SHINEDOWN Frontman: 'My Son Saved Me From My Vanity And Selfishness'

SHINEDOWN's Brent Smith told Tom Netherland of The Herald Courier that he rode the rails of rock's crazy train as hard as he could until more than a year ago. That is until the birth of his son, Lyric Santana Smith.

"My son is 16 months old," Smith said, "and I've been clean for 16 months. . . I stopped doing drugs. My son saved my life. I was immensely addicted to cocaine and oxycontin. I was being the clichéd rock star. . . Cocaine and oxycontin, I got hooked in real bad, but my son saved me from my vanity and selfishness. I'm lucky to be alive. I wasn't knocking on death's door; I was in the room doing shots with death."

Video footage of SHINEDOWN performing acoustically on April 18, 2009 for "Record Store Day" at J&R Music World in New York City can be viewed below (courtesy of "xOneOfTheGirlsx").

SHINEDOWN has selected the title track from its latest album, "The Sound Of Madness", as the next single from the disc. "The Sound Of Madness" follows "Second Chance", the CD's second single, which recently topped the rock radio charts. Brent Smith told The Pulse of Radio that "The Sound Of Madness" doesn't have the same uplifting message as its predecessor. "People always have a person that they see self-destructing themselves, and at a point in time, you get over trying to make them understand," he said. "And as you help them, they keep constantly just going downhill. And it's this song where it's the person telling the other person, 'You know what? I know that you've gone through all this stuff, I know that it's hard, but I've gone through the same thing that you've gone through.'"