Read Shinedown ’EI8HT’ | The Album Story below:
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When music is everything that you are, everything that you have been and everything that you are going to be, it shows. It’s something that cannot be bought, or faked, or learned. It’s something that started in your very depths and will still be lingering within the final particles of your being as you leave this mortal plain for good.
To truly, madly, deeply adore, respect and be grateful for the great power that music has is a very personal journey. But when it comes to Shinedown, it has been a four-pronged fork of sentimentality for some 25 years at this point.
And when it came to the band approaching the making of their 8th full-length record, there was a sense of making sure that such a sentiment stayed at the very forefront.
They also knew that they needed to take their time.
“Music is what has never left me, and it has never left Eric or Barry or Zach, either,” vocalist Brent Smith remarks. “And I’ve always talked about Shinedown as a living, breathing entity. It will talk to me when I need it to.
“And we all still believe in the power of the album when it comes to making music. We’re not walking into writing sessions with each other thinking, ‘Let’s write a song about this because that’s what’s hot in the media’ or, ‘Let’s write a song about this because we think it’ll be a number one’. The moment you start doing that, you’ve lost the authenticity, and the audience can see right through it.
“So, with what we have been making, we wouldn’t have been capable of doing it in three or four months. It doesn’t sound like that.”
What Brent is alluding to is that ‘EI8HT’, their extravagant, exploratory, energetic 18-song, hour-and-four-minute new album, took them 18 months in the studio to get right. At a time in musical history when it is easier than ever to churn out a song before breakfast, that level of care, consideration and craftsmanship is something to be commended. Even more so when the result is as barnstorming as this. Channelling as much emotion as electricity, it’s a record that is as quintessentially Shinedown as it gets, as well as being as far-reaching and fantastically bold at the same time. Readymade for arenas, but vulnerable and personal in the same capacity.
For Brent, it is all about continuing to push the band in a way that feels both challenging and rewarding. Because when you love music this much, it has the capacity to love you back.
“Anytime there’s a fork in the road, don’t just take the safe way. Go in the other direction and see what’s down that road. You can always circle back, but don’t turn back. I think it was important for us to understand that.”
THE SOUND
For Brent, Shinedown has never been one thing. It is, at all times, a rainbow of not just sounds but also opportunities. Gateways into other ways of connecting people. Why would you limit yourself to just the one chance to affect someone when you can spread your wings even further than you ever thought they could go?
“I don’t look at Shinedown as just being about rock music. It’s pop, alternative, metal, country, adult contemporary, rap, hip-hop. We’re inspired by all of it, and we swim in a lot of creative oceans, at least we attempt to. That’s the thing that allows us to say that Shinedown is everybody’s band.”
Just as Brent doesn’t like to give the band just one moniker, it’s the same with the people within it. And that is where Eric Bass comes in. Not just plucking at the bass strings for the last 18 years, he has also engineered, produced, and mixed all of the band’s output since 2018’s ‘Attention Attention’. Such a special skill set has allowed much of what makes the band tick and tock to come from within, and with that comes everything its members are listening to, inspired by, and itching to try out.
And when it came to figuring out exactly what they wanted ‘EI8GHT’ to represent within their blooming repertoire, it was Eric who held the lighter.
“He was just like, ‘It should feel like a debut record’,” Brent smiles. “I know it’s the eighth studio record but we needed to lean in to what if this was the first thing we’ve ever put out, you know? What are we influenced by? What are we inspired by? What roads do we want to go down?”
That’s why there are songs that are faster and harder than anything the band has put their name to. There are moments where you can hear as much Def Leppard as Dolly Parton. There are instances where things are slowed down and their most stripped-back and raw, and others that beg to have pyro attached to them.
But in the case of one particular song, it has also opened a door that, for many a band, would never even get a look at the key.
