By James Wright

After a short break from their heavy touring schedule the hardest working band in existence, Sevendust, is back with "Animosity". After witnessing two new songs live this summer during their set as a part of the Edgefest Canada day bash, I was left salivating and wanting more. "Animosity" takes the best elements of the first record and "Home", combining them with more melody and hooks to create the best Sevendust record yet and in my opinion the best record of 2001, hands down! We were fortunate enough to talk with Clint Lowery about Sevendust and the record that will undoubtedly top everyone's year-end play lists, "Animosity".

Lajon Witherspoon - vocals
John Connolly - guitar
Clint Lowery - guitar
Vinnie Hornsby - bass
Morgan Rose - drums

Shoutweb: I have to say that the record is amazing and is probably the record of the year for me!

Clint: Whoa! That's a powerful statement man! Thank you very much. I hope everyone else agrees and likes the record, man.

Shoutweb: I recently saw you guys at Edgefest here on Canada Day in front of a huge crowd. You guys absolutely destroyed everyone on that bill!

Clint: Whoa, thanks again, man! It was amazing because we've always wanted to break the market in Canada and every time we play there the crowd is really cool. We want to make it a habit of getting up there a lot more and we knew that was a huge show to be a part of and we did what we had to so that people would remember us.

Shoutweb: What was it like to play with bands like Tool and Finger Eleven on such a huge bill? There were approximately 38,000 people there!

Clint: Hell, yea! The thing that was crazy is that they were so far away we couldn't even see 'em!

Shoutweb: A lot of people were pissed that Finger Eleven and your set times ran into one another and everyone was forced to choose between their set or yours.

Clint: We knew that was gonna be a problem but the fans that were there were great! I'm sure Finger Eleven had a good show too.

Shoutweb: I saw a fan after the show that was crying because he got to meet you guys!

Clint: That sometimes freaks me out that people would be so nervous to meet us just because we are regular people. We don't look at ourselves as rock stars or anything, just as musicians. To me, if our music makes people react like that then that's what we wanna do! We want emotional situations coming out of the crowd and we want kids to understand and to get angry when we get angry in the set. As far as meeting us and getting emotional, that's still kinda weird but it's cool as long as there's no tearing at our clothes and shit! (Laughs)

Shoutweb: I've seen you guys live three times now and every time you've amazed me. You are probably the best live band out there playing shows. First things first, why is the name of the record "Animosity"? It seems like an odd choice considering this is the most melodic Sevendust record yet.

Clint: I still think there are a lot of heavy songs on the record but the name "Animosity" comes from a lot of different things. It comes from us working in this business a long time and sometimes we don't get a fair shake and then there's animosity coming from relationships with people who know the band that just kind of let us down. We just felt that that word kind of summed up where we were.

Shoutweb: I noticed the music this time around seems to be a bit more optimistic…

Clint: Think so? I think that maybe the way things are sung that it may seem more optimistic or positive but most of the songs are still based around that anger and disappointment we all feel.

Shoutweb: The one thing I noticed about this material right off the bat is that every song has a massive hook somewhere within each song where as older material didn't always rely on hooks.

Clint: I think that when we set out to do this record, we wanted Lajon to really stand out as he has a really good voice. We also wanted Morgan to keep his heavy vocals in there while mixing it all together. I think the thing Lajon does best is singing a hook and that just naturally took its course.

Shoutweb: Did any of you get a chance to do any experimenting with different instruments?

Clint: We did on this one and that has a lot to do with Ben Grosse changing things up. We did like a million different guitar tracks and Morgan did some drum overdubs where he would play on top of what he already had recorded. A lot of things we did we threw out and went back to basics with the song but there are a lot of guitar parts you can't hear unless you were actually there. We did a lot of loops and percussion that you hear behind Morgan.

Shoutweb: How much of a factor was Ben Grosse in the making of this record?

