IN REVIEW: Shinedown - "Planet Zero"

 

You kind of have to hand it to Shinedown; where most of the bands that would be considered their contemporaries have made embarrassing attempts to keep in step with the times and/or retreated back to the comfort of the post-grunge sameness that was in vogue during the genre's collective heyday, Shinedown have tried to achieve something more. Rather than rehashing those tried and true modern rock radio tropes time and time again, this is a band that's not afraid to push their sound into more ambitious directions without fully letting go of that money-making nostalgia. It's a delicate, near-surgical touch that's required to do this whilst maintaining a certain level of success, and that they've managed to do so for the better part of their career is why I still pay attention to their records (and why I haven't kept up with, say, Breaking Benjamin or Godsmack).

However, with seventh album Planet Zero, their ambitions may have exceeded their abilities. On paper, Planet Zero is a grand excursion into our modern times and future societal crises, a 20-track opus that deals in deep dives and hard subjects; this is meant to be received as Shinedown's biggest, most important statement yet. Granted, it is a noble attempt at that, but Planet Zero more often plays out as a surface level, preachy, cliché-riddled exercise in finger pointing; it's intended as a statement on our impending societal and planetary collapses, a vision of a terrifying Orwellian world yet comes off closer to paranoid ramblings and fearmongering.

Musically, Planet Zero is just fine; while there are the prerequisite forays into radio-friendly territory, those obvious singles that appeal to the widest demographic possible (see the title track and current single Daylight), there are splashes of colour spread throughout that distinguish the record from its blander cousin records by inferior groups. Sometimes the two paths intersect, such as America Burning, which bases itself upon a stuttering electronic beat and what sounds like a heavily distorted banjo before exploding into one of the record's stickiest and most incendiary choruses. Dysfunctional You is a standard enough ballad but features a warbly, slightly unnerving melody that does a good job of immersing the listener into the intended headspace. Then, there's Sure Is Fun, which takes a sudden detour into Edge-like guitar work but pulls it out of the obvious U2 arena sized ambitions and airdrops it into an Imagine Dragons-inspired bizarro world that shouldn't work but somehow stands out, although I'm not sure whether for better or worse.

Sadly, the problems outnumber the solutions on Planet Zero, starting with the concept itself. While it appears to be a sprawling rock opera at first glance, it doesn't take long for a cynic like me to see the seven short interlude tracks (totalling a combined four minutes) not as connective narrative tissue but an easy way to pad out the tracklist and get more bang for their buck on streaming services. This is an easier theory to get behind when you consider that these interludes don't really have much to do with the songs they wedge themselves between. Together, they are a vague appropriation of 1984, set in a world where behaviour is monitored, speech and thought are policed, and free will is an error in programming; separate, they're periodic intrusions that kill any momentum the music may have provided the album, annoying reminders of the greater idea Shinedown failed to accomplish.

The thirteen songs proper are admirable enough musically, but the lyrics fall far short of the messages they're trying to convey. Rather than a scathing indictment of our collective apathy and a cautionary tale of the dystopian future we as a society are allowing to become reality, the message here ends up being considerably more ham-fisted. I hate to reduce the essence down to a few lines, but to paraphrase: "We're mad about cancel culture and climate change, so we have to think for ourselves and persevere, oh and don't forget to be optimistic! Hey, by the way, how much did that pandemic suck? Anyway, let's start a revolution or something."

At this point, I don't think I'm in the minority when I say I'm suffering somewhat from doom fatigue; things have been supremely fucked up for a long time now, and the ship doesn't appear intent on righting itself anytime soon. I know full well that our society and world are in sad shape and, as someone who also read 1984 during the pandemic, I can recognize how one could find the work harrowing and even inspirational in its portrayal of our modern times. That said, there comes a time when being yelled at in vague, doom-laden platitudes doesn't help anymore. Listening to Planet Zero's heavy handed, half assed dystopian Ted Talks most certainly didn't help, neither with my societal anxieties nor my opinion of Shinedown.

July 1, 2022 • Atlantic

Highlights Planet Zero • America Burning • The Saints of Violence and Innuendo