Shinedown is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida, formed by singer Brent Smith in 2001 after the dissolution of Dreve, his previous band. Smith, still under contract with record label Atlantic Records, recruited the band’s original lineup of Jasin Todd as guitarist, Brad Stewart on bass, and Barry Kerch on drums.
Consistent for the first two album cycles, a few lineup changes followed in the late 2000s, eventually stabilizing with Smith and Kerch alongside Zach Myers on guitar and Eric Bass on bass. The group has released six studio albums: Leave a Whisper (2003), Us and Them (2005), The Sound of Madness (2008), Amaryllis (2012), Threat to Survival (2015), and Attention Attention (2018). Shinedown has sold more than ten million records worldwide, and has had the most number one singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts out of any band, with 16.
Shinedown’s music has most commonly been described as hard rock, alternative metal, post-grunge, alternative rock,grunge, and arena rock, with pop and Southern rock influences. In August 2013, Kerch disagreed with more specialized genre ascribed to the band, stating that “We’re just a rock ‘n’ roll band” while conceding that each album did have a markedly different rock sound to them by design. The nu metal label has been applied to the band’s earlier work by journalists on occasion, though the band disputes that term as well.
The band’s first album, Leave a Whisper, largely stayed away from having any guitar solos, something then-guitarist Todd felt was undesirable due to the popularity of nu metal at the time of recording album, though he felt the band was never particularly part of the genre’s movement. With nu metal falling out of popularity by the mid-2000s, they began adding guitar solos more prominently to their music, starting with their next album, Us and Them. Us and Them has also been described as less “grungy” than its predecessor with “more twisted, progressive song structures.”
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