Wolfshead : Interviews : Godsmack

Sully and Shannon and Urchin and Robin lurking in the TR studios

U+R- We've got Godsmack in the studio this is the Urchin and Robin show. How are you gentlemen?
Shannon- Very well, we're good

U+R- We've got Sully over there and we've got Larkin, or is it Shannon? I don't know what to call you these days!
Shannon- It's Shannon Larkin ha ha, that's my name

U+R- How long are you over here in the UK?
Sully- We're only here for a couple days more and we're going to play the Garage

U+R- Ahh, I bet you're rubbing your hands in anticipation. Have you been there before?
Sully- I don't know because we've played a couple places in London and I just don't remember the name of the places. Oh, I'm familiar by the stage and the backdoor entrance

U+R- And the rider
Shannon- I played there with Amen

U+R- Yeah I DJ'd it
Sully- Yeah, it's a great place

U+R- When was the last time you were over?
Shannon- Oh, it was a couple of years ago

Sully- Yeah, we never really, like, broke in Europe period because, uh, the first record got kinda lost with the big merger with Universal, they bought out all these record labels and people lost their jobs and our international department got all screwed up so the first record was really never heard of here. And then the second record, you know, it started to get a little bit better and then 9-11 happened and the attacks on America so that just screwed us. So we always get screwed somehow on coming to Europe.... when we've got another record to come out all of the sudden they're ready to drop more bombs. It's like, they must have something against Godsmack!

U+R- How long have you guys been together?
Sully- Oh, since uh '95, so 8 years now

U+R- And you've go the two records out?
Sully- Correct. Well we signed our deal in '98, but the band originated in '95. So we did the first record, the self-titled debut, and then the Awake record and then in between the Awake record and this record we did the Stand Alone track for the Scorpion King movie which was nice because we didn't have much going on in 2002 so it helped bridge the gap

U+R- Yeah, we've been playing that a lot. So when is the new album actually out here in the UK?
Sully- I think actually for once you get it a day earlier than America. You get it April 7th and they get it April 8th

U+R- So are you going to come back, you know, in a few months for the full tour?
Sully- Oh, definitely. This was just a small press run that we were doing a few shows and the we do our American tour which ends in like, mid June and so we're thinking by summertime? Mid to late summer we'll be back for a full-blown Europe tour

U+R- It must be kind of funny coming over here because the last time I saw you it was with Limp Bizkit at Wembley Arena and then suddenly you're playing the Garage which is a lot more personal
Sully- And we did the Anger Management tour here, too. And that's when things really started to pick up. We could see that people were more aware of the band from here all the way to Finland. Like, the crowds were very responsive. And then Limp Bizkit cancelled the tour because they were being babies about whatever

U+R- What were they being babies about?
Sully- Ah, they were just homesick I guess. They were saying "I got throat problems...." but I didn't really believe it

U+R- You should have just taken over as a headline band
Sully- Haha, yeah, I wish we were in a position in which we could but I really believe that this new record is going to change things around for us being it's a really strong record and I think that if people just have the opportunity to hear it it's going to do really well in Europe. As well as the rest of the world

U+R- It must be quite weird playing arenas in the states and then you come over here and you play clubs
Sully- Yeah, we were just talking about that and you know, it’s ok, man, because we are no strangers to the small stages because that's where we spent most of our lives. More there than on the big stages that's for sure. It's nice to get away from the arenas for once because it's not as intimate in an arena sometimes. You know, the first person is like, maybe 15ft away from me so it’'s nice to get the bodies right up against you because you feed off the energy

U+R- So it doesn't piss you off that business is not as big or as happening for whatever reason over here as it is over in the states?
Sully- I think eventually it will, it's just that we have some work to do over here in Europe and this band isn't afraid of working so we're just going to do what we have to do to make it happen

U+R- And what did you do in 2002? You said you had that soundtrack, so were you just beavering away working on the new stuff?
Sully- Well, we had been on tour for almost 5 years at that point after the Awake record and we were really burnt out. It had go to the point where our crew was really exhausted and then everyone was really tired and then 9-11 happened and were like, that's it. Enough's enough.... We needed to go home and spend some time with our family and friends and take a break and just kinda get grounded again. Refocus, reinvent the band for the next album cycle. So we took a few months off, five or six months and just kinda went our own ways and got settled in, and then we started writing for the new record and of course in the meantime, we made the member change and brought Shannon in.