“The fact of the matter is that ‘Searchlight’ during the writing process was a different song to what it is now,” Brent explains about one of the album’s biggest breakout moments. “It was a bit more like a power ballad, and that’s just not what it said to me it wanted to be. So I went back in with everybody and said, ‘Do me a favour, just pull the acoustic track up and let me re-sing this’. Then the great thing about Eric is that he then said, “That’s the way you hear it? Well, if you’re going to do it that way, I think we need a banjo, and I think we need a pedal steel guitar.”
To many a band, the idea of bringing in new toys to see if a hunch is right just wouldn’t even cross the mind. But when it comes to what an extra strand of experimentation allowed the band to do, it enabled them to be part of history by playing at the famous Grand Ole Opry.
An institution in country music for some 100 years, the band played ‘Searchlight’ live for the very first time as part of their centenary anniversary, introduced by Carrie Underwood.
“Singing those three songs and playing ‘Searchlight’ to that audience, and getting a standing ovation, that was like out of body,” Brent gleams, remembering that day. “But also, we worked with the Opry band that night. There’s an 11-piece band behind you who added these wonderful accompaniments to the song. But this one girl was playing the violin, and that sparked the idea of putting it in the mix. So we went back to South Carolina, grabbed an incredible fiddle player in Charleston, did the part, and it 1000% added to the song in a good way. It’s those surprises that are always the really interesting moments.”
There aren’t many bands that would find something more to add to a song in their finest hour, but that is truly what sets Shinedown out from the pack. That play time is vital. That taking your time and discovering something new is all part of the process. Actually enjoying every aspect of this is allowed.
“I have to remind people sometimes; I have to remind myself of this, too. Everyone, can we please remember that this is supposed to be fun? You’ve got to take a step back, look at the peripheral and say to yourself, ‘Okay, I didn’t get into this to brag about ticket sales and chart positions. Those things are great, but don’t forget why you do this, and don’t forget why it’s important for people.
“Everybody wants to get cynical these days, and I understand why it’s hard at times to find the positive. But you can also be the instigator for positivity, respect, love, and perseverance. Within the big picture, I always have to tell myself, ‘It’s the music, stupid, don’t forget it.'”
THE LYRICS
In much the same way as with the sonic element of the band, lyrically, Shinedown works from the mentality that you have to write for yourself first, because everybody else will find themselves in it if they want to. We are all making our way through this life with the same blood in our veins and oxygen in our lungs, yet we are all playing out different stories. So, for Brent, it is important to offer as many accounts, olive branches, and excuses for connection as possible. Because people will eventually find the soundtrack to their situation. You just need to put the work in to make sure it’s there for them to find.
“The public will find their own story. Or they will find why that song makes them sad, or angry, or happy, or sad, angry, and happy. It’s the human spirit.
“So all four of us are contributing things that are going on in our personal lives and what we have been going through. A lot has happened in the last couple of years. We literally wrote a song about it with ‘Three Six Five’. What I tried to do on this was let everybody know in the band that there’s no wrong answer for creating something out of nothing. It didn’t exist, and now it does. And that’s something you want to then present to the public.”
By allowing all four members of the band to speak their truth in whatever way they wanted, it has fostered a complexity within the folds of ‘EI8HT’. It also allowed the band to develop connections that they didn’t even realise they had. For example, Brent and Eric did not realise, until it came to the table, how similar their grandfather’s experiences in World War II were, which then inspired the frantic storytelling of ‘Machine Gun’. Speaking of Eric, Brent also notes just how vulnerable he allowed himself to be in speaking out about his father, in the raw admissions of ‘The Pilot’ or about his own journey through life in the vibrant freedom of ‘Young Again’.
Then there is ‘So Glad You Asked’ and ‘The Imposter’, two songs that deal with the ongoing struggles of mental health in the youth of today, including stories told directly to the band by their fans over the last few years, a subject very close to their hearts as members of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
To pull from such real places, real things that are ongoing, not just in their lives but the people around them, allows a sense of important timelessness to sit at the heart of Shinedown’s material here. But though that may seem like a conscious choice, it was more a case of them not really having any other option than to write that way. And the blood and bruises that ooze and form because of that? It’s just part of the process of putting yourself out there.
