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ON THE COUCH WITH: Seether

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Hey Sean, how’s it going?
Seether – Sean: Hey mate, I’m good, I’m just sitting around in a dress & tiara drinking a few beers after a show we’ve just done.

Access All Areas.net.au: You have been on a non-stop tour since the release of your third record “finding beauty in negative spaces”, how are things going at the moment?
Seether – Sean: Yeah things are good, we’ve been really busy for the last year & a half pretty much & things are good. We’re on tour still which is cool cause we love to play live & we love to play our new songs from the new record. We’re really happy with the material we were able to put out & it’s just good fun times man.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well let’s talk a little about the record, it’s the bands third record, you spent several months with the writing & recording & then delay in release, once the record was finally out was it a relief for you guys?
Seether – Sean: Yeah definitely, we spent a fair amount of time writing & recording the album & then went through a few issues & fights with our record label over the release, but it finally came out. The thing with the release is that it’s something tangent that you can look at & to see our work out on the shelves in stores is just really cool. The best part of course, is that we get to go on tour where we have so much fun, so its been good & we’re looking forward to the times ahead.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the record, you seem to have kept the hard-rock edge with the known melodic touches along the way, is this a sound you guys have been looking to progress through your records?
Seether – Sean: Yeah we thought it may be a good direction to take with the new record, to kind of really cement the Seether sound. We did a few things different this time, during the time off between records a member of the band left who had been really picky & really held us back in our song writing. Once he departed, we felt really good & fresh as we were able to write some really good songs, with some good harmonies in our songs to really have fun & to us harmonies really make the songs, like how say the beatles made their songs well you know, so the record is full of songs that we like & hope our fans like.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the record, you received some success with the singles “fake it” & “rise above this” going no. 1 on the US modern rock charts. How did you guys feel about having such success with these songs?
Seether – Sean: Oh yeah, I was blown away how well these songs did. The first one we put out was the song “fake it” & to us that was just a real quirky song that we didn’t think would do well but it went no. 1 on the chart & that blew us away. We then put out the more meaningful & darker song “rise above this” which also went no. 1 which surprised us, but we felt it deserved its status. We really appreciate the success we have & it’s pretty much due to our fans, so anything we do we really appreciate.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the success of the singles & the records, being from South Africa do you feel this success is a little more special as your country isn’t really known for producing rock music?
Seether – Sean: Well sort of, as we’re kind of an ambassorder type band for the country in rock music, so we feel proud when we do well. The thing is, we’re really the first rock band from the country to be sourced & signed to a label, which is really huge for us. In our country we had to fight to get noticed as people really didn’t support us that much, but since we made it it’s all changed. We’ve recently been nominated for the first-ever MTV Africa awards for best band & best rock band, so it’s a surprise to us due to the past of the band in our country, but we know that we will win over their support someday.

Access All Areas.net.au: Now over the years as a band, I know you have had several setbacks in lineup changes & certain limitations due to the wants of your record label. Do you feel these setbacks over the years have held you guys back or do you feel you have managed to work through the setbacks to be a stronger band?
Seether – Sean: Well it’s really the mentality of “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger” & I see that with every fight or battle we’ve had. Whether its been with struggles with the record label or personal problems we have always managed to struggle through & make the best of the situation & made ourselves stronger as a band. I feel personally that we could have done a few things differently had we gotten the full freedom from the label, but you know it’s just how things have turned out & we feel like things are the best they could be for us, so we’re rolling with it & seeing how things go.

Access All Areas.net.au: Now you are coming up on ten years as the band Seether, are there any plans for any special releases for the anniversary?
Seether – Sean: Yeah I think we may be putting together a compilation release to put out for our anniversary, but we’re still talking it over with the label. We’d like to be able to put together some material from our old days, back when we were Seren Gas, when we started up as just a few friends looking to make rock music, so we’d like to be able to put them out for our fans. We’d also like to do a DVD which documents our past to show where we came from to where we are now & we hope to be able to do this to really show just how far we’ve come in the last 10 years.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well moving onto the live front, you have been touring immensely on the back of the new record, how has your tours been going & have you had good responses to the new material?
Seether – Sean: The shows on the tour have been really great, we’ve had some really great crowds & some great responses. We’ve been on tour for about 12 months now almost & we’re gearing up to come down to Australia in the next few weeks. With our shows, we’ve really gone away from the rehearsal & to just the shows, I mean back in the day when we had to fight to keep a show we’d rehearse for about 7 hours in a day, but now as things are easier we just let the shows create their own kind of chaos & we love to play this way.

