Credit: Travis Shinn/Chuck BrueckmannThe COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t stop a new Sevendust album.
Blood & Stone, the latest effort from the Atlanta metallers, was apparently almost delayed to 2021 due to the pandemic. But, as frontman Lajon Witherspoon tells ABC Audio, “That just definitely didn’t flow or fly with us as a band.”
“I feel definitely that music’s a healer,” Witherspoon says. “Hopefully [I felt] that this album would be something that helps people get through this crazy time that we’ve kinda just been thrown into.”
Blood & Stone was recorded in the pre-pandemic times, though songs such as current single “Dying to Live” or the cut “Feel Like Going On” certainly feel like they could’ve been written today.
“It means even more in light of what’s going on,” Witherspoon says of the album. “I mean, of course it was very important when we recorded it, but I feel like sitting on it and, even to us, listening back and resonating on what’s going on over this course of time…it really fits what’s going on in the world.”
Blood & Stone also includes a cover of Soundgarden’s “The Day I Tried to Live. Witherspoon says he initially felt “pressure” trying sing just like the late Chris Cornell, before realizing he really needed to just sing it like himself.
“I just went in there with all the emotions that I would feel as a father, as a man,” Witherspoon says. “I dug deep into how his family could possibly feel at this time in their lives, the impact that he had on me as far as a musical inspiration, and I just went in there with all those emotions and I sang that song.”
Blood & Stone is out now.
By Josh Johnson
Copyright © 2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
