Review by Paul Monkhouse for MPM
With their name bizarrely inspired by a brand of insecticide, Atlanta heavy hitters Sevendust are one of the few bands on the scene to manage to keep a stable line up for over thirty years, the band of brothers bonded by music and blood. This kinship has certainly paid off, the band regularly playing arenas and a string of commercially and critically successful albums under their belts. Now, with album number fifteen ‘One’ they present their most rounded, forceful and personal release yet and it’s a titanic work that distils all the fire, fury and muscle that makes up their DNA.
The titular opening track comes straight out the gate with a huge forearm smash to the face, the crunch of the guitars and a twisting solo by Clint Lowery lighting up the sky as singer Lajon Witherspoon brings his gloriously soulful vocal. The arena filling ‘Unbreakable’ sounds absolutely huge, showing exactly why they were the perfect companions for the recent Alter Bridge tour in these fair isles, its overwhelming cathedral of sound brighter than a thousand suns and ‘Is This The Real You’ reveals the band’s darker side, its volcanic righteous anger boiling over into something devastating.
Throughout, an unrelenting blend of muscle and melody rules supreme and the band are old hands at walking the tightrope between the two, each number filled with an undercurrent of delicious tension. Perfectly illustrating this, ‘Threshold’ sounds utterly unstoppable, its driving rhythm offset with an irresistible hook and uplifting tone, a pattern continued on the defiantly punchy ‘We Won’ that follows. Developing their sound over time, the outfit have confidence to switch things up from time to take, keeping things varied and stretching their wings but never losing sight of everything that brought them here, their unique core sound intact.
A lot of bands would be treading water at this stage, resting off of laurels and living off past glories, happy to constantly rebadge the same old material whilst offering nothing new.
This quartet look forward in all they do though. Bringing the big swing of ‘Construct’ through to the brutal and titanically heavy ‘Blood Price’, Sevendust are rulers of all they survey and with the closing ‘Misdirection’ sharing the same glorious feel as Kings X at their prime, ‘One’ is an album that actually fulfils that old cliché of all killer, no filler. The album of their career so far and proves that this brotherhood is one of the most potent forces in modern metal.
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