ALBUM REVIEW: EI8HT – Shinedown
On their eighth album, hard rock superstars SHINEDOWN have nothing left to prove. The last twenty years as a band has seen them conquer radio arenas across the world, becoming one of the defining rock acts of the modern era. Their latest album EI8HT refuses to sound like a band settling down into legacy act comfort. Instead it is restless, emotional, and chaotic as it spends eighteen tracks throwing everything at the wall from arena rock, industrial electronics, country rock, cinematic orchestral moments, and enough emotional catharsis to be the soundtrack to an existential crisis. Yet, despite its flaws and an eighteen track run time, this album works.
Album opener, At The Bottom wastes absolutely no time in setting the tone. It is driven by jagged riffs and Brent Smith‘s increasingly venomous delivery. It feels like a deliberate reminder that underneath the polished production and radio success, SHINEDOWN are still capable of sounding genuinely dangerous when they want to. There’s a fun urgency here that immediately pulls you in as it seamlessly crashes into the phenomenal and classic SHINEDOWN sounding Dance, Kid, Dance which is well on course to becoming one of the biggest live tracks the band has in its already impressive arsenal. The pulsing electronics collide with stomping percussion with a brilliantly infectious chorus, creating something that feels tailor made for festival crowds screaming each word back at Smith and co.
This bleeds into the stomping and groovy Burning Down The Disco, which carries over some of the darkness of the previous two tracks and is already setting up the apple cart in terms of this album not obeying the usual rules of an album, which makes sense as Smith growls “lightning in a bottle isn’t quite the same.” The album shifts emotionally with Three Six Five. The bombast strips away as it leans fully into grief, loss and survival. It’s one of the most vulnerable songs SHINEDOWN have written in years, and because of that, it becomes one of the album’s most impactful moments. Smith’s performance is absolutely phenomenal here, balancing restraint and desperation in a way that feels painfully authentic rather than melodramatic.
Young Again continues the melancholic sound as it takes on a more electric sound led by a fun sounding synth. It continues to build before culminating into a colossal sound of whirring synths and hard rock, a combination that shouldn’t work on paper, but SHINEDOWN somehow make this work. As it takes a look back on simpler times and looking at how they’ve gone from one point in their lives to now, it packs another emotional punch as memories from being young flood back into your mind.
Dizzy and Imposter go hand in hand, both sounding similar as the driving force returns to the album, once again providing some emotional moments that don’t quite hit as hard as what has come before a burst of hard rock with Machine Gun. Outlaw sees SHINEDOWN embracing their Southern-rock influences as they blend dusty Americana swagger with the band’s trademark intensity. The stomping groove and rebellious attitude combine with themes of isolation, survival and defiance with Smith delivering every line like a man backed into a corner. It’s gritty, theatrical and unapologetically larger-than-life, exactly the kind of ambitious curveball that makes EI8HT such a fascinating listen.
Safe And Sound explodes with the kind of euphoric, fists-in-the-air energy that SHINEDOWN have practically patented at this point as it pulls the record back toward euphoric territory as it is built around gigantic hooks and soaring melodies designed for arena singalongs with enough emotional sincerity to stop it feeling formulaic. Searchlight follows this track with a more subdued sound, highlighting this album’s refusal to be predictable for any longer than five minutes. The Southern swagger and steel guitar should feel out of place on a SHINEDOWN album, yet somehow, the track works because the band committed to it entirely. There’s no irony, no half arsed experimentation. They throw themselves fully into the atmosphere of the song, resulting in an unexpectedly enjoyable moment.
By the time Bear With Me and Deep End arrive, the album does feel like it is started to buckle under its own weight. They aren’t bad tracks by any means. Yet they don’t have that feel other tracks do as they lack the urgency, the emotional bombast becomes repetitive as they chase the same towering crescendo formula, leading you to think that some of the fat could have been trimmed.
Killing Fields is arguably the album’s heaviest moment, drenched in menace and frustration, with jagged riffs colliding against Smith’s increasingly venomous vocal delivery. There’s a darkness here that recalls The Sound Of Madness era SHINEDOWN, but viewed through a mature lens. It’s not youthful anger anymore, it’s exhaustion. Resentment. Emotional collapse dressed in distorted guitars and towering hooks.
You could easily finish the album here, but then you see there’s still four more songs left, which starts to feel a slog and the bloated nature of the album comes to the forefront. Back To The Living is triumphant and euphoric but you can’t help but feel it is treading a familiar path by now. Wide Open and So Glad That You Asked opt again for the more subdued moments but see SHINEDOWN becoming victims of their own words here as you can’t help but think that “lightning in a bottle never strikes the same”.
The sweeping orchestral music of final track, The Pilot blends together beautifully with a soft acoustic guitar. It strips back the overwhelming scale of the record and allows a more reflective and vulnerable sound to take centre stage. It is atmospheric, emotionally charged and cinematic in sound, proving that SHINEDOWN don’t always need to rely on a classic hook sound to leave an impact as the record ends on a nice reflective moment rather than bombast.
SHINEDOWN could have made another safe rock album and comfortably dominated radio for the next two years. But there’s something deeply admirable about hearing a band over twenty years into their career still sounding this ambitious. There are moments that linger a little too long which takes away the album’s impact a little, but instead, EI8HT succeeds because it feels emotionally honest. Beneath the polished surfaces and arena-sized hooks lies a band still desperately trying to connect, with themselves, with each other and with the audience hanging onto every word. But from beginning to end, it is undeniably alive.
Rating: 7/10
EI8HT is out now via Atlantic Records.
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