Shinedown's Brent Smith reflects on 10th anniversary of 'tumultuous' 'Threat to Survival' album

Shinedown's 2015 album, Threat to Survival, turns 10 Thursday. As frontman Brent Smith tells ABC Audio, the story of Threat to Survival is in its title.

"Well, there's a reason why it was titled Threat to Survival," Smith says.

"At the time, it was a labor, and now I can go back and listen to it, because we survived that moment in time," he continues. "It was a little bit tumultuous in regards to just where everybody was in the band. I was going through some really difficult personal issues at that time, as well."

Despite those internal issues, Smith feels that he and his bandmates delivered "some really fascinating songs" with Threat to Survival. It also spawned #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Airplay chart with "Cut the Cord," "State of My Head" and "How Did You Love."

"I can listen to that record now and be like, 'Wow, man, we were pushing the envelope on a lot of things,'" Smith says. "That record had five producers and it had eight mixers, and that was on purpose. We wanted to work with a lot of different people."

Overall, though, Smith is just "glad to have survived" Threat to Survival.

"Some really great stuff came out of it, but, whoo!" he says.

One could argue that Shinedown has not only survived since Threat to Survival, but thrived. They've since put out two more albums, 2018's ATTENTION ATTENTION and 2022's Planet Zero, both of which earned multiple #1 hits, and wrapped their Dance, Kid, Dance arena tour in August.

Shinedown will make their debut at Nashville's famed Grand Ole Opry on Oct. 10.