one betrayed anyone.' They gave me almost 30 years of amazing memories and good times, and they put in their work. They just got to a point where they wanted to be home with their family and their houses, and they didn't wanna tour at this level anymore. And I have to honor that and respect it and find my peace and understanding with that. So when Neil had said to me, and Shannon, by the way, when we met him, and we were asking him if he's ever gonna play drums again, and he's, like, 'I don't think so.' And we're, like, 'Really? You're not even gonna have a drum set in your house just to play for fun?' And he said, 'I don't think so. I think I've done everything I can do on the drums.' And we're, like, 'You sure have.' And then he just said, 'Yeah, as far as being with the band, I love these guys but life moves on and there's other things that we wanna do, and nothing great lasts forever.' And that helped me a lot, understanding that as great as I felt GODSMACK has been for what we are, I was faced with that same decision, that here we go. And now is it time to just retire with Tony and Shannon, or do we try to keep going a little bit? And that all depended on who was gonna play and replace them."

As for whether he was apprehensive at all about playing the first GODSMACK show with Mangini on June 12 in Riverside, Missouri without any prior rehearsal with the drummer, Erna said: "Very little. Very little, because I've known Mike for 30 years. I knew him back in the '90s when he was taking over for EXTREME. And I knew his level of play. I knew his level of experience. And I would have never put that kind of responsibility in his hands to just send him a live show… 'Cause we put out that double live album recently. And I just sent that to him and I said, 'Just learn this, the live version of every song.' I would have never put that responsibility on him if I didn't know he was capable of coming in and playing it pretty damn close, and that's exactly what he did. Was it perfect? No. But rock and roll is not supposed to be perfect. So he came in and did a phenomenal job on the first show. No rehearsal, we just did a long soundcheck, and I'm, like, 'He knows. He's got this. Nothing is gonna be a train wreck.' And he came in and he surprised everyone. But, of course, I had confidence in him, because it's Mike Mangini, and he's just very qualified to do this job."

After Fragos noted that some progressive metal fans have claimed that Mangini is "overqualified" for the drummer gig in GODSMACK, Sully said: "It's true. By people saying... And by the way, those people are a very small audience, and those people are mostly fans of DREAM THEATER and Mike Portnoy. And poor Mike [Mangini] was in DREAM THEATER for 13 years, just trying to do his job and learn some very complicated music that Mike Portnoy chose to leave the band himself. So Mike Mangini just came into that position hired and he caught a lot of shit for it. He had a lot of Mike Portnoy fans that didn't wanna accept Mangini. But by saying that Mike is overqualified to play for GODSMACK is just like saying that Shannon's overqualified to play for GODSMACK, 'cause I don't think people realize the depth of detail that's involved in GODSMACK's music as a drummer.

"I'm a drummer. I've been a drummer my whole life," Erna noted. "Shannon's an amazing drummer, and we both spent a lot of years and a lot of time designing those drum parts. And although they may not be as complicated as DREAM THEATER, they're very detailed, and that calls for someone like Mike Mangini to fill that spot.

"Listen, I've always said the most complicated kind of music sounds very simple," Sully explained. "People may say, like, 'Oh, AC/DC, that's not hard to play.' It really is. And you know why it is? Because it's very detailed and it's very steady. It's very hard to play in a pocket like that and deliver it in a way that makes it sound easy. Yeah, maybe there's not seven different time signatures happening and very complicated drum fills, but GODSMACK's stuff is complicated because it's designed to sound easy, but when you actually dive into learning the parts, they're fairly challenging. It's not RUSH, but it's, it's not AC/DC either."

Asked if the new GODSMACK lineup will present him with an opportunity to "reinvent parts of the band's identity or even experiment a bit" with new music in a way that he perhaps couldn't do with the previous lineup, Sully said: "I think it's a great opportunity to reinvent the band and the kind of music that we wanna put out now, because over the years as I have evolved as a songwriter and a musician, my style of writing has changed a lot.

