Shinedown's Barry Kerch Reveals Direction Of New Album

02-26-2025

Shinedown's Barry Kerch recently sat down with Brian Colburn of My Weekly Mixtape to discuss a variety of topics including their upcoming Madison Square Garden debut, as well as the musical direction of their forthcoming album. Here are some excepts discussing the record:

ON IF SHINEDOWN 8 IS A CONCEPT RECORD OR NOT: Thank God, it's not a concept record [LAUGHS]. You know, I had a great time with "Attention" [Attention] and "Planet Zero." "Attention" [Attention] was purposely a concept record. "Planet Zero" just happened to become one because of the time period, recording it during Covid. It's just, we were talking about what's going on in the world and "oh, sh*t! We wrote another concept record."

We purposely said, 'can we just get a collection of songs together that are fun and put out a record?' Like an old school rock and roll record? And that's what this this one will be. We've been fighting to do it for years, literally, probably since the Amaryllis record, we've been fighting like, why can't we service a song over here and then service a song over here. And typically you get shot down by, you know, management or the label typically the label at the time. Would you just be like, well, we don't have the funding to push both of these up the chart, and we don't want to, you know. Take away from this one. If we're pushing this, and it becomes a political quagmire and nightmare. And you're like, yeah. But

ON THE DIRECTION OF SHINEDOWN 8: It's exciting.. Is it a reflection of where we're at right now? Sure! But every song is its own little animal, and that's I think that's kind of the excitement of it.

I think there's going to be some fun stuff that comes out that fans are going to really glom onto. And there's there's certain ones I'm thinking of in the back of my head that's like 'it's different. That one's different. But I love it.'
And then there's some that 'Oh yeah, that's just a straight ahead, hit you over the face Shinedown rock song, which I think "Dance, Kid, Dance" is in a lot of ways. Get ready for a ride just like we always do