Today was the first day of Winter Break for me, so obviously I did nothing productive short of this blog. Which I am doing late in the day because I was busy doing nothing earlier. Get over it. Anyway, today's band is...
Seether!
Seether is currently comprised of three members. Shaun Morgan is on lead vocals and guitar, Dale Stewart is on bass and backing vocals, and John Humphrey is on drums. Seether began in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1999, which is apparently just when all the good bands got going.
They have produced seven studio albums; only one in South Africa before they came to America. That was Fragile (2000), by Musketeer Records. That was also the only album they produced under the name Saron Gas, which they were asked to change when they came here because of the similarities between "Saron Gas" and "sarin gas," which is apparently a lethal nerve agent. Anyways, the rest of their albums have been with Wind-Up Records.
First there was Disclaimer (2002), and then there was Disclaimer II (2004). This was not the band's choice. They had wanted to go back to the studio and actually make a whole new album, but Wind-Up was like, "No, we want you to go on this huge-ass world tour and then redo your first album with almost nothing new at all on it! Sound good, guys? Great!" cause they're kind of assholes like that. Just to Seether, though, I haven't read any horror stories from other bands.
Next there was Karma and Effect (2005), which had its own accompaniment of problems. First, Wind-Up wouldn't let them curse on the album. They wanted it to be clean for some reason...excuse me, people, but this is kind of punk rock. Not letting them curse is like not letting them breathe. This is still a pretty hardcore album though; Shaun screams pretty well throughout a lot of it. But! That wasn't the only problem. They also wanted to call this one "Catering to Cowards," which I think is a pretty good title. It isn't hugely offensive and it makes sense. But noooo! Wind-Up made them change it to Karma and Effect. Then... The cover art. The art for this album isn't really that bad. But I don't know what the original artwork was, and maybe that was a zillion times better. Anyway, they'd had lots of issues with Wind-Up by the time Karma and Effect was over.
The One Cold Night CD/DVD combo was released in 2006. This featured acoustic versions of a lot of their songs, and it was really quite good. But again, Wind-Up wanted it to be clean, so certain songs were left off to that end.
Next there was Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces (2007), which was a really good album, and the first Seether CD I purchased. It featured a cover of the George Micheal song Careless Whisper, which I thought was very good. I've read different things about this song, so I'll just share all of them and let you decide which one is true. First, I read that they were requested by Wind-Up to cover a love song because they were playing a show on Valentine's Day, so they decided to pick the cheesiest, least-Seether-like song they could find and cover that. I also read that they just did the whole thing as a joke, kind of just to see if they could. Then I also read that the song has special meaning to the members of the band. That last theory has the least logic to it of them all, I think. Based on Wind-Up's history of being not so nice to this incredible band, I'm inclined to believe the first option.
But moving on. In 2011, Seether came out with their newest album, Holding on to Strings Better Left to Fray. At first listen-through, I was kinda disappointed in this one. It wasn't nearly as hard as their previous stuff had been. But after I listened to it three or four times, I began to really like it, and that's what a lot of other people have said too. There isn't nearly as much anger or screaming in this album as in previous ones, but it still isn't all lovey-dovey pop-music crap. (can you tell I'm not a huge fan of the current pop music scene?)
Moving on. Seether is excellent; they are definitely in my top three favorite bands of all time. But I have to say, I was a teeny bit disappointed in their live show. I was expecting them to be Awesome, and they were good, but they had several things going against them:
1. Who they were playing with. Which sounds dirty, but I mean the other bands. They went after Bullet for My Valentine, which isn't a band I'm really into, but they were really good live. The bass player had sweet jeans, ones that I wanted to steal and wear because they were so cute. Then after Seether was Three Days Grace, which is a band I'm really into. They were amazing live. So, so, so good. Then after 3DG was Avenged Sevenfold, which was also amazing even though I wasn't much into them at the time and I didn't get to stay for the whole of their performance. But what I did see was absolutely awesome. They played Afterlife, and it just blew my mind into tiny little pieces. Synyster Gates has such a talent for the guitar, and M Shadows' voice is just...perfect. (you can probably tell that I'm a huge fan of A7X after seeing them.)
2. Shaun's (and Dale's and John's) lack of utilizing the stage. They just stayed in their little spots for the duration of their performance, they didn't really move around that much. John gets a break because, well, drummers are kind of trapped where they are...can't pick up the drumset and move it around the stage too well.
3. The sound quality. I don't know what was wrong, but something was off with their equipment because it just sounded weird compared to the other bands' sound. And between songs, when they were pausing to remember which song was next or whatever, there was this awful droning sound that was totally weird and out of place. None of the other bands had this problem.
4. None of them spoke! All the other bands would take little intermission-type things between songs every once in a while and say stuff to us, like "you're an awesome crowd," "we love Grand Rapids," "blah blah blah how we came to be band/wrote this song/some other interesting thing," but Seether never did this. I don't know if Shaun, Dale, or John were just having a bad day, or what was going on, but they didn't talk to us. Except right after the last song when Shaun yelled, "Thank you, we were Seether!" over the loud droning noise.
Anyway, I was generally a little disappointed with my favorite band, especially considering how much begging I had to do in order to get my parents to let me go in the first place. And let me tell you, it was a lot of begging. And I went by myself because all my friends are lame and either had other stuff to do that day or just plain don't like Seether. But I still enjoyed the concert overall, and because I felt like it and still do love Seether, I bought a Seether shirt. It features the three members of the band in zombie-form, which is wonderful because it is probably the only time you are likely to see Shaun looking all skinny, cause he's kinda chubby now. Also I just like zombies. I will likely post about them sometime after Music Week is over.
Well, that might be all I have about Seether for the moment...except for some random odd facts that nobody cares about and I don't know why I know these things in the first place. So...yeah. Ta ta for now, folks!
--Razza Ragazza
No comments:
Post a Comment