ANOTHER ANIMAL NOT A SMACK TO SULLY ERNA

Another Animal features all the members from Godsmack except Sully, but after initial shock, the frontman has gotten used to the idea.

What would Godsmack sound like without Sully Erna on vocals? Well, the hypothetical has turned into reality with the group Another Animal. The band features all the current members of Godsmack; Tony Rombola, Robbie Merrill, and Shannon Larkin, and also included is former Godsmack and Dropbox member Lee Richards. Fronting the band but not really taking Erna’s place is ex-Ugly Kid Joe singer Whitfield Crane, and they’re currently touring with Alter Bridge in support of their self-titled debut.

We spoke with Larkin and Crane recently in New York, and they told us Erna wasn’t initially too keen on the band.

“At the end of the day Sully came to us and said, ‘Guys — and keep in mind in the meantime we had gotten the Another Animal thing together, and it really rubbed him the wrong way at first, and he felt like it was egg on his face and he felt we were trying to make some kind of statement, which is totally incorrect. So we sat down in a room as brothers do and we talked it all out, man. And the last thing I heard from Sully was that he heard it on the radio and he told me he was filled with pride when he heard it, and he wished me best of luck.”

Larkin talked about why Another Animal made sense both for the band and for Erna.

“He has been the creative and the workhorse behind the whole Godsmack thing from day one all the way up until now, see. He’s been going for ten years straight, strong. When he came to us, also, he was like, ‘I need to take some time off.’ He goes, ‘I need a couple of years off, guys.’ So, we were like, then this is the perfect time for us to do Another Animal. So, it all ended… Thank god it ended up in a very positive way.”

Another Animal originally started during Godsmack’s tour with Metallica when the Godsmack members would jam with members of Dropbox. The project gained more momentum during the writing of Godsmack IV.

“You know, on the IV sessions Sully got into a dark place and quit coming around. To answer the question, Tony and I finally clicked, musically together. I’m telling ya, we were busting out at least a song a day, sometimes two, in one day, and fully arranging and writing these songs in one day. So we just had so much good material that we couldn’t let a song like ‘Before The Fall’ or ‘Amends’ go to the wayside. When the last song that Tony and I had written together, ‘Speak,’ was the only single on the record that went straight to Number One and stayed there for twelve weeks. So we realized we had something magic going on, and there was no way we were just going to let these songs go to the wayside and never be heard.”