Shinedown released Threat to Survival on September 18, 2015, through Atlantic Records. Their fifth studio album followed Amaryllis with “Cut the Cord” as its lead single and a darker outlook shaped by the strain of life on the road.
The band had spent 21 months touring before entering the studio. Exhaustion, separation from family and painful vocal nodules for Brent Smith accompanied that workload. In a 2015 interview with Classic Rock, guitarist Zach Myers contrasted the optimism of Amaryllis with the record they made afterward. “This one is darker,” he said. Smith was also tired of presenting an outlook that did not always match their lives. For him, the conflict followed him into the writing sessions. He would think about abandoning the day’s work, catching a flight and seeing his son, then remember the deadlines waiting for him. “During the process of writing, I really questioned whether I was a good dad,” he told the magazine. Making another record meant spending more time away from the person he wanted to be there for.
Smith’s explanation of the album title centered on decisions made under pressure. In the album announcement, he described the instinct to fight or flee and the situations that had shaped the band. He considered it their most autobiographical album up to that point. “Cut the Cord” put its more confrontational side into the lead single, with Barry Kerch’s forceful drumming and group chants supporting Smith’s aggressive vocal. Introducing the song on Facebook, Smith framed it as something listeners could turn to when they felt betrayed and needed the resolve to keep going.
The album itself began with a different warning. “Asking for It” cautioned against treating people badly and assuming there would be no consequences. Smith told WGRD in 2016 that it was the first song written for Threat to Survival. Shinedown could write between 40 and 60 songs while developing a record, but this one remained in contention as the sessions continued. Smith had heard it as the opener from the start, and that is where it stayed. He also identified Cheap Trick and Billy Joel as influences on the track.
There was room to rethink the writing process elsewhere. Smith told USA Today that “State of My Head” developed from a drum track before the other instrumentation was settled. He usually started with a melody; this time, the rhythm determined how he approached the vocal. Smith pointed to that change as an example of the band’s willingness to experiment on the album.
By 2016, Shinedown had found a less solemn way to address the pressures around them. They worked with director Darren Doane on an “Asking for It” video starring four children as the band, navigating encounters with managers, photographers and journalists.
Kerch told TeamRock backstage at Download that they intended to ridicule themselves along with the music business. He had little interest in spending 15 hours filming another performance in a room and wanted something funny enough to hold an audience’s attention. The fictional band’s unpleasant encounters had a basis in reality: some of the insults in the film were comments people had actually made to Shinedown.
