A band that could have walked into any polished studio in America instead chose to convert a warehouse in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Godsmack, the hard rock group from that same state, wanted something rougher for their third studio album, Awake. On October 31, 2000, the record arrived on Universal and Republic, and the gamble paid off immediately. It entered the Billboard 200 at number five, moving 256,000 copies in its first week.
Building a studio in Haverhill
The band had recorded Awake during 1999 and 2000 at River's Edge Productions, the studio they built inside that warehouse. Frontman Sully Erna explained why: the group did not want to relocate to a luxurious facility because it would have dulled the edge of their sound. What they got instead was a record that felt harder, rawer, and deliberately unpolished. That choice shaped everything about how Awake hit.
The album also reached backward. Several songs had been sitting around since before the band's debut, old unreleased material that finally found a home. 'Goin' Down' had appeared on an early release called All Wound Up but was dropped from the major-label debut in favor of 'Whatever.' Tracks like 'Bad Magick' and 'Vampires' came from that same early period, giving Awake a strange mix of fresh aggression and buried history. The album also earned recognition beyond the United States. It reached number nine in Canada and number twenty-one in Austria, while in Germany it climbed to sixty-one and in New Zealand to thirty-eight. The band's sound was finding an international audience.
The title track on rock radio
The title track became the album's engine. 'Awake' dominated rock radio and broke chart records through 2000 and 2001, reaching number one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The song also powered a recruiting campaign for the United States Navy, appearing in the 'Accelerate Your Life' ads. Suddenly Godsmack was not just a band metal fans argued about; they were the soundtrack to military enlistment commercials.
There was a cost to the momentum. Awake turned out to be the last Godsmack album with drummer Tommy Stewart as a full participant. After the record, former drummer Shannon Larkin took over the kit. The lineup shift did not slow the album's commercial run: in the United States it eventually sold at least two million copies and earned double platinum certification from the RIAA.
The stranger corners of Awake got noticed too. 'Vampires,' an instrumental built around spoken-word passages, used dialogue from the television show Mysterious Forces Beyond. That track brought Godsmack their first Grammy nomination. It was a signal that the band could do more than pound out radio singles, and the industry responded. The album's success was also recognized at home. In 2001, Awake won the Boston Music Award for Album of the Year, and the single 'Greed' received nominations for Single of the Year and Video of the Year. The band was becoming a fixture in the local scene.
By the end of 2001, Awake had settled into the year-end Billboard 200 chart at number 55. The warehouse decision had taken a band that refused to soften its sound and turned that stubbornness into a commercial peak. Godsmack never needed the luxury studio; they needed the room to stay loud.
Godsmack never needed the luxury studio; they needed the room to stay loud.