10 Best Rock Music Album Closers Of The 2010s
4. Through The Ghost - Shinedown (Amaryllis)
On 2008's The Sound of Madness, Shinedown ended things with a beautiful, simple song.
On 2012's Amaryllis, they did it again, but better.
Four years after reinventing themselves as a more conventional hard rock unit, Shinedown planted that flag even further into the ground with an album full of well-written, well-performed bangers.
Bully; Unity; Enemies; I'll Follow You; the title track; Amaryllis just kept delivering right up to the very end, where it had one last emotional gut punch for its audience.
Through the Ghost is a vehicle for singer Brent Smith and his incredible voice. Smith effortlessly fires off melancholy lines about a person who has lost their sense of self, musing on how he used to wake up "to the colour of their soul" and how everything is now a "city of dust".
That's some poetry right there.
Add in some nice string arrangements and a even a couple of chiming bells, and you find Shinedown's fullest and most heavily-produced song to date.
As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and the formula of giving Smith a vocal showcase to round out a Shinedown album certainly wasn't broke.