For six years, the Atlanta, Georgia five piece hard rock/metal band known as Sevendust has tried to garner the mainstream success that so many of their touring partners (from Creed to Staind to Limp Bizkit) have enjoyed in the same time frame. With a place on the 1998 Ozzfest, they were able to push their first album to gold certification. On 1999's Home, the band expanded on their sound and created an album far superior not only to the debut, but to it's own follow up, 2001's Animosity. However, unfortunately for the band, as their albums have become more diverse and more melodic, their sales figures have gone down with each successive release (despite gold certs for each of them, in terms of actual SALES, not SHIPMENTS). I did however, find each disc to have something worthy about it, and in the case of the last two, I found a LOT worthy about each of them.

But now, with the release of their fourth album, Seasons, the band is in position to finally claim the rights to a multiplatinum disc. For you see, Seasons is far and away one of the best discs of 2003.

On Animosity, the band made use of melody a lot more often, with mixed results. More often than not, the sound was different, which was good, but it just didn't sound right. Many times, the songs felt disjointed, almost as if you would be listening to 3 or 4 songs at once. With this release however, the songs are as close to perfect for a hard rock band as one can get. The lyrics range from anger to depression to even hope at times, the verses crunch with energy (yes, if you want to hear energy, this is the album for you), and the choruses...well, the choruses soar like you wouldn't believe. And in an added bonus, the band has cut back on the chugga chugga guitars, focusing more on actual riffs than straight downtuned power chords.

A perfect example of this is the first single, Enemy, a song written by drummer Morgan Rose as a direct shot at former Coal Chamber frontman Dez Fafara (Rose's wife was the bass player for that band). Rose and lead vocalist Lajon Witherspoon trade off on the verses ("Step up to me, step up to me, you wanna be a big time player, it's not to be"), but when you hit the chorus, you're hit with this soaring, harmonious and melodic duet between Morgan and Lajon ("So when you fall to the ground, and finally get back to reality, and no one else is around, tell me how does it feel to be the enemy?"). This might be the single best rock song released this year. (And in a related side note, as a Red Sox fan who feels Grady Little is the biggest f*cking moronic douchebag ever, this song has come in VERY handy these last couple days.)

But the band has so much more in store than just a good lead single. The album opening Disease has plenty of crunch to it, which should satisfy longtime fans of the band who feared that this album would be the group's grand sellout attempt. Remember when I mentioned energy before? This song is one of the best examples of that, a song that is probably nothing more than album filler on many hard rock albums becomes a potent album opener because of the way it sounds.

Oh, the sound of this album. I've always been a big believer in that Sevendust had never gotten the production right for an album. Their first album was woefully underproduced, their second, overproduced. The third? It seemed like they hardly ever got the production right on those tracks. But this album sounds amazing. The mix is perfect on every single track. The guitars don't bleed into each other as on Animosity, the drums are beaten to hell by Morgan, and *GASP*, there's actually some audible basslines in some of these songs. And Lajon sounds better than ever on vocals, a nice mix of rich soul and harsh aggression.

The title track is a somewhat provocative song about mortality, underscored by a loud verse and another chorus that is undeniably catchy without going soft. This is followed by one of the more creative tracks on the record, Broken Down, a kind of Issues era Korn meets Evanescence and that band's more melodic side.

The group returns to their softer side (first explored in real depth on Angel's Son on the last record) for Skeleton Song, which features some of Lajon's best vocal work ever, especially on the bridge, where he just sounds so smooth and so soulful. It's really quite different from anything else on the album, and I hope the band will explore that type of sound in the future and take advantage of Lajon's voice more often.

And just when you think that the band can't keep up the pace, that the last 1/3 or so of the album is going to be disappointing, they hit you with four of their best songs ever. Burned Out reminds me a lot of the Foo Fighters' Burn Away, and not just from the titles. The songs, while so lyrically dis-similar (one is about hanging on to life, the other seems to be about despair), are sonically very similar, although I wouldn't call it a rip-off.

Suffocate has a great guitar riff as well as some high intensity that ends up propelling the chorus ("Try and save me from myself now, save me from myself now, fallen from the world, if I could ever breathe in the air, maybe then I wouldn't suffocate") to heights the band had rarely reached before. Gone is the same formula, just with an even better chorus, and a slightly less bombastic feel on the verses.

The band then saves their angriest moment (yes, even angrier than Enemy) for their last. Face to Face is perhaps the heaviest song on the record, with thick amounts of guitar and bass, and purely destructive fills by Rose. Smartly though, the band develops the song into more than just another nu-metal song, as once again the chorus ("There's not one thing that you can say to make it right, unless you say 'I'm leaving', and if you're not, then please tell me why, please tell me why you can't") makes this song eminently replayable.

Six years ago, upon hearing Black, I said that one day, Sevendust would make an album that would blow me away from front to back. After tinkering with their sound on two more albums, becoming better songwriters, writing songs that sound as close to perfect as a hard rock band can write, they have done so with Seasons. It is an album that has been in my player for well over a week and I've yet to tire of it, or any song on it. That is the highest compliment I can pay a band...

PS: Kristina, this album should be right up your alley

More on Sevendust:
Sevendust
Home
Animosity


Recommended: Yes