Shinedown launched the new year by posting a teaser video for their upcoming seventh album on social media. The 42-second clip includes a caption which reads, “So it begins… #nowiknowmyabcs… Do you? #SD7”.
Last month, Shindedown's Brent Smith told 95.9 The Rat that the new album has a more “stripped-down” approach. He said, “We wanted to push everything to the front. And what I mean by that is we've proven that we can make these records that there's a lot of musicianship involved in it, and we have layered our records over the years because we love music and we love sound and we try to make really cinematic records. So with that, you have a lot of instrumentation that is not just drums, bass, guitar and vocals — we use orchestras, we use a lot of synthesizers, we use a lot of techniques that… We don't believe in… Don't tie your hands up when you're making a record. Make the record that you wanna make. And ultimately, though, what we wanted to do with this album was make it just as ferocious as the other records but not utilizing so much of some of the style that we've done in the past with layering and layering guitars, adding lots of synth beds, stacking the vocals.”
Smith added that subject-wise, the songs were inspired by the ongoing pandemic and its impact on the people and businesses.
