Godsmack: Awake : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The elements will be familiar to any Ozzfest attendee: bulldozer bottom with occasional slap-bass reverb, guitars that sound like percussion instruments, and a deranged singer spinning tales of woe and lamentation while dangling precariously from Beelzebub's pitchfork. Boston-based Godsmack aren't nearly as musically adventurous or aggressively misogynist as some of their aggro-rock brethren, which may explain the mainstream acceptance of the quartet's triple-platinum 1998 major-label debut. The formula is repeated on Awake, a collection of muscle-bound hard-rock cliches and unrelentingly downcast, generic lyrics. Singer Sully Erna declares he's "sick of my life" and "all I feel is hate" with a voice born to growl, but his narratives lack the scary specificity of a true head case like Korn's Jonathan Davis. Rivet-gun verses continually shift into droning choruses with vague Middle Eastern shadings, punctuated by wah-wah guitar solos. Though Erna sings that he's "sick and tired of making the same mistakes," Godsmack's carefully calculated music suggests they've never made a rash move in their lives.