Check Shinedown’s vital signs in 2026, and everything suggests a band in rude health. The Florida alt.rockers have been out there killing it for a quarter of a century. They’re now set to release their eighth album – the cunningly titled EI8HT, loaded with 18 original songs – and surely about to boost their lifetime tally of 22 Billboard chart-topping singles. Contrast that, frontman Brent Smith says with a smile, with the doomy projections and media apathy of the band’s early days.
“Nothing was ever handed to us,” he says. “When we started in 2001, I thought to myself: ‘We’re going to be on MTV and the cover of Rolling Stone.’ That was not the case. Maybe they thought that would make me cower in a corner or give up. It did the opposite. I used it as fuel, man. My job starts when you tell me: ‘No.’”
