The Power of Three: Seether
Three powerful songs from Seether.
May 16, 2016
Seether is a South African rock band that was influenced by bands like Nirvana and Alice In Chains. The band is considered post-grunge. It’s not hard to find Seether’s music as it is very popular on radio stations. A lot of their songs are big hits in the music world. Seether has its own festival called the Rise Above Fest to raise awareness for suicide and mental illness. Lead singer Shaun Morgan lost his brother to suicide and he hopes that, “If this festival does something to help one person reconsider the tragic choice of suicide, then it will be the greatest success of my career.” This week’s power of three is a dedication to this band. They do seem to be really punk/emo so you’ve been warned.
This song has been remixed with another song called “Mad World.” That song was more of a depressing, slower song. “Words As Weapons” was written pretty much to sum up the album it came from, Isolate and Medicate. “I felt pretty sequestered at the time and I was in an interesting place personally,” said Shaun. One line states, “Words are Weapons I’d be terrified.” from just this line you can take away that if words were weapons the speaker would be afraid to speak or be spoken to because it’d be like attacking someone. This song ended up reaching number one on the US Mainstream Rock Billboard
You know how you’re supposed to feel fine again after a relationship? That’s the meaning behind this song. It was written by Shaun Morgan while his parents got a divorce. It was the band’s first single when it was released, and they got a big break when they were invited to Ozzfest in 2002. It’s relatable to pretty much everyone because haven’t we all been through a break up and you think you’ll be fine again after a while because that’s what everyone tells you. You’re just never really the same after you met a person and spend so much time with them that you can’t seem to understand how to get past the thought of them. I would take this song into the interpretation of just losing people in general, had I not known it was about relationships.
“Rise Above This” was written about Shaun’s brother. Shaun wrote this prior to his death in an attempt to make him feel better; however he had this to say in an interview: “The idea was to write a song that if I could play it to him, that it would make him feel better. And unfortunately I never got a chance to play it for him. So it was written just before, like a couple of weeks prior to him dying.” He never got to play this song for his brother and as tragic as that is, something uplifting rose from the ashes of sadness caused by his brother’s death, rather than negativity. Positive songs like this can be heard at the Rise Above Fest. Hopefully the festival and songs like this one can help or even fully prevent people from committing suicide.