U+R- What's the story there? What happened with the line-up change before then? Because you had, was it Tommy before? And he came and did the Bizkit dates and what happened?
Sully- Well right after we recorded the I Stand Alone track we were gearing up to start right away the third record and we were just on two different pages. We were looking to really reinvent the band and to come up with something new and musically we just weren't there anymore so we decided that the best thing to do was to bring someone else in and I've known Shannon since 1987 so I know what he's capable of, I know how he plays. We're very similar. We've always said that we were like brothers separated at birth because we just think so much alike, we play very similarly. Because I played drums on the first two records and our styles are so much alike, it was really easy for the transition to happen because a lot of people think that Shannon is trying to replace Tommy, but he's really know because the drums they hear on the record are me

Shannon- Yeah, it's like "you've got some big shoes to fill"and I'm like "my shoes are 5ft in front of me"

U+R- He doesn't tell you what to play, does he?!
Sully- No, I don't tell him what to play. I mean, we work really well together. This whole record, I've got to tell you, it was like a pleasure to work with him and the band is now so much closer than we have ever been. He's brought some amazing energy to the band. He's just got a great personality and he’s very welcoming to wanting to try new things and with two drummers in the band, how can you screw up the drums beats?

Shannon- Yeah, we're going to have killer drum beats. Forever

U+R- So Sully what band did you play drums in before Godsmack?
Sully- Every band I've ever played for. This is the first band I ever sang for, believe it or not. I mean it wasn't anything that ever did well. I had a lot of years of bad luck and Shannon did with just different bands that never really quite broke through. Everything from cover bands to a band called Malaya Rage I was with for a while. And then I signed a deal with Warner Brothers with a band called Stripmine. After that, that kind of self-destructed, I started Godsmack

U+R -What sort of music stuff was it?
Sully- Stripmine was like a punk metal band. Real fast

Shannon- With like, fifteen different parts. The drums were killer, man

U+R- Have you been digging out the old recordings then?

Sully- Once in a while they pop up like one of our crew guys, you know some of the people on our crew I've been best friends with for a long time, so they've been with me a long time and every once in a while during soundcheck or whatever, a song'll pop up

U+R- So have you always been a drummer and a singer and guitarist?
Sully- No no, I've played drums since I was three and a half years old. I've done that my whole life and then little by little after the Stripmine days which was like’ '93-94, I started to experiment with a bit of guitar playing. By '95 I just decided I'm going to start trying to write our own music, y'know, not just being the drummer. At first I was actually just playing drums for this band and it was just me and a couple other guys and we would just jam and then record the music and then take it home and work on lyrics. That's how it all kind of evolved and it was really just meant to be a studio project. We never thought it would do this because I was 27 years old at the time and my bass player was 30 and he was ready to quit music. He had been going through his own hell. I just said..."I got this crazy idea just hear me out. Try doing this....... " I was just like, y'know, try giving it a shot because if this hasn't worked out by the time I'm 30, I'll quit with you because I've had it too, y'know. And would you believe that my birthday is in February and in June of the year of my 30th birthday we signed our deal so by February it was just so hot in New England that we were ready to get signed, so I couldn't bail on it yet. It was that close to me never playing music again

Shannon- It was at that point that he called me and he was like, "dude, we're hot in Boston. Y'know, do you want to play the drums?" and I had joined Amen two weeks prior to his phone call and then ironically at the end of my life with Amen, two weeks after I quit the band he called me and was like, "hey man, what are you doing?" he didn't know I had quit or anything

Sully- Yeah, we should have a song called Two Weeks’ at least

U+R -So you didn't do auditions?
Sully-I so did not do auditions. Zero auditions. I was so not ready for auditioning drummers. Another long story made short is when we first started the band, Tommy was the first drummer in the band and then after a year he bailed, he quit because he was having some personal issues at home and he lived in Los Angeles, so he left and we got a different guy named Joe Darko and he was with us for like, two years. He had a bad heroin problem so we ended up firing him eventually and then Tommy came back and... um....what was the point I was trying to make?

