American alternative-metal outfit SEVENDUST is one of those bands that boasts an insanely consistent discography of banging albums, but has remained criminally underrated to this day. It’s pretty weird, considering that some lesser talents that emerged from the same first wave of nu-metal in the early 1990s made it big with albums that weren’t even that great. On October 2nd, 2015, the band released their eleventh studio album “Kill the Flaw,” an album that proved to be yet another solid entry in their catalog without making too much of a ruckus outside their fanbase – although the lead single, “Thank You,” did become SEVENDUST‘s first Grammy-nominated song. After having experienced some label hassles with their previous albums, the band released this beast on their own label, 7Bros. Records. Ironically enough, the band lost out in the category of Best Metal Performance to the Swedish fancy-dress occultists, GHOST. I mean, as much as I like GHOST‘s pop-tinted ABBA-metal, there’s no way they could challenge SEVENDUST in this particular category. Are you kidding me?! While “Kill the Flaw” may not be the band’s most memorable effort, it showcases their fortes quite nicely – that is, blistering hooks, funky metal grooves, and big choruses. Plus, vocalist Lajon Witherspoon‘s voice is as soulful as ever. For me, SEVENDUST has always come off like a band that continued to refine upon what LIVING COLOUR achieved on their 1993 magnum opus “Stain” without those experimental forays outside the metal framework – and this 2015 endeavor does not do much to change that impression, which is exactly why it sounds so good.
That aforementioned single opens the album with the classic, hard-hitting SEVENDUST sound, setting a rather nice tone for the album. It is a song the band wrote in order to thank their fans for all the support, and it is the song that has garnered the most spins from this album on Spotify, a little short of thirteen million listens! At the time, it was not the very song that caught my attention, though. That honor fell to the second single, “Not Today,” which upped the groove quotient a bit. Now, in retrospect, the song is almost reminiscent of those more progressive, if not altogether djenty affairs from bands such as ODDLAND. Coming to think about it, I guess the gap between drop-tuned nu-metal grooves and djenty riff-origamis is not really that large (you just need to add some odd-meter ingredient). While I’ve never considered SEVENDUST to be a nu-metal band exactly, they did sprout from that metal gene pool some 30 years ago.
While each song in this selection is right on the money with the band’s signature character, some moments stand out rather nicely – like the bluegrass motif that leads into a pounding riffage in “Chop,” making a comeback later in the song. Then, “Letters” kicks off with a verse that resonates with the Gothic rock of, say, HIM, or the latter-day saints of the aesthetic, such as CEMETERY SKYLINE. Of course, Witherspoon‘s soulful grit adds an entirely different, almost R&B-tinted dimension to it – just imagine Terence Trent D’Arby doing “Join Me in Death.” Well, why the hell not? There aren’t many, apart from SEVENDUST and maybe OCEANS OF SLUMBER, who could even pull something like this off without sounding corny.
Even the band’s stock performance is good enough to make you bob your head, and when the plot really thickens, like on the groove-metal-esque “Torched,” things get really heated. Back in the day, some critics were quick to dismiss some of the album tracks as throw-away songs, but I wouldn’t go as far – yeah, a couple of tracks, such as “Cease and Desist” and “Silly Beast,” may smell of homemade bread and not-so-strong coffee but in the past 10 years, I’ve grown to like them just as much as those instant bangers. Then again, I can appreciate all sorts of aesthetic values on a metal record, not just blistering, mosh-pit-exploding riffs. In terms of flow, “Kill the Flaw” is a near-flawless endeavor altogether – not perfect, but good enough to nip all pointless nitpicking in the bud. The overall aftertaste left by the album is very pleasant indeed.
It remains one of the mysteries of the music world why SEVENDUST has not become the brand ambassadors of the funkier type of modern metal. They signed to the relatively big label, Napalm Records, for their latest 2023 album “Truth Killer,” so with any luck, this bunch will finally become recognized as the amazing band that they are. As it happens, SEVENDUST is one of the support acts confirmed for ALTER BRIDGE‘s upcoming show in Helsinki, set for January 22nd, 2026. The word on the street is that this band is insane on stage! So, all my fellow Finns, you’d better mark that date on your calendars!
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Thank You
- Death Dance
- Forget
- Letters
- Cease and Desist
- Not Today
- Chop
- Kill the Flaw
- Silly Beast
- Peace and Destruction
- Torched
- Slave the Prey
Lineup
Lajon Witherspoon – vocals
Clint Lowery – lead guitars, backing vocals, production
John Connolly – rhythm guitars, backing vocals
Vinnie Hornsby – bass
Morgan Rose – drums, backing vocals
Label
7Bros. Records