Clint: He was a huge factor! He was almost like another member of the band, not so much in the writing aspect but in the arrangements and sonically with the things we experimented with like guitar effects and stuff like that he was involved in all of that.

Shoutweb: Besides "Angel's Son", which was already released, "Christmas Day" is probably the most dramatic change for Sevendust.

Clint: I wrote that song about a friend who you love but totally makes your life difficult. It was a really sad song for me and the only reason I called it "Christmas Day" is because it came to a head around the holiday season. It's about saying goodbye to someone you love because you can't take it anymore. When I wrote it, I actually didn't think we were going to use it but I could use it for some other project but it turned out the band really liked it a lot.

Shoutweb: Was it like an emotional release when you wrote and recorded it?

Clint: Totally. I think it's like therapy when you write about something that hurt you so bad and once you do it and hear it then it kind of dulls the pain after a while.

Shoutweb: You guys just shot the video for the first single "Praise". How did that turn out?

Clint: Great man! We we're down in Orlando, Florida and we worked with a local radio station to help promote the video shoot and a bunch of fans came down. It's basically just a video of us just playing the song with some extra special effects.

Shoutweb: Do you have a favorite video of all the ones you've done so far?

Clint: My favorite is the one that's on our DVD for "Licking Cream" with Skin. The DVD has every video we've ever done but there is something about that video that was cool.

Shoutweb: Do you enjoy making videos or is that something that is a necessary evil?

Clint: I like doing videos because the end result is cool but the whole way it's done I'm not a fan of especially the lip-synching. It's kind of funny that there's an audience of people there rocking out to the song and you're not even playing it. This last video we just shot for "Praise" was the best as the director was really cool.

Shoutweb: Why did you guys decide to re-record "Angel's Son"?

Clint: Basically the reason we re-did that is because the thing about the Strait Up record is that people didn't really know where to find it. They would hear it on the radio and they'd see the video but they wouldn't really know what the project was about. I don't think people understood how important Lynn was and we do a different arrangement live than we did on that record which is more of a guitar/vocal thing. Now there is a bunch of strings on it and we always wanted to have those strings on there so we figured it wouldn't hurt to re-record it and expand on it with all these beautiful elements.

Shoutweb: Do you have a memory that sticks out in your mind about Lynn?

Clint: My memory of Lynn was always of us being like brothers. We were always wrestling around and the thing I will always remember about him was that he always made it a point to make sure he told you how much he loved you and how important you were to him. Last time we had seen him was when we played House Of Blues in LA. He didn't come see the show but he came by with Dobbs and his girlfriend just to tell us how much he loved and missed us. Then he smoked up with LJ and left.

Shoutweb: I never had the chance to see him but I was a huge Snot fan and he seemed like the most amazing person. I wish I could have met him!

Clint: Snot to us was bigger than friendship and they made us the band we are today just because of how intense they were. We all had the same kind of goals and our bands were on the same level at that time and we always kind of viewed ourselves as an east coast version of Snot. Every night there was competition between the bands and it was like, "We're gonna get up there and smoke you guys tonight!" It's just healthy competition.

Shoutweb: What was different recording "Animosity" from the first two records?

Clint: This one we had more time and we didn't rush into anything. It was all about what kind of music we wanted to write. We took a lot of time off from the road on this record and just took time to heal ourselves and then get back into it. We knew we wanted this record to sound sonically better than the last two records and I think we accomplished it.

Shoutweb: Was that time off from the road a necessity? You guys have been on the road for almost the past 3 or 4 years straight with no time off.

Clint: With the second record we didn't have any time off but this time it was very necessary. We just wanted time to even heal our own bodies from playing everyday. All of our knees are brutal, we all have tendonitis and our bass player even tore his ACL and played with it torn for about three months.

Shoutweb: What are your hopes or expectations with the release of this record?

Clint: I just hope people like it and I'd love to sell a lot of records while having the respect of my peers and the people I respect. I just hope people enjoy the record and manage to keep an open mind.