WHAT THE HELL ARE SEVENDUST DOING TO THEMSELVES?
After years of mis-management, losing a key songwriter / founding member, and a string of mediocre but decent enough albums, things were looking up for Sevendust. They weathered the storm of the nu-metal fallout to emerge unscathed by the critical backlash to beset pretty much every other band to whom that term ever applied. They’re set with their own label imprint through WMG’s Independent Label Group, they have a new album coming out a mere year after the last one, and they signed on to headline one of the side-stages at this Summer’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour. Yes, Sevendust were poised for a new start; and now they go and fuck it it all up.
Sevendust has committed one bone-headed business move after the other in recent months. First came the news that they were having country star Chris Daughtry and Myles Kennedy from Alter Bridge guest on their new album, Chapter VII: Hope & Sorrow. Talk about desperation. I mean there’s nothing wrong with expanding your horizons, but having an American Idol and a guy who sings with the dudes from Creed; um, who thought THAT one up? There goes their metal cred down the tube, whatever was left of it.
Then they dropped off the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour, citing “changes in the group’s touring schedule.” In recent years Sevendust has completely avoided package tours or support of any kind, much to their detriment. While package tours may pay less than their own tours and support gigs may be a blow to the ego, both serve that ever-critical function of refreshing their fan-base. Meanwhile Sevendust’s audience has dwindled, precisely because they haven’t brought in new fans at all, to the point where they needed to downsize a recent show in NYC from a 3,000 capacity to 600 capacity venue. Rockstar Energy was the perfect opportunity to revitalize their aging fan-base, to introduce the band to the fans of Mastodon, Dragonforce, and others, not to mention re-introduce them to fans of Slipknot and Disturbed who may have lost track of Sevendust along the way. But then they pulled out of the tour, quite possibly the most retardo move ever… what else could they possibly have on the table that’s better?
Sure as hell couldn’t be the tour with Saliva that they just announced, could it? Yes, Saliva, the band who wrote “Click, Click, Boom,” — one of the most annoyingly wretched songs of the 21st century — and then turned into a pseudo-sleaze/hard-rock revival band like their fellow former-nu-metal brethren Papa Roach. Yeah, that band, the one that approximately 31 people nationwide give a shit about in the year 2008. A tour with fucking Saliva.
Look, I appreciate the band’s integrity and high standard of stage production, and I get why they want to headline their own shows instead of play festivals. But they’re slowly burying themselves with these business moves that fail to introduce them to new fans. Sevendust better have something else or a damn good album up their sleeves — or rather, both. Or they’re fucked.
-VN
