Seether Confronts Self-Doubt and ‘Genuine Anguish’ on New Album ‘The Surface Seems So Far’
For Seether frontman Shaun Morgan, it’s extra thrilling to be bringing out a untouched copy — The Floor Turns out So A ways, which drops Friday, Sept. 20 — than it’s to be celebrating the band’s twenty fifth per annum.
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It’s been that lengthy since Morgan shaped Seether, as Saron Gasoline, in his local South Africa (bassist Dale Stewart joined in January of 2000 and has remained since). Throughout the intervening time the gang has exempt 9 studio albums and netted 26 govern 10 singles on Billboard’s numerous rock charts, together with 10 Incorrect. 1 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits with the untouched copy’s first unmarried, “Judas Mind.” Seether was once additionally Billboard’s Incorrect. 1 Energetic Rock Artist and Heritage Rock Artist in 2011, the similar generation “Country Song” was once the govern Energetic Rock music of the generation.
“Sometimes it feels like 25 minutes, sometimes it feels like 250 years,” Morgan tells Billboard by way of Zoom from his house in Nashville — the place, he recognizes with a snort, “I’m 45 now, so it’s been a protracted past and I’m foundation to really feel it within the bones, the entire respective illnesses that slowly creep in with future. There’s at all times that truth take a look at to allow you to know you’ve been doing it for awhile.
“I supposition for us essentially the most thrilling factor continues to be so to do it…at this stage and with this type of zest and this type of fan bottom. Fortunately to this point we’ve controlled to reserve on trucking and reserve the band shifting ahead. That during itself, I believe, is the fulfillment I focal point on.
“I’ve toured many, many years with many, many bands that no longer exist, and they were bands I thought were better than us. We’ve certainly weathered some genres and trends and seen some go and return, and we’ve just sort of been trucking away in the background. Somehow we’ve managed to keep ourselves around and be relevant on some level.”
Seether’s proceeding reference to its target market isn’t dehydrated to determine. The tune extra one of those undying, high-powered emblem of fat rock, steeped in well-established traditions of vintage grunge, steel and, from time to time, punk. As a lyricist, in the meantime, Morgan wears his proverbial middle on his sleeve, unafraid to mine unlit feelings the entire as far back as early favorites comparable to “Fine Again,” “Gasoline” and “Broken,” the global leap forward unmarried when it was once re-recorded with Evanescence’s Amy Lee for 2004’s Disclaimer II copy.
“I just try to write what I like to listen to and what I like to play and what makes me feel something on an emotional level,” Morgan explains. “I don’t attempt to overthink it; I simply incrible what I’m feeling each and every past we do an copy and attempt and incrible tune that is helping me get thru statuses, or darker days I supposition. I attempt and at all times constitute the tune and myself in a good and possible way and be as inclined as I will with out being looking to give away remaining. I attempt and be as non-transperant as I will, lyrically, so population can follow the songs to how they’re feeling and possibly get one thing out of it that means.
“So all of that combined would contribute maybe, to the fact we’re still here.”
Fanatics most likely gained’t have hassle on the subject of the 11 tracks on The Floor Turns out So A ways, both.
Written all the way through an 18-month duration all the way through which Morgan’s spouse gave beginning to their 3rd kid, the songs stem from “a lot of existential crisis moments” he was once experiencing all the way through the 2020 pandemic lockdown, which got here only a few months ahead of the let go of Seether’s latter copy, Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.
“Obviously 2020 was a wash, and 2021 and ’22 weren’t much better,” Morgan explains. “I’d been told by the powers that be that I was not a relevant or important person and my livelihood was not important for a very long time.” And pace he wasn’t sorry that “I got to sit and be with family and really enjoy being a dad and a husband,” Morgan additionally confronted “moments of self-doubt and the real anguish of questioning, ‘OK, what’s then? Is that this all that there’s? Do I’ve to search out one thing else I wish to do for the extra of my year, the place I believe extra fulfilled and possibly don’t really feel fairly so disposable?’ There have been repeatedly I considered quitting, yeah.
“Those were the biggest issues for me in writing this album.”
The ones fat questions will also be felt all over The Floor Turns out So A ways as Seether — Morgan, Stewart drummer John Humphrey and guitarist Corey Lowery — steam during the leaden dynamics of songs comparable to “Try to Heal,” “Same Mistakes,” “Semblance of Me,” “Paint the World,” “Dead on the Vine” and “Illusion,” pace “Walls Come Down” sticks out as a extra melodic counterweight.
“It’s funny; this is the first album we’ve done that doesn’t have an acoustic (track) on it, which I didn’t realize until we were done,” Morgan notes. “I wrote about 20 songs and we ended up recording about 13 of them. However there was once by no means in reality a considered what I sought after it to tone like. On every occasion I get started writing for albums it’s type of a fishing expedition; I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t have any course, so I simply get started writing and the course finds itself to me.
“And the most powerful emotions of the past few years for me were certainly rage and anger, and in this particular snapshot of my life most of it was, ‘I need to get rid of this frustration and this anger,’ and that leads to heavier music, obviously.”
The Floor Turns out So A ways marks Morgan’s 3rd consecutive copy as manufacturer, too, a job he first discovered “daunting” however that he’s grown extra happy with over past. “There’s only one producer I worked with who I felt the experience was positive and I learned something from, and that was Brendan O’Brien,” who produced Conserving Onto Tales Higher Left to Fray in 2011 and 2014’s Isolate and Medicate. Morgan explains that, “I came out the other side of those albums with him and thought, ‘OK, I’ve learned enough about songwriting from him. I’ve learned enough about producing from him, the approach of making an album from him, and I’ve learned from the either guys what I DON’T want to do, so lemme give it a shot and see how it works out.’ And because of that these past three albums are actually the first time a high percentage of me is proud of how they sound.”
That stated, Morgan doesn’t not include operating with any person else going forward.
“I’m not opposed to it,” he says. “I always had in my mind there would be this trio of albums I’d produce, and they’d all kind of be in a similar vein and have a similar kind of theme or a similar kind of sound, and when the next album comes it’s gonna be a brand new chapter…and maybe have somebody else come in and give me an opinion again from an outsider’s perspective. We’ll see.”
For now Morgan and Seether are excited to be getting again at the street. Dates have simply began with Skillet, working into October with some competition stops (Louder Than Time in Louisville, Rocktoberfest in Oceanside, Calif. and Aftershock in Sacramento) and extra forward for 2025. The untouched copy will likely be new, after all, however Morgan predicts that “‘Judas Mind’ will certainly be within the poised record, and I may wish to play games ‘Illusion’ ’motive it’s considered one of my favourite songs at the copy and is at the streaming platforms, so population can comprehend it. You do wish to play games the songs that lovers are there to look, proper? So I do wish to play games the entire classics, so that you could discuss, and as soon as the copy’s been out a negligible longer we will be able to begin to play games extra of the ones songs and get a really feel about the ones from the target market.
“We’re just happy to be getting back on the road, man. We are a touring band, and we haven’t been able to do as much in the last few years, so we’re really ready for this now.”