Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces

What about a band from South Africa?

If you always thought that success on a metal scene is a prerogative of musicians from northern countries than you were definitely wrong. What about a band from South Africa? Yes, this case is not quite typical but the fact is implacable – South African metal band Seether is popular all over the world. The band's story goes back into early days of a new century when the musicians have been playing small-scale concerts at nightclubs and University venues in Cape Town as Saron Gas. The band's first album was taken fairly good by the South African audience and its success attracted attention of American label Wind-up Records, which actually singed the band and released their second ever since and first international album Disclaimer. The band's affairs were set going and by the time their next record Karma And Effect was released they were already popular in States, UK and Australia. The new album brought Seether wider recognition and it even managed to climb to a platinum status. However, by all appearances this fact didn't impress the band's led guitarist who left Seether in the middle of 2006 for unknown reasons. The band recorded their new album Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces as a trio but actually it didn't have a big impact on Seether's sound and material.

The band doesn't sound as heavy and aggressive as before

Overall, Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces fits in with the band's discography quite harmoniously. The material's stylistics still finds itself somewhere between modern alternative metal and post grunge. Nevertheless, when a proper attention is paid it becomes obvious that Seether are focusing upon mainstream rock much stronger nowadays. The new material doesn't sound as heavy and aggressive as it was on Karma And Effect, the tunefulness of the songs is regarded as the main value here and generally speaking, the album as such looks much more positive. There is no need to go far for examples – the very first tracks draw a fairly clear picture. Like Suicide is mainly based on acoustic riffs and Fake It may remind you songs of garage rock bands. Yet, both of the songs sound pretty heavy, fast and bouncy at times. Of course, there are some tracks that sound very typical for Seether, for example No Jesus Christ or FMLYHM but the majority of the material still carries some features of the band’s new musical approach. Listen to Rise Above This or Six Gun Quota – these are probably the most exemplifying and interesting songs here.

Seether's most confident album

Most likely, Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces will be interesting for Seether's old fans for the first place. But not because this record is incapable of attracting new listeners, quite the contrary, it has piles of catchy moments, much more than Disclamer had. The thing is that this album has one weird feature. The voice of Seether's leader Shaun Morgan sounds very similar to the voice of Nickelback's Chad Kroeger and it may simply evoke some blaming reaction of the public. Sometimes the resemblance is so obvious that you may think that Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces is Nickelback played in a heavy interpretation. Such associations will hardly bring any service to Seether. Who needs a copy of already existing band? But let's keep off exaggerating the facts. The truth is that Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces is a sufficiently distinctive thing. Perhaps the Seether's style is spinning around the same mainstream axis as the style of Creed or Evanescence but their songs are not imitation and not plagiarism in no way. Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces is the most confident and probably the best album of this band so far. The main thing they have achieved with this album is a proper and catchy balance between post grunge and alternative metal, so if you like these genres you should definitely give this record a chance.