Godsmack - Awake

My Thoughts: (Reviewed by K-Billy)

Godsmack’s second album, Awake, boasts big metal tracks with the distinctive growl of frontman Sully Erna. The band themselves achieved fame with their debut album, borrowing liberally from bands like Alice In Chains, among others. While I would never accuse the band of being a rip off, they are most certainly similar to many of the older metal acts. With this said however, Godsmack is an extremely fun band to listen to. Their cd “Awake” has some fine examples of heavy metal moments. The title track itself is excellently arranged with Erna’s painful delivery growling throughout the song. The same can be said for “Greed” or “Sick Of Life.” However the bands sound isn’t necessarily limited to the full fledged metal aspect. Many of the tracks on the latter part of the album combine tribal influences and beats along with a more thought provoking quality to the obviously different music. Tracks such as “Mistakes” are much more blurring to the listener in their arrangements before blasting into the heavy rocking of the chorus. Much like “Trippin” which is probably the best of these style of tracks. On top of this the band even throws in an instrumental, interestingly titled “Vampires” which features crunching guitars. However the album is not without it’s faults. As I stated before the sound shifts, many of the hard hitting tracks are in the beginning of the album, and in this case it somewhat causes the listener to long for the intensity of the first half, for the second half can feel lacking. It’s not that the the more tribal tracks aren’t bad it’s just that they aren’t as engaging. As an end result, half of this record is interesting, and the other half is good, but not nearly what it could be. I prefer the selt titled debut over “Awake.”

Key Tracks:

Awake
Greed
Trippin
Sick Of Life