U+R- There's no such thing as a good heroin problem?
Sully- I don't even remember where I was going. Oh! But the point was that when we were going from Tommy to this other kid Joe, we went through this audition thing and it was a nightmare so when Tommy came back and we finally made the decision that we weren't going to work with Tommy I was dreading that audition thing. It was just nice to have [Shannon] available because I've known him for so long and I know what he's capable of and I was just like this is the missing link to the puzzle here. If we get Shannon in the band we're done. It's all good from that point on and it has been. Perfect

U+R- And what were you up to at home. You said the Amen thing came to an end and was it like, "oh, my God, what am I doing now?"
Shannon-Yeah, well Sonny and Casey weren't getting along near the end and Sonny I had known each other for fifteen years and he's always been my boy. We had a band practice, the Amen guys and we had already lost Fig and beautiful Rich Jones came in and that was all good, but it still hurt the original line up when Fig left so Sonny wasn't happy at all and so he quits.. I went home that night and we had toured for well over a year and I had come home and I have a wife and kid and I had 450 bucks in the bank and I had three weeks to find another 400 just to pay my rent and that's not even including putting food on the table for my daughter. I just freaked out and I quit the next day after Sonny quit. Basically I was just thinking of throwing in the towel and maybe going to school, because I had never really done anything else with my life apart from play drums so I was really at an impasse. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life

U+R- Did you really think of jacking it in?
Shannon- I was thinking of going to school for cutting hair because my mom's a hairdresser and I've always been into freaky hair or whatever so I was thinking about maybe doing that and I could always play drums in the studio, be a studio musician. Make some money like that just to pay my bills and playing drums but [Sully] called and I was just like, YES. YES....

Sully- You know what's funny about that story, too, is that a long time ago a musician friend of mine who got signed with a band way before I got a record deal and I had always dreamed of having one told me that it'll happen when you're done. When you think you're on your last straw and you have just had it and I quit. It all came back to me later because I was like... I'm done. I'm going to be 30 years old and I can't handle this anymore. All my friends have nice cars and nice apartments and they have money in the bank and girlfriends and I'm bumming off my sister for $2 for a pack of smokes and sleeping on her couch. I can't live like this anymore.... And then it happened. For [Shannon] it's the same thing. When you're really in that mindset that you're going to go off and do something else and then it happens it’'s just really weird

U+R- Is Paul Geary still managing you? Was he involved from the off?
Sully- No, he's another one that I've known since like, 1990. When I first put Godsmack together I played him some music and he was just in a little bit of a dilemma himself because he had just come out of Extreme. He was trying to stop managing because that's what he had always been really good at, he was always the business guy of the band and it just wasn't working because he never got an act that really worked for him. Then he went into the club business for a little bit and tried to open up some venues and do live acts at theatres and all that but that just fell apart and he went back to managing a little bit. And in the meantime I'm handing these and I'm like "come on!" and he was just too scared because he had lost so much money with other bands that just never really worked out. So then finally I didn't care. I was doing most of it myself. I was booking gigs and doing the merchandise and whatever else and managing the band. But at a certain point it had got so big in New England that I couldn't deal with it anymore because I didn't know how. I wasn't that educated with legal stuff and contracts and all the record labels were calling my bedroom because on our demo my phone number was on the CD so Universal is calling my bedroom and I'm like ..um..... our manager will call you back.... but we ain't got no manager. So I was just like ..Paul, you're the fucking manager of this band cause I need someone to do something..... So finally he had seen what was going on and he was getting excited anyways and I just sat down with him. The reason I really wanted him to do us for one was that I had seen what he had done with Extreme and he was really the business guy behind that whole thing and two I genuinely trust him like my brother. I've known him for so long and he's just an honest guy and really trustworthy. And he's a musician and I felt good about that because he's not just a typical manager who just caters to the business end and doesn't know what a musician's needs are and that's important when you're on tour. So he finally came in and I said take this thing and do what you gotta do..... And he's definitely one of the hidden heroes behind our success right now because he's really negotiated the right deal for us and he looks out for us

U+R- Does he come down to the soundcheck and jam?
Sully- We've tried to get him up there a few times but he's just like, "I'm a fat manager now. I don't do that now"

