SULLY ERNA Says Fans Will Get 'More' Of GODSMACK Now That Band Will No Longer Release New Music

In a recent interview with AXS TV's "Power Hour", GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna once again spoke about the announcement that the band's eight album, "Lighting Up The Sky", will likely be its final collection of new material. Erna said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I want people to understand and be clear that we're not saying this is the end of the band. We just feel that we've arrived at a certain place in our life… I remember reading this quote a long time ago from [AEROSMITH bassist] Tom Hamilton when he said, 'Music is something I've always wanted to do with my life, but it's not everything I wanna do with my life.' And so I start thinking, we're just kind of closing one chapter right now and we're opening a new chapter, and that chapter is gonna be weightless for us. Because to not have that responsibility of always having to go back in and grind years of your life in studios making music… We wanna just be able to honor this greatest-hits show and create that. So I think these — we call 'em the 'sunset years' now — we wanna just go and enjoy all these things that we've earned for the last three decades and be able to have fun with it and not have that pressure of always having to deliver for the label and blah blah blah. So I think it's an exciting time, and people should be excited for us because they're gonna get more of us because the reward is really the live show. After all the tedious stuff you do in the studio — you guys don't care about that. I mean, it's cool — you get to see the behind-the-scenes once in a while for second, but, really, you're coming to the show to have a good time and have some drinks and listen to music and let loose. And now that's what we get to do for the rest of our lives, for as long as we wanna do it."

GODSMACK kicked off its 2023 U.S. tour on May 4 at the 107.9 KBPI Birthday Bash at Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre in Denver, Colorado.

This past March, GODSMACK and STAIND announced a 25-city co-headlining 2023 tour, produced by Live Nation. The trek kicks off on July 18 at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in St. Louis, Missouri, with stops across the U.S. before wrapping up in Austin, Texas at Germania Insurance Amphitheatre on August 31.

"Lighting Up The Sky" was released in February via BMG. The LP was co-produced by Erna and Andrew "Mudrock" Murdock (AVENGED SEVENFOLD, ALICE COOPER).

The first single from "Lighting Up The Sky", "Surrender", which arrived in September, marked the first release from GODSMACK in four years, following their globally acclaimed and gold-certified 2018 album "When Legends Rise", which earned the Erna-fronted outfit a No. 1 spot across U.S. Hard Rock, Rock, and Alternative album charts.

In a recent interview with Australia's Heavy, Erna was asked if he will miss the creative process now that GODSMACK will no longer release new music. Sully said: "It's such a good question because if there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that I don't know shit. You think you've got it figured out, and then just when you do, it humbles you very quickly and throws a curveball at you. So you could never say never, but right now, where I am in this time and place in my life, I feel like I've done just about everything I've ever wanted to do in music, and it's left me with a very satisfying feeling of being complete. And so I don't know what I'm gonna do after this. But I do know that music is in my blood and I always feel like I will play my piano and a guitar, and if that leads me to writing songs and I just release some stuff on my own, then so be it. But if I never did again, I can't say I have any regrets. If this all came to an end tomorrow, I would be able to call it a pretty good run and be happy."

Erna previously addressed GODSMACK's decision to no longer release new music last fall in an interview with Pablo of the Minneapolis, Minnesota radio station 93X. Speaking about "Lighting Up The Sky", he said: "I've never been that artist who says, 'Oh, this record is our newest record. It's our best work ever.' You can read any interview you want over my whole career, and you've never heard me say it," he continued. "I've always loved our records [and] I always knew there would be some good singles on it and hoped it did well, but I was never the guy that said, 'This is our best fucking work ever.' And I'm telling you right now this is our best fucking work ever. And it's because it's emotional, man. This is the last record we're ever gonna do. This is the last run around the mill for us. We put every single ounce of energy and emotion into this album. Especially for me, when I wrote a lot of these songs, it was about my life journey. That's really what the sequence of this album becomes about. Not that it was planned that way, but this really kind of mystical thing happened where I felt like the universe wrote this record."