"We're returning to our roots," Godsmack frontman Sully Erna told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "Big riffs and big solos. I think that rock is making a U-turn right now and coming back."

Erna doesn't seem exactly good to his word, as the Boston metalmen are turning the noise down a bit with the November 18th release of an acoustic album, featuring stripped-down versions of older material and new tracks.

The band is working with producer David Bottrill, who produced "I Stand Alone," the band's contribution to The Scorpion King soundtrack, in a Hawaii studio and has waxed spare takes on "Voodoo" and other songs from its three albums.

But the acoustic approach isn't totally out of the blue for Godsmack: The band's most recent release, Faceless (which was issued in April and debuted Number One on the charts), featured "Changes," which included an acoustic passage in the middle and the quiet, album-closing "Serenity," which is one of the songs that is being re-recorded for the new album.

MARC W. DOLECH
(August 12, 2003)