For Seether frontman Shaun Morgan, it's more exciting to release a new album — The surface seems so far awaywhich drops on Friday, September 20 — to celebrate the band's 25th anniversary.
It's been that long since Morgan formed Seether, as Saron Gas, in his native South Africa (bassist Dale Stewart joined in January 2000 and has remained ever since). In between, the band released nine studio albums and scored 26 top 10 singles on various Billboard rock charts, including 10 No. 1 Mainstream Rock Airplay hits with the new album's first single, “Judas Mind.” Seether was also Billboard's No. 1 Active Rock Artist and Heritage Rock Artist of 2011, the same year “Country Song” was the top Active Rock song of the year.
“Sometimes it's 25 minutes, sometimes it's like 250 years,” Morgan says Bulletin board via Zoom from his home in Nashville — where, he acknowledges with a laugh, “I'm 45 now, so it's been a long time and I'm starting to feel it in the bones, all the corresponding diseases that slowly creep up with age. There's always that reality check to let you know you've been doing it for a while.
“I guess for us the most exciting thing is to be able to do it … at this level and with this kind of excitement and this kind of fan base. Luckily so far we've been able to truck on and keep the band going. That in itself, I think, is the achievement I focus on.
“I've toured for many, many years with many, many bands that don't exist anymore, and they were bands that I thought were better than us. We've certainly outgrown certain genres and trends and seen some come and go, and just trucked away into the background. Somehow we've managed to stick around and be relevant on some level.”
Seether's continued connection with his audience is not hard to understand. The music remains a kind of timeless, high-powered brand of heavy rock, steeped in established traditions of classic grunge, metal and, occasionally, punk. As a lyricist, meanwhile, Morgan wears his proverbial heart on his sleeve, unafraid of dark emotions to early favorites like “Fine Again,” “Gasoline” and “Broken,” the global breakthrough single when he was again. -recorded with Amy Lee of Evanescence for 2004 Disclaimer II album.
“I just try to write what I like to hear and what I like to play and what makes me feel something on an emotional level,” Morgan explains. “I'm not trying to overthink it. I just write what I feel every time we make an album and I try to write music that helps me get through situations or darker days I guess. I always try and represent the music and myself in an honest and true way and be as vulnerable as I can without trying to give too much away. I try to be as vague as I can, lyrically, so people can apply the songs to how they feel and maybe get something out of it that way.
“So all of that together would probably contribute to the fact that we're still here.”
Fans will likely have no problem relating to the 11-track The surface seems so far away, either.
Written during an 18-month period during which Morgan's wife gave birth to their third child, the songs stemmed from “a lot of existential crisis moments” he was experiencing during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, which came just months before the release of Seether's. latest album, Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.
“Obviously 2020 was a wash and 2021 and '22 weren't much better,” explains Morgan. “I had been told by the powers that be that I was not a relevant or important person and that my living was not important for a long time.” And while he didn't regret that “I got to sit back and be with the family and really enjoy being a dad and a husband,” Morgan also faced “moments of self-doubt and the genuine anxiety of asking, 'OK, what's next? ; Is this all there is? Should I find something else that I want to do for the rest of my life where I feel more complete and maybe not feel so expendable?' Many times I thought about giving up, yes.
“Those were the biggest issues for me in writing this album.”
These heavy questions are felt everywhere The surface seems so far away as Seether — Morgan, Stewart drummer John Humphrey and guitarist Corey Lowery — break through the soaring dynamics of songs like “Try to Heal,” “Same Mistakes,” “Semblance of Me,” “Paint the World,” “ Dead on the Vine' and 'Illusion', while 'Walls Come Down' stands out as a more melodic counterweight.
“It's funny. This is the first album we've done that doesn't have an acoustic (track), which I didn't realize until we were done,” notes Morgan. “I wrote about 20 songs and we ended up recording about 13 of them. But I never thought about how I wanted it to sound. Every time I start writing for an album, it's kind of a fishing trip. I don't know what I'm doing and I have no direction, so I start writing and my direction reveals itself.
“And the strongest emotions of the last few years for me have definitely been rage and anger, and at this particular point in my life the biggest part was, 'I have to get rid of this frustration and this anger,' and that leads to heavier music, obviously.”
The surface seems so far away marks Morgan's third straight album as a producer, too, a job he initially found “daunting” but has become more comfortable with over time. “There's only one producer I've worked with who I felt was a positive experience and learned something from, and that was Brendan O'Brien,” who was a producer. Holding the strings Better left to break out in 2011 and 2014 Isolation and medication. Morgan explains that, “I came out the other side of these albums with him and I thought, 'Okay, I've learned a lot about songwriting from him. I've learned a lot about production from him, his approach to making an album, and I have learned from the two children what DON'T You want to do it, let's try it and see how it goes.'' And because of that, these last three albums are actually the first time that a high percentage of me has been proud of the way they sound.”
That said, Morgan isn't ruling out working with someone else in the future.
“I'm not against it,” he says. “I've always had in my mind that there would be this trio of albums that I'd produce, and they'd all be in a similar vein and have a similar kind of theme or a similar kind of sound, and when the next album comes out, it'll be a whole new chapter…and maybe someone else to come and give me an opinion again from an outsider's perspective. We'll see.”
For now, Morgan and Seether are excited to be back on the road. Dates have just begun with Skillet, running through October with a few festival stops (Louder Than Life in Louisville, Rocktoberfest in Oceanside, CA, and Aftershock in Sacramento) and more ahead for 2025. The new album will be fresh, of course. but Morgan predicts that “'Judas Mind' will definitely be on the set list, and I might want to play 'Illusion' because it's one of my favorite songs on the album and it's on the streaming platforms so people can he can learn it. You want to play the songs that are there for the fans to see, right? So I want to play all the classics, so to speak, and once the album is out for a little while longer, we can start playing more of those songs and get a feel for them from the audience.
“We're happy to be back on the road, man. We're a touring band and we haven't been able to do that much in the last few years, so we're really ready for it now.”