"The one thread that GODSMACK always had to maintain is staying powerful and being a hard rock band," Sully explained. "We're not metal, but we're not classic rock. We're right in the middle. But there was some stuff in the early days that was a little closer to metal. It was heavier back then; it was darker. And then over time, as I've evolved and grown, I wanted to regress back to just hard rock, which is what I grew up with — AEROSMITH, BLACK SABBATH, LED ZEPPELIN, bands like that. So I think every album that has come out now since the 'IV' album has led to becoming more established as just a hard rock band. And now sometimes the band even starts to gravitate towards being just rock. There's always one song on a record that opens the door for the next album. And I think with the last album — like when we did 'When Legends Rise', we had a new kind of sound. Well, let me go back even further. When we did the 'Faceless' album, on album number three, that song 'I Stand Alone' came about, and that really set us in a different direction. We started to introduce harmonies on the vocals and things like that. And then we went through a bunch of albums and did some heavy stuff, and then when albums like 'When Legends Rise' came out, we had that song 'Bulletproof', and that introduced us to a little bit more of a commercial sound, and we started to see our audience grow even more with women and children. So we took 'Bulletproof' and we expanded from that, and we wrote 'Lighting Up The Sky'. And 'Lighting Up The Sky', I think, stayed more true to just being a hard rock band. And there's songs like 'You And I', which is the first song on the last album, that lends itself to being a little bit more '70s rock feeling, but in a modern way. So I think we're gonna take that and kind of move forward from there. And I think the next record, you may hear a little bit more classic rock feeling. It'll be heavy, but it won't be metal. But I haven't wrote any music yet, and that's just what my mind is telling me. For all I know, we could end up writing a record that could sound like PANTERA, so I have no idea. [Laughs]"

Murff joined GODSMACK this past spring and played more than a dozen shows with the group between May 8 at the Welcome To Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, Florida and May 30 in Houston, Texas.

Just hours before his last show as the drummer of GODSMACK, Murff shared a post in which he appeared to look forward to the remainder of the gigs on the tour, writing: "Houston TX tonight! Little break coming up and then we come back and light up #kansascity. What a great start to the tour! Thank you to everyone who came out and saw 'The Rise Of Rock' show with #godsmack #stonetemplepilots and #dorothy!"

On June 6, it was announced that Murff would fill in for BLACK VEIL BRIDES drummer Christian "CC" Coma (born Christian Mora) for the remainder of that band's 2026 European tour due to "an unfortunate personal and private matter". Murff played his first show with BLACK VEIL BRIDES on June 10 in Munich, Germany.

Mangini announced his exit from DREAM THEATER in October 2023. Mangini, who had been with the progressive metal band for 13 years, was dismissed from DREAM THEATER in order to make way for the return of the group's original drummer, Mike Portnoy.

Mangini joined DREAM THEATER in late 2010 through a widely publicized audition following the departure of Portnoy, who co-founded DREAM THEATER 40 years ago. Mangini beat out six other of the world's top drummers — Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati, Aquiles Priester, Thomas Lang, Peter Wildoer and Derek Roddy — for the gig, a three-day process that was filmed for a documentary-style reality show called "The Spirit Carries On".

Mangini made his name in the hard rock world in the mid-1990s when he played with EXTREME, before landing the gig with guitar legend Steve Vai in 1996. Nearly a decade later, Mangini took up a full-time teaching position at the world-renowned Berklee College Of Music.

In February 2025, Mangini launched a new band, MONOLITH, with Hernán "Motley" Rodríguez on bass and vocals, and Andy Barrow on guitar.

Mangini released his debut solo album, "Invisible Signs", in November 2023. Accompanying Mangini on the LP were Tony Dickinson on bass, Ivan Keller on guitar, Gus G. (FIREWIND, OZZY OSBOURNE) on lead guitar and former EVANESCENCE guitarist Jen Majura on vocals.