Seether Are Bringing The Parish Down Under

On the back of their heaviest album to date, SEETHER are intent on blasting the roof off with equal measures of ferocity and purpose on their Australian starting tonight. This is a band that knows how to connect with an audience, whilst delivering all the blood, sweat and sheer musical brutality that transports fans to a state of nirvanic rhapsody.

SEETHER are not your bog-standard riff-mongers. This is a multi-platinum rock anthem machine whose live performances are armed with soaring guitars and monster melodies delivered with an atmospheric crunch that will leave fans blissfully drained. As well as killer tracks from Poison The Parish such as Stoke The Fire and Let You Down, fans will be treated to veritable hit parade of classic SEETHER including Broken, Fake It, Rise Above This, Fine Again, Gasoline and Remedy. Hi Fi Way: The Pop Chronicles spoke to Dale Stewart about the tour.

How have things travelling for Seether since the release of Poison The Parish? We spoke to John Humphrey just before the album came out and then there was a real sense of excitement.
We’re coming off a bit of a break before we hit Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and then back to Europe then a run in the States. It’s been great to be back on the road, playing songs and it’s nice to be busy. I love coming home and having a break but being home for a long period there’s that feeling of cabin fever and the need to get out there and do something and playing shows.

Do you have to switch off completely from music when you are on a break?
Absolutely! When I come home I don’t even touch a guitar, I fish and I cook, shoot, ride motorcycles and do everything but play music. I love music and music is my life but I think it is important to step away and remove yourself from it so that when you do go back and get on stage it is fresh again, it’s not work but sometimes after a long tour it can feel like work. Playing songs shouldn’t feel like a job so when it gets to that point it is time for a break and step away from everything so you can go back with fresh batteries.

Have you been quietly stoked with how well Poison The Parish has gone?
Yeah, it has been great, we can’t complain as we have been doing this for a long time. I feel that each album release has done a little bit better than the one before. There’s not a lot of bands that can say that so we do feel blessed. Over the years of doing this we have seen so many bands come and go, friends bands come and go, to still be doing this and that people still care and want to come to the shows is awesome. We’ll keep writing away as long as people keep coming to shows and wanting to hear the music we’ll keep plugging away.

Is it a tough one knowing that the life span for an album is getting shorter and shorter and that you’ll need to think about the next one?
I think people’s attention spans have gotten quite short, maybe it’s because of the age of instant gratification. If you want to watch a movie you can watch it in seconds, if you want to hear a song you can hear it, you don’t need to flick through a stack of LP’s to find that tracks. It’s that world now and maybe the kids now don’t have the attention span like we did when we were kids. It is a weird thing but I think we started long enough a go to have a solid core fan base. I wouldn’t want to try and start a band now, in some respects it would be easier, recording would be easier, making decent sounding demos would be easier but getting your music played around the world is so easy, the problem is that there is a million other people with the same idea. Even though you have access to everyone in the world you’re lost in the swamp of mediocrity. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there that you have to wade through to find the good stuff. Technology is cool, I want to not like it but it is cool to be able to lay in bed and buy albums whenever you want. It is a weird time but we need to roll with the punches.

Has the band thought much about album number eight?
We’re still in tour mode right now and we’ll wait for the album cycle to be over then we’ll take a break. Usually by the end of a tour you’re pretty burnt out, that break is important before working on new stuff. With Parish we had a lot of fun making it and it was a bit heavier, a bit of a throw back to the old school stuff we did. Even old demos we did back in the day that no one has ever heard, we were angry kids back then and a lot of our stuff was loud and heavy and I feel that over the years, the label we had tried to take the edge off to make it easier to add to radio stations. Doing this one ourselves we made it what we wanted it to be. Now it’s like we’re back in that garage like it’s 1999 rocking out and making noise. I think we’ll stick with that mission statement from now.

The Australian tour starts tonight which should be epic…
Yeah, I would love to be able to tour Australia more, it is hard being a faraway place. There is a lot of overhead to do a full Australian tour, a lot of flights, a lot of hotels, a lot of days off. With that said it is one of my favourite places to play, the crowds are always amazing and we’ve played some of our best shows in Australia. Great vibe, great people, great air… definite a favourite place of mine to tour.

Interview by Rob Lyon

Catch Seether on the following dates…