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Shannon Larkin

Godsmack, Another Animal

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Godsmack’s man behind the kit has come a long way from his early days as a drummer. Born in Chicago, Illinois on April 24, 1967, Shannon Larkin's drumming career began not long after, and went on to include numerous bands and world tours. Throughout his career he has played with Wrathchild America, Souls At Zero, Amen, Snot, Godsmack, and, most recently, Another Animal.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Larkin played with numerous bands and reached a moderate level of success. After slaving away behind the drum set for more than a decade, he was finally given his shot at playing with a multi-platinum-selling artist. The call from his old friend and vocalist of Godsmack, Sully Erna, to replace Godsmack's original drummer, Tommy Stewart, came in 2002, just as Larkin had nearly given up on his dream of becoming a rock star to enroll in community college and become a hairdresser. Erna offered him a spot with no audition, and Larkin jumped at the chance, joining Godsmack in the studio to record their upcoming album, Faceless.

But just because their was no audition, didn't mean Larkin didn't have to prove his mettle. While Larkin laid down all the drum tracks on Faceless, it was Erna, himself a drummer, who wrote the majority of the drum parts. The album proved to be Godsmack’s most successful and was nominated for two Grammy Awards. It wasn’t until four years later that Godsmack released their next album, IV. This time around, the recording of the album proved to be a more rewarding experience for Larkin, as he and the rest of the band took over the majority of the writing duties from Erna. Newly empowered, the musicians of Godsmack recruited Ugly Kid Joe vocalist Whitfield Crane and rerecorded the leftover tracks from the IV sessions under the name Another Animal. Here Larkin's energetic playing and endless creativity are on full display, just as they are in Godsmack, where both of the full-length albums he performed on, Faceless and IV, have reached #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and have sold millions of copies.

—Greg Dawson

Vitals

• BandGodsmack, Another Animal
• Date of BirthApril 24, 1967
• FactoidLarkin played drums on Vanilla Ice’s 1998 album Hard To Swallow.
• Quote“Visually, nobody is better than him, you can’t put on a better show than that kid. God put him on the Earth to perform as a drummer, period.” —Sully Erna (Vocalist of Godsmack)