IV (Godsmack album)
| IV | ||||
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| Studio album by Godsmack | ||||
| Released | April 25, 2006 | |||
| Recorded | October - December 2005 at Spiral Recording Studio in Hollywood, California | |||
| Genre | Alternative metal, heavy metal, hard rock | |||
| Length | 52:37 | |||
| Label | Universal Republic | |||
| Producer | Sully Erna, Andy Johns | |||
| Godsmack chronology | ||||
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| Singles from IV | ||||
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| Allmusic |   |
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IV is the fourth studio album by the band Godsmack, released on April 25, 2006. This is Godsmack's only studio album produced by Andy Johns.
According to Sully Erna: "This is the first time I’ve been totally honest, speaking the truth about real situations," he says. "In the past I was always pointing a finger, whether at myself or someone else, but I’ve come clean with myself and the people I can now love and care about.
This record is about the light at the end of the tunnel, coming out of that funk, recognizing the dark parts of our lives, but committing to finding a way out of them."
With legendary engineer Andy Johns, who worked on such Led Zeppelin classics as "Stairway to Heaven" and "When the Levee Breaks", as well as albums by the Rolling Stones and Van Halen, Godsmack transitions from their metal roots to full-fledged classic blues-rockers.
Recorded at Spiral Recording Studio in Los Angeles, Godsmack had the luxury, for the first time, of writing and recording IV without being on the road or having to rush to meet a deadline. They wrote 35 tracks, recorded 17, and picked the best of them to go on the disc.
"There were a lot of things that happened on this record that were different than the way we worked in the past," explains Erna. "And one of those was me letting go of the steering wheel a bit, allowing the band control over the writing and me stepping away to an outside point of view and coming up with lyrics for what I viewed as another group entirely," he says.
The lyrical themes, about speaking the truth and coming clean, are echoed in "Livin' in Sin", a song that inspired Erna to reveal to his girlfriend his infidelities, a theme he also explores in "The Enemy". "I was blocked for months," he says. "Writing that song opened up the floodgates and made me realize what this record was about."
"Shine Down" was another example of the band wrenching light from dark. "That one's not just a song of hope, but of realistic expectations," explains Erna. "It's about being human and having problems. About not being able to lift your head off the pillow, but knowing there's somebody out there that watches over us and a universe that protects us. I knew this new year would be rocking for us. It's not religious, but spiritual."
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