U+R- Has he hung up his sticks?
Sully- Yeah, he's hung them up. Actually, I think Extreme did a little reunion thing a little while back for Rush. One of Rush's co-workers had passed away that used to also work with Extreme so it was a mutual friend so he went up to Canada and he jammed with Rush. That's crazy

U+R- So what's with the gargoyles? Because when I saw you supporting Limp Bizkit you had revolving drum kits and gargoyles, and to be honest I was deeply impressed
Sully- Well we have a pretty elaborate show on in America because we do much bigger venues so we have a pretty decent pyrotechnics show and videoscreens and at the time we had a show that was like a wall of a castle and there were gargoyles built into that and towers and things like that with videoscreens built into the rocks and cauldrons and torches and that kinda vibe. It was a medieval kind of thing. But obviously we couldn't bring the whole set because Limp Bizkit had to have their stuff or whatever and there was no room so we just tried bringing a couple of pieces with us so we had something of home

U+R- But you still managed to squeeze a revolving drum riser!
Sully- That is what it is. Wait till you see the new show in America

Shannon- It's not going to be like the castle. It's more stripped down, but it's really cool. Lots of movement

U+R - Who designs it?
Shannon- [Sully] does everything, man

Sully- I did a lot of it, but I also have this guy Tom Horton who's our lighting director and he's helped a lot to design the stage with me

U+R- So how do you go about designing the stage? Do you just think, "okay, I'm going to delve into my childhood and go for dungeons and dragons," or do you theme it on the album or what?
Sully- Yeah, it was more like what kind of atmosphere can you put the band in that doesn't look cheesy, but kind of fits with your imagery. It wasn't like we thought of the whole medieval thing, we just wanted towers made of rock instead of metal trussing and stuff like that. It just had a cool feel to it. Even the drum riser, the one that you've seen, we had rock on. It looked like a pile or rocks that someone had chopped off the top and sat the drums on. It was just stuff like that. I just try to think of stuff that the band would look good in. That was really just the first attempt at building a stage because we had just made the graduation from theatres to arenas

U+R - What are you going to do for tomorrow's show at the Garage? Are you going to bring a pebble?
Sully- Haha, yeah, we're going to bring a pebble. And our drum riser just turns three quarters of the way round. We're actually going to give out glasses so you think things are going on on the the stage, but they're really not. Kinda like 3D glasses

U+R - I hear you were at the Ozzfest in America and you sang with Ozzy a couple of times?
Sully- Yeah, I did. It was a sound check thing. I didn't get to do it live but I got to sing with Black Sabbath. I got to do Heaven and Hell’ That was pretty cool. Ozzy won't do it because it wasn't his record, it was Dio's and Tony Iommi, I used to tell him, no offence, I love all of Black Sabbath, but I really love the Heaven and Hell record and he goes, yeah, I know, I love it too but Ozzy won't sing any of it because it isn't him.... And then I just kept telling him how much I love that track and then one day there was a knock at the door and it was Tony Iommi's assistant and he says "hey, there's a sound check and they want you to go up there and sing Heaven and Hell....." I was just like "Yeah, okay, shut the door". I thought he was kidding but he said, "no, I'm serious, they really want you to come up now," and I go, "I don't remember the words!" because I wanted to get out of it. But yeah, that's how it happened. And [Shannon] too, he played a show with Black Sabbath!

U+R- Oh do tell, how did that happen?
Shannon- It was the first Ozzfest and Ozzy had blown his voice out and they had to cancel the show. It was one of those things where the crowd were starting to riot so they had to give them a make up show right away. "We're coming back, your tickets are good for July 1st" or whatever and then they realised that Mike Borden, Faith No More were still together at the time, so Borden had to go back and tour with The Faith. I got the call. Went and played one show playing drums for Black Sabbath and Ozzy.

