Godsmack - Faceless

There's no reason for me to have a problem with Godsmack. They may have taken their name from the title of one of Alice In Chains' songs, and hey, so what if their logo is similar to AIC's sun logo. And so what if Alice in Chains is one of my favorite bands and they are gone and their imitators, Godsmack, live on. No reason at all for me to be bitter. Because I really don't have legs to stand on anymore (They had me at "Voodoo"), because Godsmack is a pretty decent band that just put out a pretty decent album. For the teenager in us, we get some fairly vague yet nail-on-the-head moments with lyrics like "Decisions made from desperation/ Internal instincts craving isolation/ For me to grow... Fell into a river of illusion/ Drowning in a self-induced confusion" ("Re-Align"), which I really appreciate. For, after all, I like vagaries when coupled next to some definitely SLAMMING "rawk" sounds, and that's what Godsmack gives me. It's angry, it's loud, it's Ozzfestive and it's primitive hard metal that's been hammered out into something malleable enough for those of us who don't really dig Pantera anymore, et al. If you need some decent crunch, here's your album. But there are skippable tracks, no doubt. "I Fucking Hate You" is so 9th grade poetry in alternating capital letters and lower-case letters. While it does the trick in securing Godsmack in the pantheon of teen angst, the band is capable of better and I think that they are aware of it. Faceless reeks of over-exposure to angst that makes the band (who are really good) teeter just on the edge of staying true to a formula that the kids at Hot Topic won't reject. With tracks like "Dead and Broken" and "Straight Out of Line" we see that Godsmack are a hard rock band, but the ethnic-sounding, drum-skittered-driven track "Serenity" prove that Godsmack are more than just a spot at Ozzfest, a poster on a teenager's wall, but just that they haven't gotten up to their potential yet. And if you're the cousins of Alice In Chains, you've got big shoes, at least in my book, to fill. [www.voodootribe.com]