Seasons (Sevendust Album) - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

In an unusual choice, Butch Walker was chosen to produce the band's fourth album. Although Walker had produced some demos for the band in their early years as Crawlspace, he had a largely pop-oriented résumé. In a 2003 interview, guitarist John Connolly described the album's overall approach:

"It’s really heavy and just tons of melody. We’re real big fans of melody and there’s no reason that a heavy band can’t have something to sing over, and we just really pushed it a lot farther then we had a chance to on the last few records."

Connolly also compared Seasons to the band's previous albums:

"A lot more mature. A lot more focused. We just had a lot more time to spend with it. Working with Butch Walker in the studio just made us a lot more efficient, and we could move a lot faster. We wrote a lot of songs for this record. I think we just pushed better songs further along then we had a chance to with Animosity."

In retrospect, Morgan Rose has described Seasons as too commercial. This was due to Sevendust's loss of creative control with TVT Records thinking that Seasons should be suitable for radio airplay. He noted in an interview, "When we finished our touring cycle for Seasons, and our number one priority was to figure out a way to get out of the record deal that we had been stuck in for quite a while. Once we finally got out, our next priority was not to be stuck in the same position as far as creative control and to be able to make a lot of the musical decisions on our own."