U+R- How many rehearsals did you get for that one show?
Shannon- Uh..we got one rehearsal and then I walked on stage in front of 35,000 people shitting myself with Ozzy going "what's your name, man?"
......."Shannon" .....
"Shannon who"....
"Shannon Larkin".........
"I'll never fucking remember that"

U+R- That's amazing. ..........Is it true you took a boxing trainer on tour with you?
Sully- Yeah how did you know that? You've been doing some research. Yeah, it was a guy named Max. Max the Hammer. I was actually introduced to him by Phil from Pantera. He's trained Phil when they go on tour and stuff and we met at the Ozzfest with Pantera and that’s how we met him. It's a sport that I've always loved so we just kind of hit it off and we were talking and he asked if I wanted to do some training because he had a lot of spare time and I said yes and that's how we became friends

U+R- Was it not difficult taking him on tour with you? Because you know, you get off the bus and get thrown into the venue and that's pretty much it
Sully- No, on our own tour we had a bit more time because press and any interview we has would start at around 12 or 1 and would end at 4 and then from 4 until about 9:30 at night we didn't really do much of anything. So we'd take a nap, eat some dinner and then at around 6 or 7 train with him for about an hour, take a shower and hang out and wait for the show. It's good when you have a lot going on and you get to punch the shit out of a bag. Or somebody. Somebody's got to get punched

U+R- I hear you had a run in with a security guard?
Sully- Oh my God, you guys know all the stuff. That was a long time ago, man. I don't even remember what year that was..... '99? 2000 or something? That was in Florida. It's just a weird thing because I was just hanging out talking to Shannon talking about our lives when I was younger and I grew up in a really bad neighbourhood and it was really violent. Had a lot of crime.. It was just in my nature to fight and I used to love to fight but as I've gotten older I haven't gotten in a fight in 10-15 years. I mean, it's not what I want to do anymore. It happened to be at this one show and we were playing in front of 20,000 people at this show in Florida at Fort Meyers. Some radio festival. There was a certain song when we were jamming and I had jumped into the crowd and the security guards who watched the barricades didn't see me go over into the crowd so all they could see was me coming back and going up on the stage. This one dude who was just an idiot chased me up on the stage and I was going to get my microphone and he grabbed me and I'm like,.......whoa, dude... and the band's jamming so we can't talk to each other so I can't hear what he's saying and I'm like pointing at my mouth saying "I'm the singer!"....... You know when someone's looking at you, but they're not really looking at you anymore. More like right through you and they're like on a mission and they just have to do their job, well that's what it was like and I couldn't get this guy's attention. He finally got behind me and put me in this like bear hug. I just knew it was going to get ugly so I gave him a right hook and he hit the deck. There were big headlines like .."security guard gets godsmacked" or whatever. I wasn't really responsible for knocking the guy out, I just knocked him down and what happened was that when I punched him, he was close to the drum riser so his leg hit the back of the drum riser and he fell over. Then two of our crew guys came over and I grabbed my mic and I'm in fighting mode by now and I'm waiting for all the bouncers to come at me and start beating on me, and then I happened to look over and I see two of the crew guys. The drum tech and one of the stage guys and they looked both ways and just pounded him. Next thing you know he's in an ambulance and it was just a bad thing. But the funniest part of that story is that after that we finished the show and all the security jumps up on stage so I clench my fist and I'm getting ready to get into full attack mode and they ran straight past me and they all circled around him laying on his back with his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he's all messed up now because the crew gave him a few more shots, and they all just circled round and looked down, yelled, "YOU FUCKING IDIOT, THAT WAS THE SINGER" and they're all just yelling at him. I was relieved, though, because I thought I was gonna get it. I was just like, "I can't believe what just happened. I'm gonna get sued for this" Of course, 20,000 people were just standing there cheering it on because they always hate the people in the barricade. These two state troopers start walking towards me and I look at my bass player and I'm thinking, "that's it. I'm going to jail,".... but they just carried on walking straight passed me and one of them pats me on the shoulder and says "nice right hook" and he kept walking. I was just like, "yes! " !

U+R- So the moral of the story is that training pays off on tour
Sully- That was before. That was way before I had Max, man. It was a lucky shot I guess. I can't believe you knew about that. That’s funny

U+R- Are you still getting grief from the parental advisory people in America?
Sully- No, that was gone in 6 months after the problem started

