A lot of equivocating and elaborating followed Godsmack‘s declaration in 2023 that it’s ninth album, Lighting Up the Sky, would be its last.
And now, as the Boston-formed heavy rock troupe prepares for the release of its new Live at the Mohegan Sun album, next Friday, May 1, and this summer’s Rise of Rock World Tour, frontman Sully Erna tells Billboard that there is indeed more to come.
“Definitely there’s gonna be a new record — I just don’t know when it’s coming,” Erna says. “We’ll probably get some new music out by early ’27, I suppose. I’m starting to noodle (on new songs), but it’s a little too soon to say.”
Some significant things have happened since Lighting Up the Sky’s release to bring about Godsmack’s change in tone, none more crucial than guitarist Tony Rombola and drummer Shannon Larkin’s decision to retire from the band following the tour supporting Lighting Up the Sky — “on good terms, but for no other reason than to fulfill their desire to live a more simple and quiet life away from touring,” according to a statement by Erna during April of 2025. Erna said he and bassist Robbie Merrill were “excited to explore new directions.” They filled out the band with Evanescence drummer Will Hunt and Dorothy guitarist Sam Koltun and toured in Europe during 2025.
“Me and Robbie sat down and had a long talk,” Erna recalls now. “We contemplated kind of retiring the band…but we were just like, ‘We don’t really want to stop yet. We feel like we have some gas in the tank. We love what we do.’ (Hunt and Koltun) are strong, great players that really did an amazing job at honoring the music. Their attention to detail is perfect, (and) because the vocals don’t change I really think people will enjoy the music and the brand the same as they have in the past, because that’s really what it’s about. It’s about celebrating the music, celebrating the catalog.
“So we’re like, ‘Let’s run this thing and see how it feels.’ Me and Robbie started this thing together a long time ago; it was just me and him to begin with, now it’s back to me and him. We made a promise to each other in the early days –‘we don’t know what this thing’s gonna be. Let’s just write some music, get in the studio, have fun with it, and no pressure.’ And the thing ended up turning into a multi-platinum brand.
“And now we’re kind of using the same concept. We don’t know if it’s gonna feel good, not feel good, if it’s gonna have longevity or if it’s gonna die next week. But we’ve got some gas in the tank now, so let’s go out there and run it and see how it feels, see how people respond. Who knows; we might get surprised again and have Godsmack 2.0 for the next 10 years running, the second chapter in my life.”
Godsmack will give fans a hint of that next era with a new song before the Rise of Rock tour starts May 7 at the Welcome to Rockville festival in Florida, with Stone Temple Pilots and Dorothy also on board. Erna and company have teamed with Dorothy for a track called “Set Me Free,” which he describes as “an incredibly powerful and really straight-up, bad-ass, boot-kicking rock song. (Dorothy Martin) has a hell of a voice; she’s so cool and smokey and bluesy. We were really up to do a song with her, so we jumped in the studio with Scott Stevens and me producing, and it’s really cool. The voices work really well together. I’m really excited to release that song and have that get out on the Internet and the airwaves and see how people respond.”
Rise of Rock currently has dates booked through Sept. 26, mostly at amphitheaters and with a few other festivals in the mix.
Before that, however, Godsmack will drop Live at the Mohegan Sun via Primary Wave, an album and film documenting the Oct. 26, 2024 concert in Uncasville, Conn., that wrapped the group’s Best of Times World Tour and was its last show with Rombola and Larkin. “It was very emotional,” Erna recalls. “You can see it on our faces, on the audience faces, ‘oh my God, this is it.’ I remember coming to the last song, ‘I Stand Alone,’ and we’re getting to the final chords and my body started to lose it. It was so surreal; ‘the song’s going to be over in the next seven seconds, and I can’t handle it!’ I just remember hugging Tony on stage. It was just wild.”
In addition to the performance, the video — directed by Daniel Catullo — captures Godsmack offstage, including a post-show “retirement party” for Rombola and Larkin. “It’s something I’m incredibly proud of, because it came out so damn good,” Erna says. “It looks amazing, it sounds amazing but more importantly they captured everything, all the emotion. If everyone’s ever been a fan of the band and doesn’t get this, you won’t ever be able to have the proper closure that we’ve had by releasing it.”
During its tenure so far, Godsmack has released six top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, including three that hit No. 1. It’s also logged 13 No. 1 Mainstream Rock chart singles and was the rock artist of the year at the 2001 Billboard Music Awards, along with 16 Boston Music Awards and four Grammy Award nominations. And while he’s keeping the band’s recording future somewhat open-ended, Erna promises that anything fans hear will not stray too far from what they know and love about Godsmack.
“We’ll always be a hard rock band,” he says, “whether we’re gonna go back to the roots and put out a Pantera-style, heavy as f*** record or if we’re gonna continue into this rock ‘n’ roll sunset that we’ve kind of gotten into as we grew and aged and become better songwriters and better entertainers. I personally loved going back to the nostalgia of rock and bringing a little bit more of this traditional rock ‘n’ roll vibe to it, whether it’s high-energy or more ’70s-style rock.
“Either way, Godsmack has established ourselves to be the beast that it is, like AC/DC (doesn’t) waver too far from what they do. A lot of what we honor is always trying to be a good, tough, edgy hard rock band — not metal, not blues, just a straight-up hard rock band that represents big energy. It’ll be interesting to see, with some new players, where the direction goes. Obviously there’s gonna be a new flame, new inspiration, what their backgrounds are about and what they naturally play and how we incorporate that into the writing. It’s exciting.”
