Worthless: Name Change for Godsmack's new CD

Does anyone remember 1998? I'm afraid to say that I can't really differentiate 98 from 99 from 00 ... and it's not because of drugs or anything, its just that life somehow went groundhog's day for me around this period

(ed.note: a review of FACELESS by Godsmack follows ... and some evaluation of Godsmack's body of work)

Godsmack - Self-Titled: B

One of the things that stood out to me about 1998 was ... well, besides graduating from law school hell ... music from a little band from Boston known as Godsmack

In fact, I can remember hearing the strains of KEEP AWAY on some mediocre MTV reality program that I can no longer remember the name of ... the song was heavy and catchy sounding ... and some things never change, I needed to know who the hell was behind it

I would hear another track from this album called WHATEVER on some wrestling show ... and I liked it too, and figured that ok, I better get serious about finding out who the heck these guys are

Ok, let me say something about the way I acquired my GS collection ... the first two I got for FREE from BMG ... I actually paid 9 bucks for Faceless ... so maybe free makes me happier to listen, and for pay makes me more of a critic

What you notice by listening to this album (even in 03) is that these guys are the product of their environment ... I mean, in the wake of the violent shakedown when the grunge sound just totally IMPLODED ... and yeah you can hear some of the old masters heavy guitar sound: Metallica and Black Sabbath

Concisely, these guys sounded like the next big thing in hard rock, or so I thought at the time --- I will acknowledge it: I am a big fan of Alice In Chains Facelift and Dirt and Stone Temple Pilot's Core ... and I think that I thought GS sounded like the next step to this style of music ... AIC never sounded like that again, nor did STP for that matter

So needless to say, I was happy to see someone willing to play HEAVY, new sounding hard rock in a way that was pretty much straightforward and jam-oriented... Now that I think about it, its like a wing of the "new-metal" sound, I think this style stays clear of the new wave and rap influences ... but only GS seemed to play it this way (ed.note: yes RATM is equally as strong musically, but they have a tight rap component ... now I think Audioslave is the prime example of this style of nu-hard rock)

Ok so back to the debut, the first three tracks are just classic examples of great new hard rock: Moon Baby, Whatever, Keep Away ... Voodoo is another song that got push from radio and MTV, that track has a weird trippy progressive rock rather than heavy vibe ... the rest of the songs kind of show a willingness of the band to go and just jam some heavy music, including instrumental ... and some show big time homage to early AIC, track 8, is that Layne Staley????