U+R- Are they still stickering albums in the states? Because we don't get that so much over here. They're starting to more on the bigger acts like Eminem
Sully- It's because they blame so many things on bands and artists when kids commit suicide and they had headphones on listening to Black Sabbath and all of a sudden it was Ozzy's fault that the kid slit his throat which is ridiculous, because obviously this kid has issues if he's going that far and it's not a Black Sabbath song that made him do it. That was just this guy who was really upset. It was on the first record and his daughter had really wanted to buy this record and so her father bought it for her and I guess he listened to it and he was just like, "no way" because there was like, a handful of cuss words on the record. So he went and made a big stink about it and threatened to sue Walmart and all these companies and so they pulled our records off the shelves and there was just a big thing that went away fairly quickly. And after that, we found out that he was doing that to a lot of different bands, not just us too. Like Powerman5000

U+R- Do you get a lot of stick from religious fraternities that hear the name?
Sully- We only got it really bad in places like Utah that have a lot of mormons and things like that. Plus we came through with Black Sabbath, so that didn't exactly help. All the religious people are like, "oh, my God, it's Armageddon. It's the end of the world" and the funny thing is is that they protest the shows and hand out pamphlets with Godsmack on the front and you'd open it up and it would have passages from the bible like "witches will be burnt in the lakes of fire" and all this crazy shit and we'd go out and picket with them because they're so ignorant that they don't go and do their homework and find out what the band sounds like or looks like. They just hear the name and that's all they need. So a couple of times I went out there and was like, "yeah, fuck Godsmack!'...and they'd be like "yeah, that’'s right!" They're just ignorant

U+R- Does it kind of scare you that they might come and shoot you one day?
Sully- I'll shoot back. They better hit me good, because I'll shoot back

Shannon- He's got bigger guns

U+R- They're really upset about that in the states
Sully- They're just uptight

U+R- We don't really get that over here. I think Marilyn Manson got it a bit..
Sully- Yeah, well if anyone, he's gonna get it. I mean, he comes out with an upside down cross carved into his forehead in a black thong..........

U+R- Is the new album's material, lyric-wise, just you talking about yourself?
Sully- Most of everything I've ever written has been about something that has happened to me or a situation I've been because it's where I get most of my emotion from. Mine, anyone's life if you go through a traumatic time be it the death of someone or a bad relationship I think it's really what affects you the most and that's where I get my energy from and a lot of it I don't feel is a good thing to repress and always hold in, and thank God it's always I think that I can get it down on paper or scream about it on stage or whatever. I just use it as a form of therapy. Whereas music I write when I'm more happy and upbeat. I can't write lyrics when I'm happy. I just can't sit there with a pen and try and write lyrics. I'm in a good mood, I want to go out and have a beer with my friends

U+R- I read somewhere that Voodoo was about a film?
Sully-Yeah, uh, Serpent in the Rainbow. It's a movie by Wes Craven. He did the Nightmare on Elm Streets I think? It was basically a movie about voodoo and people going to a certain place and getting caught up in this whole underground world that they didn't really know about and although they kept getting warnings by the people like medicine men and whatnot telling them that it wasn't a place for them and that they should get out you're going to get hurt if you stay here, for some reason he just kept coming back to the place he knew he didn't belong in it. It was one of the few songs I've written that wasn't about something that had happened to me. There's a song on the new album called Serenity’ which is about a book called the The Ghostrider that I read which was written by the drummer for Rush. He went through some really awful tragedies himself so I was just really touched by the book and I ended up getting a really good song out of it

Shannon- And the song is really voodooish with tribal hand drums

U+R- It's very native American sounding. ...........Has Neil (Rush's drummer) heard it?
Shannon- The idea was to get him to play the drums on the track but he was on tour with Rush. We sent him the song, a demo of it that we had done and Neil wrote a letter back explaining how he liked certain parts in the song and I was just pretty excited that he had definitely listened to it because we're huge fans

U+R- Have you both been influenced by Neil?
Shannon- Definitely

U+R- Does that piss the rest of the band off? "oh, they're talking drums again. Oh, they're playing drums again" or are they kind of down with it?
Sully- It better not

U+R- So what's next for you promotion-wise before this record comes out?
Sully- Yeah we're going to be working, God willing this war goes away, for the next two or three years. It's a pretty deep record and I'm really excited for you guys to get it and I'm really excited for Europe to hear it and in the UK and Japan and whoever else needs to hear it because it's really good rock record. It's really deep and there's just some killer music on it and I think it's really gonna revive the rock scene in general because this is like nothing like, no offence to any other bands because there's a lot of bands that I love what they do and I think it's important for bands to experiment with new styles of music so we can always evolve into new things but we don't claim to be the new thing. We're not trying to say that.. We know for a fact that we're just a good hard rock band. The difference is that we are very true to what our roots are and on this record it's coming out a lot more and it's going to be a really big rock record I think

