Lighting Up the Sky is the eighth and final studio album by American rock band Godsmack.

While on tour promoting When Legends Rise, news of a follow-up to the album began circulating as early as August 2019 when frontman Sully Erna revealed in an interview with Canada's iHeartRadio that the band has been preparing to begin the songwriting process for the album.

[4] Several months later, in a video message dated March 23, 2020, and shared via the Twitter account of SiriusXM, drummer Shannon Larkin and lead guitarist Tony Rambola confirmed the band had been writing music for the album.

[5] Shortly after, and during an appearance on Sirius XM Radio's Trunk Nation, Sully Erna admitted that, while his band had been compiling some ideas, he was lacking the inspiration to write anything.

Nonetheless, he assured the fans that the new album would be finished sooner than later: We are gonna focus this year, and I will get it done.

[8] While being interviewed by Pablo of the Minneapolis radio station 93X, Erna confirmed that Lighting Up the Sky would indeed be Godsmack's last body of work but went on to clarify that the band will not be retiring from performing or touring after this album.

Like its predecessors, Lighting Up the Sky is based on Sully Erna's own personal life experiences as he stated during an interview with Audacy: This is a record that even if you don't know the stories behind it -- which is really based on my life, my entire career, the journey that I took from the time I began through all the ups and downs... all the way to appreciating my band again, getting over those hurdles, having so much respect and love for those guys -- to the last song, which is called 'Lighting Up The Sky,' which is the title track.

[2] He did, however, admit that none of that was planned, but rather "this really kind of mystical thing happened" where he felt "the universe wrote this record.

[2] The day after, the band held a private listening party at the Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

[12] During the listening party which was attended by roughly sixty radio and media personnel, the band played five songs from the album while frontman Sully Erna talked about the writing and recording process for each one.