''Disclaimer'' is the debut studio album by South African
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
Seether
Seether are a South African rock band founded in 1999 in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. The band originally performed under the name Saron Gas until 2002, when they moved to the United States and changed it to Seether to avoid confusion wi ...
. The album was released on 20 August 2002. It features three successful singles which would remain some of the band's most well-known songs. It is their first release under their current name after changing it from ''Saron Gas'' in 2002 to avoid confusion with the deadly nerve agent
sarin gas.
Background and release
A great deal of pre-production took place in South Africa with supervision from a Wind-up representative. It continued in New York City before the album recording sessions began in Los Angeles. Veteran session drummer
Josh Freese
Joshua Ryan Freese (born December 25, 1972) is an American session drummer. He is the son of tuba soloist Stan Freese and the older brother of musician Jason Freese.
He is a member of the Vandals (since 1989) and Devo (since 1996), having for ...
filled the role in the studio before an audition took place at Leads Rehearsal Studio. Among sixteen others,
Nick Oshiro auditioned and joined the band in 2001. Seether would also enlist guitarist
Patrick Callahan in the fall of that year after performing alongside his then-current band in Philadelphia.
''Disclaimer'' was released with ten different cover variations. These feature images from the "
Fine Again
"Fine Again" is a song by South African rock band Seether. It is the band's debut single from the album ''Fragile'' (which was released when Seether were still going by the name "Saron Gas"). It was also later included on the '' 5 Songs'' EP, and ...
" music video with people holding signs depicting a negative outlook or a poor situation in life. The concept to implement it through the album cover was headed by the video's director, Paul Feeder. According to bassist
Dale Stewart
Dale William Stewart (born 30 November 1979) is a South African musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the South African rock band Seether
Seether are a South African rock band founded in 1999 in Pretoria, Gauteng, South Afric ...
:
:"
eedercame up with the idea of the people bearing
'sic''their souls and holding up the signs and we thought it was a good concept. It's kind of like a thread that runs through the whole album, the fragility, or whatever you want to call it, you know in people. People are always screwed up about something, even if they act like they're not."
[Interview with Dale Stewart, Nick Oshiro, and Pat from Seether]
(November 2002). Retrieved on 1-29-11.
In regards to recording and single output, the band allegedly faced a considerable deal of label pressure compared to future albums. According to a reflective
Shaun Morgan
Shaun Morgan Welgemoed (, born 21 December 1978) is a South African musician. He is the singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the rock band Seether.
Early life
Morgan spent most of his early life in South Africa.Bottomley, CSeether: South Af ...
in 2005:
:"...With ''Disclaimer'', we were still pretty green and all the say-so was made for us. We really didn’t have much and most of those decisions, I felt, were bad ones. Last time around we had a manager from South Africa. She wasn’t very good at what she was doing and she was letting
he record label
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
walk all over us."
[Perlman, Jaso]
Interview with Shaun Morgan
Ferrante's Power Equipment (2005). Retrieved on 1-29-11.
According to Morgan, "the producer
/nowiki>Jay Baumgardner">Jay_Baumgardner.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Jay Baumgardner">/nowiki>Jay Baumgardner/nowiki> was shit, so recording the album was a long process. The producer would come into the studio on Monday morning, after we worked for the entire week and say, 'nope, do it again'," partially because Baumgardner owned the recording studio and made a profit from them. As a result, the recording process for the album took three months, unlike later albums which took around two weeks.
", "69 Tea," "Fine Again," "Driven Under," "Pride," "Your Bore," and "Pig". "Gasoline" had originally been a bonus track on ''Fragile''. Eventually, it became a single along with "Fine Again" and "Driven Under", which had preceded it.
"69 Tea" was the first song that Shaun Morgan remembers writing. He has said:
He also explained the song's meaning:
"Fine Again" is about how one can be fine again after a breakup. Morgan wrote it when his parents got divorced, to reflect how he was feeling at the time. He was in the middle of the divorce and going through a lot of pain.
At the age of 23, Morgan experienced heartbreak, which inspired the song "
". Morgan's wife did not follow him from their homeland of South Africa to the United States, and chose to live in South Africa with their daughter. Morgan thus felt he lost his best chance to have the family experience he always wanted. He explained:
Morgan wrote the song "Gasoline" in five minutes during soundcheck and the lyrics came out automatically. It is a song about all "MTV girls" and their fakeness.
One of Morgan's earliest memories is his mother waving a gun in his father's face. He was locked up along with his brother in the bathroom. Later, his mother gave him a loaded .45 caliber gun in case of danger. "Driven Under" was inspired by these memories.