According to The Pulse Of Radio, GODSMACK singer Sully Erna told Gibson.com in a new interview that the plan for the group’s next album is to take its music even further away from the signature sound of older hits like “Whatever”, “I Stand Alone” and “Straight Out Of Line”. Erna explained: “We feel that on this new record we’re going to write next year, we may just completely take a drastic turn in what kind of style we want to pull out.”

He continued: “I think we want to get away from being lumped into the metal crowd. I think we’re coming a lot more back to our roots now, so on the new record, I think we’re going to try to mix things up and get to a place where we’re not going to hurt the integrity of the band but maybe go in a more rock ‘n’ roll direction.”

Erna told The Pulse Of Radio a while back that he’s always been proud that GODSMACK doesn’t fit neatly into one musical genre. “You know, it is nice to know that we’re creating stuff that’s just kind of living on and that does really well in the active rock stations and the hard rock world and that kind of stuff,” he said. “So we’re in that middle ground. We’re not quite as poppy as like AEROSMITH, but yet we’re not as dark and metal as, you know, the SLIPKNOTs or the METALLICAs or whatever. So we’re kind of like that in-between band.”

On a timetable for its seventh studio album, Erna told Gibson.com: “The band is writing, and I think we’ll probably start really getting together to arrange everything and start recording by early next year — maybe spring.”

Erna, who also plans to do some solo touring next year, said that the band hopes to have the new album “recorded and ready by the end of the year. If not, definitely by the very top of 2017.”

The quartet’s 2014 studio effort, “1000hp”, was GODSMACK‘s first new album in four years and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart.

The band is currently on a North American tour that brings it to Wallingford, Connecticut on Tuesday (October 13), with the trek wrapping up on November 14 in Las Vegas.

Fonte: Blabbermouth.net