Review Summary: Shinedown's Us and Them is a step up from the monotonous Leave A Whisper, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
In the year of 2003, hard rock quartet
Shinedown saw mild success with their debut release Leave A Whisper. With the help of the single 45, it made its way to 53 on the Billboard Hot 200 chart. With a first listen to such a successful song, I found it to be a great tune with a hook that, for some reason, stayed in my head for weeks upon end. However, I listened to the rest of the album and realized all 12 tracks sounded just like that. This debut album wasn't bad, by any means, but it was very simplistic with not many differences between each song. The production quality was subpar and it was, all in all, a musically weak album.
"But you said this was a review for Us and Them, not Leave A Whisper." I'm getting to that. Shinedown's 2005 release Us and Them fixed a lot of the problems that existed within the first record. Us and Them still had the cliché hard rock sound that haunted the early to mid 2000s, but overall production quality was much better and the album was definitely way more multifaceted than Leave A Whisper. The lyrics had a lot more depth to them and all of the musicians - Brent Smith (vocals), Jasin Todd (guitar), Barry Kerch (drums), and Brad Stewart (bass) - proved that they had a lot more talent than they were letting us hear in their first release.
This album begins with an all spoken track called "The Dream." It has nothing to back it up (i.e. ambiance, music, etc.) so it's a little dull, but it sets the tone for the album and leads right into "Heroes." There's nothing really noteworthy about the first real song on the album except for the fact that it has some of Brad Stewart's best work on the album. The intro of the song does its job and grabs your attention, so you can hear Brent Smith belt his powerful vocals.
There were a few songs on this album that were reminiscent of Leave A Whisper. It is possible to say that they were too reminiscent. Songs like "I Dare You" and "Begin Again" followed the exact same template that the majority of the songs on Shinedown's first album did, therefore giving it that same feeling of sameness. These two songs in specific were weaker points on the album, but were made up by the fact that the rest of the LP had a great level of variety.
A couple of songs that stand out the most on this album are "Save Me" and "Lady So Divine." The former was the chart topping single from the album and it didn't reach the top for no reason. The song opens with a simple yet satisfying bass line from Brad Stewart, which is immediately followed by eerie notes on the guitar from Jasin Todd. The entire song is performed with this gloom that plays into the lyrics well. It also is one of Brent Smith's strongest moments on either of Shinedown's first two albums. During the bridge when he sings, "The hardest question to answer is why," he does it with such intensity that chills ran through my spine when I heard it. It is definitely the greatest song on the album. "Lady So Divine" is Shinedown's longest song to date, being just over seven minutes long. The running time was stretched with amazing guitar work on Jasin Todd's part that bridges the mysterious sounding song.
Us and Them was a good album with some exceptional tracks. While it still had that missing something, it was a step up from Shinedown's first album and served as a message to listeners that this band had more potential that we had yet to see.
