To me leadsinger Brent Smith is mostly responsable for the mood and sound changes throughout the album. For me the album's sound marks a nice fusion of "Crossover" and "Old School Metal" with a range that will include everything between "Soundgarden" and "Pink Cream 69 (also PC69)". "Us And Them" was my first Shinedown album and I was pleasantly surprised! I found bits and pieces from sounds of other bands that I like to listen to mixed well and executed brilliantly. Buy it here or better yet, go and buy it now at your local FYE, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart. Buy Us and Them AND Leave a Whisper! My preference is Us and Them but a lot of my friends like Leave a Whisper. Trust me, you wont regret it for a second. If they come in a 200 to 300 mile radius of my house, I'll be there to see them perform! If you get a chance, go and see them! Tour dates can be viewed on their website You will NEVER forget the first time you see them live. I went to Atlanta to see them again on the Sno-Core tour where they co-headlined with Seether and that concert confirmed my love for them. I went to see them open for 3 Doors Down in Columbus, GA a few months ago and they were incredible! The day after the concert I went and bought Leave a Whisper and then I had to painstakingly wait for 3 months for the best X-mas present EVER! Us and Them has literally not come out of my CD player since X-mas and will stay there for a long time from now. But after all its populist concessions, Us and Them isn't it.This is the most underrated band I have ever known. Shinedown definitely have a rewarding hard rock album in them somewhere. It's a confusing song that doesn't do anything for the album's continuity. Elsewhere, "I Dare You" is like a formula and an experiment all in one, suggesting light pop like the Calling even as gritty guitars churn up the reverb. They didn't invent ploddingly urgent post-grunge either, but provided the most recent examples with their string of early-2000s hits. "Save Me" and "Beyond the Sun" are direct descendants of 3 Doors Down. Shinedown have been road-tested, and they prove it again on "Trade Yourself In" and "Yer Majesty." Unfortunately, for most of Us and Them the band still relies too much on formula. Shinedown frontman Brent Smith channels Chris Cornell (or at least Alter Bridge's Myles Kennedy) on opener "The Dream," but the song's grunge theft is forgiven by its airtight groove. The quartet played something like 400 shows over the course of 20, and that gelling process is unquestionably a factor in the more realized hard rock sound of the 2005 follow-up, Us and Them. But it became a hit, certainly due in part to radio support, but mostly because of the Jacksonville, FL-based band's reputation as a great live act. The debut LP Leave a Whisper offered more of the same - a satisfactory sound as rock radio filler, but ultimately pretty calculated. Shinedown's 2003 single "Fly from the Inside" blended atmospheric Alice in Chains references with a lumbering post-grunge sound similar to Nickelback.
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