20 years to be in any game is a long time and these guys are not letting up. With a passion for music that carries their broken hearts on wide wings, they continue to drive on with conviction and power.
When Seether moved over to the USA they left their family and country behind to look towards a gasoline-powered future. Seether took their name from a Veruca Salt song that they later covered on “Seether 2002-2013”.
They didn’t reinvent themselves but they became an entity whose reach began to extend to so many people with their six-gun quota. Over the years they managed to create riffs that are instantly recognizable and melodies that are easy to get along with. Balancing the music the heartfelt lyrics often come from a dark place that speaks to many when listened to, and even if not, they fit it well enough to create sonic art that could be enjoyed. In their catharsis, we found comfort.
The album cover is quite a dark scene. An almost tortured mind driven under by uncertainty and weakness but possibly having had the potential to be bright. It was created by a fan, Richard Harden. The band liked the artwork so much they put it on the cover. That must be a fantastic feeling to have your work appreciated like that by a band you revere. For an album that is a celebration, this is quite a dark album cover.
This is one of those albums that doesn’t deserve a score as it is a collection of what we have heard before. No new songs to delve into. Depending on when you became aware of the band you’ll have appreciated the songs up until now. It’s great that their work has achieved as high acclaim as it with their songs achieving chart success but sometimes there are songs on an album that are popular to yourself and not to the world. Each album they have sourced them from would’ve had a certain style about them that we appreciate on an individual basis. Commercially successful songs sometimes lack the grittiness that can often be enjoyed more because they are not played as often on the radio. Everyone will have their own favorites but at least herein we can make our own charts.
This album will then appeal to those who have not encountered the band before and want to hear some of the commercially best they have put out. The songs themselves are great pieces of music and you can appreciate them for what they are. If you are already a fan and have their albums, this will be more of a collector’s piece rather than something we can reflect on further.
The number of songs taken from each album:
Disclaimer and Disclaimer II – 4 songs
Karma and Effect – 3 songs
Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces – 4 songs
Holding on to strings best left to fray – 2 songs
Seether 2002-2013 – 1 song
Isolate and Medicate – 3 songs
Poison the Parish – 2 songs
Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum – 1 song
We are looking forward to getting another twenty years out of this band!
- Fake It
- Remedy
- Fine Again
- Broken
- Words As Weapons
- Country Song
- Let You Down
- Rise Above This
- Weak
- Tonight
- Nobody Praying for Me
- Careless Whisper
- Truth
- Gasoline
- Betray and Degrade
- Breakdown
- Same Damn Life
- The Gift
- Driven Under
- Dangerous
Seether: Facebook
Release Year: 2021
Label: Craft Recordings
Category: EP
Country: South African
Reviewed by Byron Lotz
