Shinedown: Sound Of Madness - Thoughts

I hadn’t heard of Shinedown up until early 2009, when I heard one of their songs, Second Chance in the Billboard US Top 40. Considering I really liked it, I decided to follow-up on the artist. The first step was to get their album that had Second Chance on it, and give it a listen. That’s how I got around to acquiring and hearing Sound of Madness. From my subsequent online research I learned that Shinedown was a relatively new band from Jacksonville, Florida that came together in 2001. Sound of Madness was their third studio album released in 2008.


• Artist: Shinedown
• Album: Sound Of Madness
• Release Date: Jun 24, 2008
• Genre: Rock

Key Credits:
• Brent Smith – vocals
• Barry Kerch – drums
• Zach Myers – guitar
• Eric Bass – bass

After having heard the album several times over in these pasts months, it’s safe to say that its quite amazing. It’s a nice blend of hard hitting fast rock, and power ballads with emotion; a few tracks even have a alternative rock sound to it. Some tracks appealed to me from the get go, while others grew onto me with repeated hearing. Frankly speaking it’s hard to fault a single track; they’re all quite remarkable. Sound of Madness has to be one of my all time favorite albums, with excessively high repeat hearing value.

- The opening track Devour sounds intense and charged. While having a noticeably swift pace, it’s not unnecessarily hard or putting off. Devour has featured in the Final Destination soundtrack and has been used in multiple WWE events and video games including Madden NFL 09.

- Second Chance is the bands most popular track to date, reaching #7 in the Billboard Top 100 in June 2009. Its slower and has a nice pleasing sound to it; proving that Shinedown is not afraid of taking a risk with different styles.

- The Crow & the Butterfly has a melodious flow to it, while maintaining a sense of power and passion. Listen carefully and you’ll hear the sound of violins; which works really well here. This track is one of my personal favorites.

- Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide is probably the fastest song on the album. It just whizzes past while ensuring to sound great throughout.

- Call Me is a ballad, with very minimal string use, relying heavily on the piano. Brent Smith expertly shows deep passion and emotion in this song. It’s a perfect closing for the album, and another one of my favorites.

While I haven’t gone into details of all the tracks, every single one has something noticeably nice to it. The version I was sampling was the Fan Club Limited Edition. It had 3 additional bonus tracks (I Own You, Energy, and Son Of Sam) which were also quite good. Considering that I was listening to this in 2009, after several weeks of repeated hearing I decided to give it a break, and sample some newer music. A few days ago though, the sound of Shinedown started playing in my head and I was compelled to fire it up again.

My Recommendation: An Aural Extravaganza (The Sound of Madness is the sound of awesomeness)