Godsmack

On this album, released on Halloween in 2000, Godsmack's dark, macabre metal conjures up visions of Black Sabbath in their prime and Alice in Chains before their decline, with a lot of James Hetfield vocal grit thrown in over the thick rhythmic grooves and bass aggression. The best part: this Boston-based band comes by its grisly images honestly, since frontman Sully Erna is a card-carrying Warlock. Even a breakup song ("Trippin'") is cast in an eerie spectral light, but they open up the Book of Shadows on a song like "Vampires," a mini horror movie-cum-documentary that thrills and chills.

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 mainstr... More >