“This is all coming from a very real place,” Brent nods. “Yes, we’re writing songs, but we’re writing them from within real-world scenarios, so you have a responsibility to lean in to that. But truly, I just don’t think we had a choice. I just think the bar was so high. And it’s hard. In life, you’re going to have to do hard stuff. You’re going to go through life, and it’s not going to be a cake walk. But there are a couple of things you can do when you come up against a brick wall. You can negotiate with it, but it rarely works. You can go over it, under it, or around it, but sometimes it deflects you. Sometimes, you’ve just got to go through it, and when you go through it, you’re going to get banged up, you’re going to get cut up, beaten. You’re going to have some battle scars. You’ve got to accept that.”
THE TITLE AND ARTWORK
When it came to figuring out what sort of word and visual would be best to umbrella these songs, Brent turned to the man who has been building worlds with them for over a decade. That is Mark Obriski, responsible for the band’s art direction since 2015’s ‘Threat To Survival’. One of the first people to see the album at every stage and in all its forms – from demos to mixed and mastered – he has felt the evolution through every stage of this long journey.
There were plenty of clever plays on words or slogans that were in his little black book, but the first thing that he sent the band was as simple as it gets. The word EIGHT, with the G replaced by the band’s signature S. And when written down, that symbol is replaced by the Numerical 8, which, when turned on its side, looks an awful lot like the infinity symbol. Really simple, but really powerful, a reminder that at the heart of all of this is Shinedown, and whatever is placed within this piece of art is forever. Sometimes, that is all that is needed.
And when it comes to the flowers that Marco created to make up the cover art, eight in total, that came from a place that continues to be the true beating heart of the band.
“There was an article a few years back about us that read, ‘It’s time to give Shinedown their flowers’,” Brent explains. “Now, I know that this was supposed to be endearing and thoughtful, but I was like, Yeah, we don’t need flowers’. If anybody deserves flowers for going through all of this with us and continuing to be on this journey, it’s the audience. That’s the dynamic of all of this. It’s for them.
“But it’s all a reminder to us that we don’t need to overthink any of this. It’s all exactly what it needs to be.”
THE FUTURE
As he mentioned earlier, it’s easy for life in music to become about ticket sales and chart positions. And the truth is that where Shinedown are right now, those elements are at the highest and most prominent they have probably ever been. But despite the awards and festival headline sets, Brent continues to make sure that they are second to the fact that even being here, having the opportunity to achieve those things, is more than enough. With ‘EI8HT’, the band have delved even deeper into what it means to be human and to resonate with other humans on the same wavelength. Still, as they look forward, he is keeping in mind that even being here at all to enjoy this as a reason to celebrate. So get up and watch that sunrise, tell that person how you feel about them, do something that scares you, laugh until your eyes are streaming. Live this life whilst it’s here for you, because that’s what Shinedown are doing. And they aren’t looking to change that anytime soon.
“The symbolism of all of this is just the authenticity. But what else plays into this is just how absolutely astonishing it is that all the elements and all of these key things that had to happen for me to be here talking now,” Brent explains in closing. “The miracle of being alive. We’re a small blip in the vastness of the universe, but that’s the beauty of it. If there was ever a meaning of life, man, it’s to live it, because the fact that you have it in the first place is a miracle.
“And how humble are we? And how gracious are we? How thoughtful are we that we have this moment in time to be able to do what we love as artists and as musicians? And when you’re an artist, you leave behind a legacy. They may forget your name, but they probably won’t forget the music.
“And some people may think that’s a bit morbid, but it’s not because it’s just one element of our existence. The fact that we’re alive at all is a blessing and a gift. So don’t sweat the small stuff, and just live, man.”
