There is a version of this story where Godsmack remain a moderately successful nu metal also-ran, lost somewhere in the churn of downtuned riffs and frosted tips that defined the turn of the millennium. One phone call from a film director changed all of that.

By 1998, nu metal was commercially exploding. Korn's Follow The Leader topped the US charts and sent labels scrambling for anything adjacent. But while peers like Slipknot, Linkin Park and System Of A Down were building serious momentum in that same surge, Godsmack's early releases hadn't lifted them into the top tier. They were good. They weren't yet essential. That gap matters, and it's worth being honest about it.

One Song, One Film, One Chance

The Scorpion King was designed with a specific purpose: move Dwayne Johnson from wrestling megastar to credible Hollywood lead. His cameo in The Mummy Returns had come the year prior, but this was the proper attempt at a breakout. Director Chuck Russell wanted Godsmack to write the theme, and he kept using a particular phrase in conversation with frontman Sully Erna: "he stands alone."

Erna has spoken openly about why that landed so hard. He felt it himself, the particular loneliness of being the person with the vision, carrying the band's direction on his back. Heavy is the crown and all that. The song he wrote from that place, I Stand Alone, introduced something new for Godsmack: harmonies, a bigger melodic sweep, something genuinely anthemic rather than just heavy. When he played it to friends, they'd sit in silence when it finished, then ask him to play it again.

The [crossover between rock music and Hollywood has produced some genuinely iconic moments](/uprise/music/i-asked-arnold-schwarzenegger-if-he-would-do-it-and), and this sits comfortably in that company. The music video, directed by The Brothers Strause, cost Universal around $750,000. The desert scenes were real. Erna actually climbed those rocks. And the day spent with Johnson himself was, by all accounts, the opposite of a hollow showbiz encounter: he was generous, warm, and treated the band well.

What It Actually Delivered

The Scorpion King opened at number one and pulled over $36 million in its opening weekend. I Stand Alone rode that wave to the top of the US Mainstream Rock chart, went Gold, and earned Godsmack two Grammy nominations, for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance. They lost to Bruce Springsteen and the Foo Fighters respectively, which is not exactly embarrassing company to fall short to.

The song was originally meant to be a standalone release. That became impossible. It appeared on 2003's Faceless, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, knocking Linkin Park's Meteora off the top. The album went on to sell over a million copies. Arena tours and a stint supporting Metallica followed.

For [bands trying to make the leap from promising to genuinely cemented](/uprise/music/its-their-first-real-test-as-torchbearers-for-metals-future), the third album moment is always the one that counts. Erna said it plainly: the first record is discovery, the second is expectation, and the third is proof. Faceless was their proof.

The verdict is straightforward. Godsmack were not a novelty act riding a genre wave. They had the material. What they needed was a moment big enough to make everyone else notice, and a wrestler-turned-actor gave them exactly that.