Godsmack
Lighting Up The Sky

Godsmack returns with a new album, five years after their previous excellent work “When Legends Rise”, with which they embraced new hard rock sounds and twenty-five years after their self-titled debut album.

Sully Erna, the band's frontman, without any frills and in a very honest way, has announced that “Lighting Up The Sky” will be the “swan song” for the Boston four and will close a quarter-century of prolific music production (nine studio albums and three compilations), to pave the way for life on the road, focusing exclusively on the live dimension.

“Lighting Up The Sky” is a carefree record, also and especially for the aforementioned reasons, created to remember the glorious past and celebrate the present with a future perspective. The sounds evoke grunge and hard rock, with a significant nod to the nu-metal era of the great success of “Awake” and the self-titled “Godsmack” before that.

The riffs of Tony Rombola in the opening “You And I” evoke the early Rage Against The Machine and encapsulate the typical sounds of Godsmack, with undeniable nods to grunge. After all, the Massachusetts band's moniker always reminds us of their never-hidden love for Layne Staley and Alice in Chains.

It moves from the pure hard rock essence of “Red White & Blue”, a piece destined for radio play, to the wild “Soul On Fire” and “Surrender”, which seem to have been born to ignite mosh pits during upcoming live performances. There is no lack of a reflective and melancholic interlude with the splendid “Truth”, which sees Mr. Erna sit once again at the piano, caressing the black and white keys to accompany with sweet and soft notes the explosion of the vocals on bitter-tasting verses.

“Hell’s Not Dead” and “Let’s Go!” don't scream 'miracle,' but they amaze because they seem specifically written to provoke a healthy sting of nostalgia, showcasing an evident state of grace that mocks time. By mentioning the bygone times, “Best Of Times”, with its eloquent title, serves to sum up and recall the sales records and the dizzying chart peaks, with heartfelt thanks to the listeners.

“What about me” and “Growing Old” have a common denominator, which is the guiding thread of the entire work. It reflects on life's mistakes, bringing up the conditional, the “hindsight.” If the first is driven by a galloping rhythm, the second is characterized by a very dark, dragged, and reflective singing.

“Lighting Up The Sky” is the closure you expect. Melodic at first, then aggressive and sharp, it doesn't really change the reflective attitude of the previous tracks but is the exit from the studio door, the definitive farewell. The final mashup in the background, with nods to parts of the early historical tracks, beautifully closes the track in a fade-out.

Ultimately, we can say we hold an honest, very pleasant, at times nostalgic album that is never strained in its narrative. Listening to it multiple times gives the sensation that there is still much to say and that it is not the right time to freeze an era to be displayed relentlessly in future years. But perhaps that's how it must be.

Surely, life doesn't oblige us to exclude reconsiderations. And it doesn't force us to use the conditional.