Is Seether a good band? I ask myself this more than I reasonably should. A fair amount of people like this band and I never heard much bad spoken of them until i started lurking various music focused websites. My opinion had always been that they were pretty good but recently thats been changing as time passes and I hear their singles on my local rock station. So with that in mind I decided to go back and listen to what I felt was their best album: Disclaimer. After a couple listens it became apparent that my opinion changed.
The album starts off very promising with "Gasoline", "69 Tea", and "Fine Again", a series of easily digestible, catchy post-grunge numbers that encapsulate the best of what Seether has to offer on this album. Lead vocalist Shaun Morgan carries the songs exceptionally well with enough passion and a passable range that complements the instrumentals, all coming together to create some radio rock goodness. The music is interesting enough to be rememberable and accessible enough to not throw off the casual listener.
Sadly the album dips in quality greatly after that trilogy of songs. "Needles" is a generic snoozefest, "Pride" is a nu-metal track that attempts to grab the listener's attention with lyrics like " Take it. Break it. Rape it. Forsake it" but fails because of its repetitive instrumentation and tired structure. "Sympathetic" sounds like a Creed song or any post-grunge song that you would hear in a Early 2000's tv show. None of these songs are insulting or awful they're just boring. A problem that many post-grunge acts exhibited and one that stings a bit more in this instance after the album's strong opening.
Its not until the final two tracks: "*** It" and "Broken" that the album picks back up. "*** It' isn't anything special but its aggressiveness injects some much needed energy into the album and helped bring me back into the music. That attention grabbing and aggressiveness helps compliment the next track "Broken" a ballad that even Mom can enjoy. The track is cute (not in a bad way) and sweet, it carries this sense of sincerity that closes the album nicely.
This album needed more diversity, many tracks meander and slog there way through without much impact. Seether show themselves to be capable and those capabilities aren't used efficiently. A Strong start and okay end isn't enough to warrant a recommendation.
