Seether’s Dale Stewart: full albums are becoming pointless — singles are the future
Dale Stewart, bassist of Seether, has spoken candidly about the band’s likely direction in an interview with KillerTube. His verdict: the group will probably shift away from full-length albums and towards releasing singles on a more regular basis.
“The dilemma is, do you take months and months and try to come up with twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen songs to record a full-length album — recording that much material, it just takes a lot longer, it’s a lot more work and costs a lot more — or just release singles? Come up with a song, or maybe two, three songs, release those. And I kind of feel like that’s where the future’s kind of at, » he said. His core concern is not the format itself but the audience: anyone born after the year 2000, in his view, simply won’t sit through deep cuts. “You put all this work into songs that are just kind of throwaway songs, » he said, arguing that it makes more sense to write two great songs, put everything into them, release them as singles and tour on those — more frequently than a full album cycle would allow.
Stewart is self-aware about the contradiction. He grew up on LPs, cassettes and CDs, and always bought full albums. “Now it’s just, you get on some type of streaming thing and just listen to that specific song. It’s a whole new world. We’re just a bunch of old guys trying to adapt to the new stuff, » he said — though he added that from a listener’s perspective, it’s “an incredible time to be a music fan”.
In the meantime, Seether remain active. This past April they released the digital-only EP “Beneath The Surface” via Concord Records, featuring four tracks including two previously unreleased studio cuts from the “The Surface Seems So Far” sessions (2024). This autumn, the band will support Staind on the “Break The Cycle 25th Anniversary Tour” across the US and Canada, running from September 8 in Atlanta to October 19 in Austin.
