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Awake
12/05/2000 1:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Bob Gulla
Spending three quarters of an hour or so blasting the new Godsmack record from a car stereo is like driving through a pummeling hailstorm. From the opening grooves of opener "Sick Of Life" and the throttling title track, singer Sully Erna and guitarist Tony Rombola bruise and batter their way through a barrage of devastating noise and riffs.
Yeah, they sound like many of their antecedents, most conspicuously Metallica ("Awake") and Black Sabbath ("Bad Magick"). But in Erna's voice and Rombola's guitar, 'Smack finds a sound of its very own often throughout the record, especially on the spare, seething "Trippin'" and on the vaguely psychedelic closer, "Spiral." At their best, as on the ultra-cool riff-rocker "Vampires" and the vehement "Greed," the band bridges its fondness for its heroes with a bludgeoning and impressive inspiration of its own. This actual recording, engineered by the band and Andrew Murdock, is a thing of beauty, flattering the sonic intensity with power and dexterity. Godsmack, friends, is here to stay.
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