Access All Areas.net.au: In november you will be returning to Australia for your second & largest tour to date. Are you looking forward to coming back over to Australia?
Seether – Sean: Well the thing is, the last time we toured I honestly didn’t want to get on the plane to leave the country I had that good a time. We are so looking forward to coming down to Australia in November as it will be great to be able to get back down & see all the people we made friends with last time we were there as well as play some great live shows.

Access All Areas.net.au: With the shows while down here, will you be playing many of the songs off the new album or only a few mixed in with older material?
Seether – Sean: Well with the tour of Australia, we will probably play a lot more new material than we would do in say America as we don’t have as much of a release down in Australia. Over in America we have the singles pushed out so the fans get to hear a lot more over there than down in Australia & we honestly feel that the labels really mis-market the releases by pushing so much into North America. Getting back to the question though, we will also be playing a lot of old material for the fans who know & love us as there are so many great Australian fans we can’t wait to come & play to.

Access All Areas.net.au: Finally, having been to Australia previously, do you have any good memories from touring?
Seether – Sean: Oh definitley, its pretty much the people, the shows & just the place in general. With Australia, it’s really a lot like South Africa in climate, culture & even slang. You find when South Africans leave home the first place they come is to Australia, so not only do we get a bunch of great shows, we also get a sort of home feeling when we’re down in Australia. I mean we met some great people who we can’t wait to meet up with again & we are really looking forward to getting back to play the shows when we get down there in November.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well I’d like to thankyou for your time today, I hope you have a great tour of Australia & I hope things continue to go well for you guys in the future, do you have any last words for the Seether aussie fans?
Seether – Sean: Yeah, well firstly, thankyou for the interview, it’s been great talking with you. Secondly, to our fans, thankyou so much for your ongoing love & support, you know who you are & we love & appreciate the messages we see on the boards & stuff & we know you can’t wait to see us, so thankyou & we will see you all soon.

Interview By: Ben Coby.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Shaun Morgan is a changed man. For the front man/guitarist and principal songwriter in hard rock frontrunners Seether, a new outlook on life and music has resulted in Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces (Wind-up). Easily the South Africa-bred, L.A.-based hard rock band’s strongest and most innovative studio offering yet, Morgan and his bandmates – drummer John Humphrey and bassist Dale Stewart – have delivered a succinct album built from twelve superlative songs.
Cherry-picked from the sixty tunes Morgan brought to the band and producer Howard Benson (My Chemical Romance, Three Days Grace), the concise end-product affirms Seether is boldly inventive and on their A-game. With no fewer than five potential singles, “Fake It” – the infectious hard rock smash that launches the disc – is front and center. Taking aim at the plastic people that share the Los Angeles landscape with Morgan in his adopted hometown, the track was built around a swing drumbeat and is driven by a surging, inescapable riff.

Ironically, Shaun never expected the song to be a single, and says it almost didn’t make the record. “I originally wrote it as a joke,” the Johannesburg-area native admits. “But there was something I found endearing about the song. And the more we all started to listen to it, the more we realized it had to be the first song off of the record. And I like it because it’s got a different kind of feel to it. It’s a catchy song, but in a good way.”

“We wanted to create songs that are a little different,” Morgan continues. “At the same time, there is nothing on this album that would make people go, ‘Whoa. I can’t tell who this band is.’ They can’t say we’re doing something too dissimilar. If fans are concerned that we’ve gone all pop, I assure you we haven’t. It’s not like “Fake It” is a complete departure from what we’ve done before.”

What Seether has done since 2002 – when it released its U.S. debut Disclaimer – is capture the attention of music fans across the globe with its epic riffs, thunderous rhythms and conscience-invading choruses. Certified gold the first time out by the RIAA on the strength of radio favorites like “Fine Again” and “Gasoline,” a reworked version of that album (known as Disclaimer II) went platinum when a new rendition of the ballad “Broken” which became a Top 20 pop hit.

