Expect a show that’s heavy on the hits when Shinedown stops at the Bryce Jordan Center
Spring 2020 saw Shinedown’s unplugged “Deep Dive” tour go up in smoke when the pandemic hit. It was going to be a rare opportunity for fans to see the hit-making group play a selection of rarely performed album cuts from across their career.
Now three years later, plans for the acoustic tour are on indefinite hold. But fans have seen that Shinedown put the unexpected down time to good use.
Some of the time was spent making the band’s latest studio album, “Planet Zero” (more on that later), but there were other activities as well.
In September 2021, the band released a film, “Attention Attention,” which collects the videos for all 12 songs from Shinedown’s 2018 album of the same name. The album generated four No. 1 mainstream rock singles – “Monster,” “Get Up,” “Devil” and “Attention Attention.” The film, meanwhile, was intended to further elaborate on the album’s themes of overcoming negativity and adversity.
“I think we did our best to kind of visualize (the album’s themes), but we’re not giving too much away,” guitarist Zach Myers said in a recent phone interview. “We’re not really a band that likes to tell people necessarily what our songs are about because I think that ruins it for people. If you have a song that you really love or you really enjoy, and you equate it to a breakup or something that happened in your life and I go ‘This is a song about a ham sandwich,’ I don’t like those things. I think you can pull the curtain back a little bit, but we don’t want to let everybody know exactly how the sausage was made.”
In addition to getting the “Attention Attention” film finished, singer Brent Smith and Myers reactivated their acoustic-oriented duo Smith & Myers, releasing a pair of acoustic-oriented EPs (“Smith & Myers Vol.1” and “Vol. 2”) and doing a pair of short tours.
And the band as a whole (which also features Eric Bass on — what else? — bass and Barry Kerch on drums), of course, finished their seventh studio album, “Planet Zero,” which was released last April.
Myers offered a few thoughts about the album.
For one thing, it stands as the most topical album in the career of Shinedown, which formed in Jacksonville, FL in 2001 and has become one of mainstream rock’s most popular bands, thanks to such hit-filled albums as “Us and Them” (2005), “The Sound of Madness” (2008) and “Attention Attention,” which continued Shinedown’s unbroken string of platinum or gold-certified albums.
While as a duo, Smith and Myers had some topical content in their original songs on “Volume 1” and “Volume 2,” Shinedown has, with only rare exceptions, avoided social commentary – until “Planet Zero.”
“When we started making this record, we were at a time when it was very uncertain. When we started writing, the world had just shut down,” Myers said. “So when you’re in a place like that, you have all of this other stuff around you. You have people stating opinions that aren’t necessarily political or racial or anything else, and they’re still getting canceled for their opinions. So there was a lot to write about.”
Indeed, tracks like “The Saints of Violence and Innuendo,” “No Sleep Tonight,” and “America Burning,” examine the divisions in today’s society. But Shinedown also offers moments of hope and spotlights the need for unity on songs like “Daylight,” “Dysfunctional You,” and “A Symptom of Being Human.”
A unique twist in the album is the introduction of a robot-like character, Cyren, who acts as a narrator and guides listeners through the album and helps connect the themes of the songs.
Musically, “Planet Zero,” which was produced by Bass and recorded primarily at the band’s own Big Animal Studio in South Carolina, has a more raw feel than some other Shinedown albums, and Myers thinks fans will hear that the four band members are very invested in the new songs.
“What I think you’re going to take away from it musically is that it’s a very inspired record,” Myers said. “Musically it’s some of my favorite (work) we’ve done. I think we pushed ourselves as musicians.”
Shinedown began the touring cycle behind “Planet Zero” with a run of dates in spring 2021, followed by a summer tour. Now the band is doing another headlining tour, which stops at the Bryce Jordan Center on Saturday with Three Days Grace and From Ashes to New. The show, of course, will feature some of the new songs, but the rest of the set is likely to be heavy on the hits. Choosing what songs to play has become increasingly challenging, as their total number of singles approaches 30.
“It gets a little dicey. When you try to make a set list, you want to make everybody happy,” Myers said. “Obviously, you have your, we call them the four corners. You’ve got to play ‘Second Chance.’ You’ve got to play ‘Simple Man.’ You’ve got to play ‘Sound of Madness’ and you’ve got to play ‘Cut The Cord.’ Other than that, you can kind of maneuver around a bit.”
