Shinedown kicked off 2025 with the release of two new songs, "Dance, Kid, Dance" and "Three Six Five," and they've been working on an album to follow 2022's Planet Zero. Coming off of Planet Zero and 2018's ATTENTION ATTENTION, which were Shinedown's most conceptual records, the band's next effort is going to be, as frontman Brent Smith describes it, more "traditional."

"All I mean by that is these songs aren't linked to one another," Smith tells ABC Audio. "This next Shinedown record is a collection of songs."

"They're all gonna live and they all belong together, because we say they belong together," he laughs.

Without having to think about how a song might fit into an overarching narrative, Smith and his bandmates are simply focusing on writing the absolute best songs they can.

"We have to go off of what's the melody, what's the message, what [is it] about this tone or this drum beat or this guitar or this lick that makes us go, 'Out of everything you just played, that's bad a**,' and kind of following that," Smith explains. "Like, where's the stuff that's really great?"

That approach, though, has led to the band members continuously coming up with what they feel is better and better material, leading to an elongated writing and recording process.

"Originally I wanted the record to come out in July," Smith shares. "Then, honestly, two, three songs got written and I was like, 'Hang on a second, these are really, really good, and we kinda need to go down another path.'"

In between working on the new album, Shinedown will launch the summer leg of their U.S. tour in July.

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