★★☆☆☆
For the third time since their formation, alternative rock band Shinedown from Florida has joined the Carnival of Madness line-up, along with Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm, among others. The tour will be bringing back its fiery sets and equally fiery energy to the United Kingdom this winter, starting in Cardiff on 28 January and finishing with a show at the Manchester Arena on 6 February.
This will be an opportunity for Shinedown to convince their British fans of the merits of their fifth album Threat to Survival.
Released last September, the album marked a definite change of style that had already been announced in the previous one, Amaryllis. Instead of the heavy bass of earlier songs like ‘Sound of Madness’ and lead member Brent Smith’s rather unsophisticated but definitely headbang-worthy singing, ‘Asking for It’ – the first track of Threat to Survival – strikes as coming less from the band’s guts than from a known recipe for likeable but weaker rock songs.
Perhaps resulting from an attempt to produce more lyrical rock than the very straightforward ‘Devour,’ the chorus of ‘Asking for it’ is an example of how this album lacks the edge Shinedown was originally appreciated for. Despite this, their popular single ‘Cut the Cord’ retains some of the characteristic aggressive tone of their earlier works.
