Seether - Live Review - Glasgow Garage - 10/03/12

Grunge music has been on the go for a long time now and it seems to be a genre that has died out a little with other genres like dubstep emerging on to the music scene but post-grunge band Seether are helping keep grunge music alive.

The band arrived on to the music scene in 1999 - a couple of years after the alleged ‘death’ of grunge in 1994. Whether you believe grunge died in 1994 wholly depends on how big a Nirvana fan you are. The band are originally from South Africa but relocated to American to build the bands success.

With five albums under their belt they show no sign of slowing down.   Despite Seether being on the scene a steady length of time I had never had the pleasure of seeing them live until recently.

The show at the Garage, Glasgow sold out which I was somewhat surprised about.  I had underestimated the popularity of the band due to not many of my friends being fans.

A lot of the band’s songs are what some would call ‘depressing’ but I would argue that the songs are more true to reality than a lot of other songs out there.  Lyrically I have always found Seether nerve touching.   The song that introduced me to Seether was Remedy – a now classic Seether song and the first song of theirs to reach no.1 - which I stumbled across on Yahoo Music way before YouTube took over the internet.   The crowd particularly enjoyed rocking out to this one.

The song most will be familiar with is Broken the highly emotive song featuring Amy Lee of Evanescence.  I however had completely forgotten about the songs existence and when they started playing it the emotion could have crumbled me like a digestive biscuit.  The atmosphere amongst the crowd felt tense during this song.  I knew I was not the only one to be struck by this song.  Keep in mind a large part of the crowd were your stereotypical bearded metal heads.

Shuan Morgan has vocals that are very suited to the grunge genre but his vocals are also very beautiful on the more melodic tracks like Broken and Tonight.  His live vocals are as pleasing as they are on the recorded material.

The only compliant I have about the gig is that the band were not on for as long as I would have liked them to be but the live quality was high both musically and vocally the band were top notch.  There was not much crowd participation but this fits in line with the laid back style of the band.

(Shaun Morgan. Photo by: Victoria McEwan)

When they tour again I would like to see them play a bigger venue as although The Garage creates an intimate setting I also find it slightly claustrophobic and there is not enough room to ‘rock out’ without smacking the person next to you.