Seether - One Cold Night

Wed 12th Jul, 2006 in Music Reviews

They probably will never escape the critic tags of Nirvana and Staind rip-offs, but in the dimmed-lights live setting is where South African grunge-rock torchbearers Seether really belong.  There’s a soft tap on the cymbals (mostly) to keep the twelve tracks here moving, and there’s obviously some bass in the gaps in ‘Fine Again,’ but otherwise One Cold Night is a full acoustic album, taken from a small club in Pennsylvania back in February. The mix works better than it does on any of Seether’s other albums, because there’s more focus on lead singer Sean Morgan’s ‘pain’ and the sololess acoustic guitars just help us remember which track’s which.

This is particularly shown on first track ‘Gasoline,’ which is so much better than it was on Disclaimer.  Without its annoying chuggy electric, the song has a much quieter anger and grabbing power.  And the band winds its way through all their other hits or well-known songs off Karma & Effect and Disclaimer (II), and it’s a decent choice of songs most of the time – ‘Driven Under,’ a song about ‘faking it in bed,’ ‘Remedy,’ last year’s underrated hard rock-fest, latest singles. Then there’s of course all the ‘soft songs’ – ‘Sympathetic,’ ‘Fine Again,’ probably the most touching song they’ve written to date, ‘Broken,’ the ‘It’s Been Awhile’ of this band except slower, and ‘Plastic Man,’ which is just a little bit too slow and mopey to make an impact on radio.  ‘Someday I know I’ll find my place,’ he half-whispers on the last of those. Not that there’s no emotion in it, but it’s also too targeted to make it seem like his broken heart needs to be on display more than anything else.

It’s disappointing, too, to see that some of the band’s better harder material was left off for those ballady songs, which sometimes come off as kinda soppy.  ‘Because Of Me,’ the first track on Karma & Effect, was their songwriting at the very best, and ‘Fxxx It,’ while not quite as smart, was so angry anyone could use it for a bad day.  But no, they’re not here.  Maybe it’s because Morgan decides not to scream, only using his gruff voice to get all the words out.

Not to bag him in any way: one does start to worry at some point about his relationship with his audience, saying only ‘thank you’ between every song (something that makes each one kinda hard to tell apart if you’re just a normal listener), but he’s a great showman.  He can sing without doubt, he’s got all the heartache, and he improvises introductions to songs like ‘Truth’ and ‘The Gift.’  ‘Diseased’ is probably the best track you’ll find – it builds up so well with its high-pitched guitar riffs, and there’s no extra noise to stop it being beautiful.  A cover of Pearl Jam’s ‘Immortality’ was not such a good choice and is pretty much useless, but the unreleased (?) track ‘Tied My Hands’ does the sharp Seether emotions very well.

Then there’s the bonus to make fans believe there’s stuff worth collecting on this besides a secret show: it’s an alternate mix of their latest single ‘The Gift,’ but it’s no different to how it is on the album except that it takes some of the extra guitar noise out.  Being the last track, it pretty much sums One Cold Night up: although it’s probably better than any of Seether’s albums before it, no-one outside of fans need to or are going to pick this up.