SEVENDUST Guitarist Discusses New Album Concept

In a recent interview conducted by Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net, SEVENDUST guitarist John Connolly discussed the concept behind the band's new album, "Alpha" (in stores March 6). Excerpts from the interview follow.

Live-Metal.net: Aside from "Alpha" being one of the songs on the album, why did you choose that as the title for it?

John Connolly: "Well, the whole record is a bit of a concept. It was kind of one of those strange things where it happened to cross us, because usually what'll happen is as we're doing the record, as the songs are going down and you'll have the last two or three songs that we've already tracked musically that still are missing a few vocals, things that we need to kind of start to fool around with. As we were rounding everything out, usually at that point we start getting all the lyrics written entered into the computer so that we can make sure we've got everything right for copyrights and for the album art and for the liner notes and all that stuff, and we go through the meetings, sit there song by song, go, 'OK, what's the song about? What was it inspired by? Who contributed what?' And we would kind of have these discussions so that if someone says, 'What's that song about,' at least we kind of know, because sometimes, you know, Lajon [Witherspoon, vocals] might write a line in a verse and Morgan [Rose, drums] may write a chorus and I might write a bridge and they all kind of mean something based on what was there before what we did, but sometimes you don't really know. Sometimes you're just kind of going off what your interpretation is. It's funny, sometimes there's songs that are written about three entirely different things but find one unanimous vision for everything. With 'Alpha,' we noticed that as we were going through it, it was like, alright, every song is a conversation between these two people, but the two people are really one person. It's basically just voices in someone's head. And slowly but surely, we started going through and I was like, 'Dude, all these songs are this.' And Morgan kind of looked at me and was like, 'Yeah, strange, isn't it?' And I was like, 'Yeah, it's really strange.' It's basically 'Fight Club'. It's 'Fight Club' the record, except the only difference is you don't find out that there's another entity [inside his head] at the end of the movie, you find out at the beginning. So it's basically about someone who is slowly but surely losing their mind and they know that they're losing their mind, and there's a couple cries out for help as it goes through. It's definitely a darker piece for us, for sure. But it's just one of those things. Everything we do reflects something that we've had going on in our lives and when we finally got out of our TVT deal and the whole WineDark thing really, really started getting weird, you look back and you're like, 'Man, when am I gonna do the right thing and why do we continue to have all this weirdness?' And sometimes it just drives you nuts and it definitely influences the way you write and what you write about. It's a darker piece and, like I said, every song kind of relates. As you take the journey through the record and listen to it from that perspective, all these arguments within one person's head, it's definitely a darker thing for us, for sure."

Live-Metal.net: "How long did you actually spend [making] "Alpha"?"

John Connolly: "Honestly, it was fast. As soon as we got the studio booked, it was maybe about three weeks. We had about three weeks to pull as much music together as possible and immediately I just started slamming as much stuff on CD, just working quickly. I wouldn't sit there and dwell on 'OK, I need to write this, I need to write that.' I basically picked up a guitar and jammed and whatever came out, I went back to it later and I went and found the songs. They were there, I just had to find them. And then you just kind of put things together and started sending CDs to Lajon and Morgan so that they could kind of get a jump on the vocals, and I guess once I got up in Atlanta we probably had five of the 15 that we ended up recording finished, and two weeks after that everything else was done. We went in, we did all the music in eight days and then the vocals took another two and a half to three weeks. So it really happened fast. When the record was finished, that's when we took the break. We sat back and went, 'How did we pull this off?' It was one of the smoothest — you know, it's definitely nerve-wracking when you've got your entire career based on what you think is gonna be good for you and for your fans, and a lot of people would say, 'Well, you need to get a big name producer and you need to go off and write songs for two years and release this gigantic whatever.' We were like, 'Let's self-produce it, let's do it as fast as humanly possible.' Because for some reason or another SEVENDUST works better that way. We learned from experience. Less time is better. I don't know why. I guess it's more instinctive that way. You don't let your head get in the way. You just kind of react, you let your hand and your heart kind of do what it's gonna do, and if people are digging that riff and that song then you move on."

Read the entire interview at Live-Metal.net.