Review Summary: Seether experiments with their style, for the better.
For a little over 10 years, Seether has been a punching bag of mainstream rock. They were a Post-Grunge band hailing from South Africa, and they’ve always played it pretty safe as far as Grunge can go. Singles like “Remedy” and “Words as Weapons” got airplay around the time their respective albums came out, and hell I even still hear them on the radio once in a while. They’re pretty unadventurous tracks, which describes the rest of Seether’s discography up until now. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed any works of theirs before, their 2007 album, Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, I thought was an okay album. Over here on their latest album, they’ve grown past that Grunge style of music and have embraced Hard Rock/Alternative Metal. If you paid attention to any of the latest singles from this album, then you’ve more than likely drew parallels to other bands like Tool or Chevelle, and you wouldn’t be wrong to do so the songs sound very similar, hell I actually thought “Let You Down” was a new Tool song the first time I had heard it. Now I know better but still.
But that’s enough of that, now to actually get into the album. Obviously, as I mentioned before they’ve gone a bit harder and more aggressive on this album, while still keeping that edge and angst in the lyrical content, which has always been a major issue with Seether to me. They don’t need to do that on every single song, even though that’s obviously what Grunge is about, they could’ve eased up a bit. And now that they’ve moved away from that Grunge sound, it makes it that much more embarrassing in all honesty. However, the instrumentals more than make up for it when they don’t sound ripped from other mainstream rock hits. “I’ll Survive” in particular plays up an acoustic to hard hitting instrumentals dynamic very well, and has a pretty solid guitar solo. It’s easily the best track on the album. But it’s followed up with the first single from the album, “Let You Down”. I mentioned it briefly in the first paragraph, and how I thought it was Tool on first listen. This song wears off hard after the first few listens. It’s not bad, it’s one of Seether’s better singles actually. I can’t put my finger on why I’m not enjoying it that much anymore but it’s just an okay track, and it’s still not as bad as the two tracks that come after. “Against The Wall” and “Let Me Heal” play up the same acoustic to hard dynamic that “I’ll Surive” did, but they don’t work nearly as well. The latter of which is just painfully sappy as it spends the majority of the song with the acoustics and painfully angst ridden lyrics, as to be expected from the band really. However the album kicks into high gear afterwards, with “Saviours”. It’s a very hard hitting track. It’s loud, fast, and aggressive, with lyrical content that’s very in your face expressing how you an individual, or in this case, the listener, is not a savior during the explosive chorus. And from there on, we approach the last four tracks of the album (of course ignoring the deluxe edition tracks).
“Count Me Out” and “Nothing Left” which are both singles, are also pretty weak tracks. Just like the first single as I mentioned earlier, they grow off hard. Not bad tracks, not standouts either. Just incredibly boring for the most part. ”Emotionless” is pretty self-explanatory. It’s also in your face as “Saviours” was, but to a much lesser extent, and although having a pretty okay riff redeems the song a little, it just feels really weak in comparison to other tracks. The closer, “Sell My Soul” is pretty soft, with occasional guitars thrown in like any other track here trying to be slow, however it’s a really nice closer, and the lyrics aren’t as groan worthy as some others on here. It’s got a guitar solo that surprisingly doesn’t break the flow of the track in fact I think it adds so much more as the closing track to this album.
After hearing all of this, I’m actually kind of curious and excited to see what Seether does next. It’s a step in the right direction for this band, they could’ve easily just put out another pandering Grunge garbage fire, but they didn’t. They put out a pandering Hard Rock album that hits pretty damn hard at times, despite having flaws and being an inconsistent mess for the first few tracks. It’s worth checking out, I hope they do more with what’s been established here, their next album could be something great.
