The Misery Behind Seether's New Album

As The Music connects with singer, songwriter, rhythm guitarist and guiding light of the three-piece Seether, Shaun Morgan (Welgemoed), some 60,000 punters are “going nuts” at 2014 Hellfest France.

“Today's festival we've never played before,” Shaun Morgan admits, deciding, as we speak, to change from the blue he's wearing to “regulation uniform black” as he doesn't want to be lynched. “This one's a little bit intimidating, due to the fact that this is a metal fest and we aren't necessarily a metal band. I think with our stage, it's the sort of stage that plays music that brings the girls in, and all the guy stages are everywhere else! So we might adjust our set to make it be a little bit heavier, just so we don't look like complete pussies up there. Or maybe we give them a little break from the thrash! That's our job here, a brief reprieve from the aural onslaught.”

Seether are promoting their sixth album, Isolate And Medicate, produced once again by Brendan O'Brien, whose credits include everyone from Springsteen to Pearl Jam, a major Seether influence, to AC/DC's 2008 album, Black Ice.

"I basically just felt pretty much alone."

“Brendan works really well with us and he's a really great guy – he's a legend as far as I'm concerned. And he pretty much produced all the albums that influenced me as a kid, so to be working with him now, it's one of those things that you never think will ever happen, let alone meeting any of the bands you listened to, or playing with some of those bands. We're playing with Soundgarden today, for example, and he produced [1994's] Superunknown.

“So it's like this weird serendipitous journey that we've taken to meet him, and he's just really cool to work with. The annoying thing is, not only is he better on guitar than I am, he's better on bass than Dale [Stewart], is and he's better on drums than Johnny [Humphrey] is – he's like this incredible musician. He'll just sit in the studio and noodle away with his eyes closed like he's just screwing around and make me look like I've just picked up guitar for the first time, which is awesome,” Morgan chuckles.

Those girls at Hellfest should have had plenty of reasons to “connect” with the new material, written, as much of it was, not only in isolation – Morgan actually built his own little musical home “man cave” to enhance the creative process – but about isolation.

“Mostly it was about dealing with being in a miserable situation,” Morgan explains, “and trying to make the most of that. I basically just felt pretty much alone, I guess. I don't know if I really paid much attention to the outside world for a long time 'cause I was a little tucked away in my own 'bubble of misery'. That's where the bulk of the lyrics came from. It was me just dealing with feeling like was completely alone – basically not hearing from anyone.”