Seether’s success carried forward with 2005’s Karma and Effect, which debuted at #8, going platinum and boasting hits like “Truth,” “The Gift” and “Remedy.” Although the latter topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart for eight consecutive weeks), it was a considerably darker effort than its predecessor( s). “That album was really dim and really heavy and acerbic because we were trying to get away from the ‘Broken’ connection,” Morgan admits. “We wanted to take back our identity.”

This time out, there’s still plenty of heavy rock music to be found. For starters, Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces hosts the cathartic, scream-driven “Fallen” and the vitriolic, angst-laden seven minute “No Jesus Christ.” But Morgan admits, “I wanted to write songs that were more melodic this time around,” he continues. “I’ve always loved the Beatles and I’ve loved pop music – which is, by definition, music that you can remember and whistle or sing along to.”

“We wanted to experiment. And because it was just the three of us [guitarist Pat Callahan exited in 2006] there were fewer minds involved to stymie or halt the whole process. I didn’t always feel the need to scream as I might have in the past and I felt like I could use sitars if I wanted. And I felt like I could explore as much of the melodic side of myself as I wanted while staying true to what Seether has always been about.”

The most evident example comes with “Rise Above This,” an enduring song Morgan wrote about his brother Eugene in advance of his tragic death this past August. With it, Seether sounds unexpectedly and ironically optimistic, unveiling a bona fide crossover smash-in-waiting that should throw fans for a loop in a good way.

“I used to think more about what the fans thought, but ultimately I wound up stunting myself creatively,” Morgan explains. “The point of being a musician and writing music and being in a band is that I can write an optimistic-feeling, accessible song if I want. Even though it wasn’t written about an optimistic experience, I opted to see a positive in the situation. Rather than my usual reaction, which would be to get all piss-y and moan-y about it.”

Bolstered by that creative freedom, Seether is armed with a bevy of potential chart contenders. From the highly-charged roar of “Like Suicide” to the soaring, reflective drive of “Breakdown,” the men in Seether attribute much of the vibe on Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces to the project’s producer.

“I love working with Howard Benson,” Seether’s brainchild exclaims. “He’s amazing at what he does. It’s the first time in my life that I allowed myself to trust a producer. In the past, we’ve had some that seemed to have an ulterior motive, whereas with Howard he’d tell me what his motive was at the outset. He’s an honest guy from Philadelphia. When he takes the raw material away and he comes back with it and it’s polished, I almost always think he’s done an amazing job. Of course the songs start with me. But its very much teamwork. And he can bring a song to a different place.”

If much of Shaun Morgan’s outlook and approach to his song craft has become lucid after his August 2006 rehab stint, he admits he’s still just a man with primal urges. Hence “FMLYHM,” an abbreviation for the chorus to what is clearly Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces most animalistic (and amusing) track. It’s a tune both men and women alike can identify with, even if its salty language sabotages any chance to hear it on the airwaves. “With “Fuck Me Like You Hate Me,” Morgan explains, “I was allowing myself to be a male and at every point in a man’s life, I’m sure that idea comes to him. I just thought it was a funny thing to say. It’s obviously not one of the higher brow songs on the record. But I think it belongs there, if only to remind me not to take myself too seriously.”

From a sonic standpoint, “Walk Away From The Sun” is equally ballsy and unconventional. With its unique acoustic introduction matched by a drum machine, the song is distinctive but still resides with the boundaries of what Seether can be. Morgan says he has had the music for the disc’s finale for five or six years. “I never got around to finishing it,” he confesses. “That was one of the songs that I finished in rehab. And when I came out it sort of fell into place. Everything just worked. And John came to me and said, ‘Man that sounds really grown up.’”

To which Morgan explains the significance of Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces. “At some point in my life I decided to see the good in the bad,” he admits. “I was driving home from the studio one day and the title hit me. It’s an ambiguous art euphemism. Growing up I was told the negative space in art is as important as what the objects are. But it has a double-sided meaning. Kind of like, I lost my leg but I still have another one. Or, my girlfriend left me and took all the furniture, but I still have my guitar and a mattress.”

As for his ultimate goal with Seether’s third studio disc for Wind-up, Morgan concludes, “I wanted it to be as powerful as one of those live albums, with nine singles on it. And that’s a product of condensing sixty tunes down to twelve. And then we worked extremely hard on those twelve to make them really good songs. I wanted to have an album that was that powerful, something that I was really proud of from start to finish.”

Mission accomplished.

www.seether.com

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