Shannon- Like, we got lead guitar parts and stuff

Sully- There's like jams. It's not like a condensed rock song squashed into three minutes. We're stretching out. The vocal melodies are a bit bigger with big drum fills in it and really big guitar solos

Shannon- And keeping it to a band. It's not rap rock

U+R- Do you have any stuff with loops and whatever key parts?
Shannon- We might put an 808 in there for emphasis for the bass drum

Sully- Yeah, we made sure we don't over do it because the one thing we've always taken pride in is that when we strip ourselves down, like we will tomorrow night at the garage, it's when we do our best. We never wanted to overproduce a record to the point where it's so layered and stuff that you can't pull it off live. That's one thing we always keep a close eye on

U+R- So it's a definite band effort, this new album?
Sully- Yeah, we moved away from New England to Florida and it was a great thing because we were away from our family and friends and any other distractions and we were just really able to sit and eat together in a house and just rehearse and write every day. There wasn't one argument. There wasn't one bit of drama

Shannon- I've been in this band for 8 months and I've never even seen the guitar player mad. We've never ever bickered. The focus is incredible

U+R- Because to prepare for a 2-3 year tour, like you said?
Sully- I think it'll be a minimum of 2 to 3 years as long as nothing crazy happens with all this crap that's going on in the world right now it, I really believe it will take 2 years to work through this record because there are a lot of good tracks on it. I mean, we're having a hard time as it is just trying to figure out our setlist. With the I Stand Alone track and this new song Straight Outta Line on this new record we have nine singles that have been top 5 hits in America, so we have to play those nine songs. We're having a hard time trying to fit in other tracks because there's not much room left

Shannon- It's like we want to play every song from the new record and we just can't decide

U+R- Maybe that can be your first argument then
Sully- Yeah, well it's not a bad problem to have. It's still aggravating because we want people to hear this new record. As much as the old songs were popular songs for a lot of people, the selfish side of us is like, "we don't wanna play those old songs anymore."

Shannon- Like Mick Jagger was saying, "I'm not going to be singing Satisfaction when I'm 50!" and now look at him, he's 60. Well, immediately we're going to go back to Boston and we got like, two weeks to get our shit together for the big show in America and we have a lot of work cut out for us, but then we're going to play on the Jay Leno show and then I guess some more promotion and then we got like, two weeks off. Sully doesn't have two weeks off, he's got to program the lights. Yeah, then we're going to come back here and do every nook and cranny of Europe

U+R- Are you going to be headlining?
Sully- We don't know that yet. It's tough for us to say because we're trying to work something out with Metallica right now. We took out one of their bands a while ago on our gargoyle tour and they really want to return the favour. Especially Lars, it was his band called Systematic. We took them on tour in America and he just really wants to return the favour. But if not with Metallica, we'll come back over and do club tours or theatres or wherever and we'll see how this record evolves in Europe. There's also a band you guys have called Apocalyptica. They finally gave me a CD of theirs and it's all original and now Dave Lombardo from Slayer's playing drums. I really want to hear this. 4 cellos and Dave Lombardo? What's that gonna sound like? But it's heavy because they put all this stuff through heavy guitar amps. Really like, killer riffs and stuff. So we may do something with them in the future. I may sing on one of their tracks. It just depends.. I just thought it was a very unique thing. I even think people in America would dig it because it's so different. It's not like they're all subdued either, they're all thrashing out on these cellos. It's great.

U+R- So you don't have much time for side projects then?
Sully- No, I don't, man. Godsmack is my number one thing. It's what I care about the most and as much as I love to do little side things and I've thought about it. As a matter of fact, me and Dimebag from Pantera wanted to get something going but it's just the schedules are too crazy

Shannon- People are calling him all the time like Anthrax dudes and Iron Maiden for him to sing and we were just saying that when we were 14, 15 we would have loved to and now it's like, "no, dude. I can't. I just don't have the time."..........

U+R- Well it's been a pleasure
Sully- Yeah, thanks for having us. It's been fun