Brent Smith and Eric Bass of SHINEDOWN recently performed a few exclusive tunes for the listeners of the Baltimore radio station 98 Rock, and one of them was a special Christmas cover. Check out their version of "Christmastime Is Here", composed by Vince Guaraldi for the 1965 TV special "A Charlie Brown Christmas", below. Last month, Smith revealed that he and his bandmates are building a new recording studio in Charleston, South Carolina. The new facility is being spearheaded by Bass, who is the group's bassist and producer, and will be used to record the follow-up to SHINEDOWN's 2018 album "Attention Attention". In a November 19 Instagram video, Smith stated about the musical and lyrical direction of the new SHINEDOWN material: "I think that it is definitely — there are parts of it that are gonna be a product of what we are all going through this year. But there's also a lot of soul searching on this record. [We're] really, really focusing super, super hard on the lyrical content, and the way that it sounds. "For us to look at everything that's going on right now and to listen to some of the new-school artists and seeing what they're doing with production and what have you, you can always learn from different people," he continued. "It's interesting the state of kind of where music is right now, 'cause there's a lot of it." Brent went on to clarify that SHINEDOWN is "not done" writing the songs for the next LP. "I'd say we're, like, 40 percent there in regards to the writing process," he said. "We'll see by the end of the year where we're at, and then the timeline for getting everything together." Three months ago, Smith told the KLOS radio show "Whiplash" that he and Bass were looking to make a more organic-sounding album this time around. "We've kind of proven that we can make these very large records, these very cinematic, orchestrated records with this wall of sound," he said. "What we wanna try to do with this album is we do want to hone it back down to drums, bass, guitar and vocals and the best songs that we can write and the freshest songs we can write with the most tenacity and the most ferociousness that we can express. So I don't think this time around we're going to necessarily look at the handbook of, 'Let's layer this record like we've layered other records, and let's keep adding to it so that it grows.' I think more the idea of big mono on this album, it's more about stereo and putting all of the sonics down the middle. But you don't have a hundred tracks on a song; you don't take a 22-piece orchestra and bring it in there. We've done that, and we've done those kinds of records, and we love those records, and we love that sound, but I think what we wanna do with this next record is we really want to focus on being a four-piece band, and let's see if we can peel the paint off of the walls with just the fury of the four of us in a room." This past August, SHINEDOWN broke the record for the most No. 1s ever in the 39-year history of the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart, scoring its 16th No. 1 hit with "Atlas Falls". This also marked the band's 17th No. 1 on the Mediabase Active Rock chart and its sixth consecutive No. 1, following "How Did You Love", "Devil", "Get Up", "Monsters" and "Attention Attention". Originally written in 2013, "Atlas Falls" was first made available from SHINEDOWN's vault in March as part of an exclusive song and T-shirt bundle for the band's COVID-19 fundraising effort. SHINEDOWN also recently released its "Live In London" full concert video on YouTube.
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