SEVENDUST's LAJON WITHERSPOON: 'We Don't Have To Be The Heaviest Band In The World'

In a new interview with Heavy New York, SEVENDUST singer Lajon Witherspoon spoke about the importance of evolving musically on each successive album, particularly on the band's latest effort, "Truth Killer". He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We definitely experiment, especially on this album. You definitely can see that from the programming. We kind of went really outside the box, which is fun. And I feel like at the point of our career right now, we're old enough, we've been around long enough that everything doesn't have to always be, like, you know… 'Cause you always have those guys, 'Oh man, they're not heavy anymore.' No, we're seven thousand years old. We don't have to be the heaviest band in the world. [Laughs] We've grown. We have kids. Life changes."

He continued: "We've grown up as artists, and I feel like the SEVENDUST family has grown with us and they've allowed us to change. I feel like it would be silly to have everything sound the same, because you would just get tired of it. You have to experiment. You have to grow. With anything that you do. I don't care if you worked at McDonald's, where I used to work at when I was a kid, you still had to grow. You had to do something different in the spot that you were in. You still have to evolve. And I feel the same way with the music and I feel like we've been able to do that, especially with this album too."

Witherspoon previously talked about SEVENDUST's musical experimentation in an interview with Hollywood Soapbox. He stated at the time: "That's why we felt safe with putting out the first teaser with a song like 'I Might Let The Devil Win', you know what I mean. People were like, 'Oh my God, what's going on? You guys going to really do that?' … We're not afraid at this point to put our music out. Before it was like, you had a whole group of people, 'Man, you guys are not heavy anymore.' Yes, we are. Yes, but we've grown. We've evolved. We have kids, wives. Other things inspire. We're not those kids that didn't have responsibility that just toured on the tour bus and the only thing we had to do was write music. There's a lot of different things going on now that inspire to help you write things, and you have to have that in life. I think if you're doing the same thing all the time, you can't have good things to write about that are really real. We have to have real experiences."

"Truth Killer" was released on July 28 via SEVENDUST's new label home, Napalm Records. The follow-up to 2020's "Blood & Stone" was once again tracked at Studio Barbarosa in Gotha, Florida with producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette, who has previously worked with ALTER BRIDGE and SLASH, among others.

"Truth Killer" showcases the original and current SEVENDUST lineup, comprised of Witherspoon, Clint Lowery, John Connolly, Vince Hornsby and Morgan Rose.