Disclaimer is the debut studio album by South African rock band Seether. The album was released on 20 August 2002. It features three successful singles which would remain some of the band's most well-known songs. It is their first release under their current name after changing it from Saron Gas in 2002 to avoid confusion with the deadly nerve agent sarin gas.
A great deal of pre-production took place in South Africa with supervision from a Wind-up representative. It continued in New York City before the album recording sessions began in Los Angeles. Veteran session drummer Josh Freese filled the role in the studio before an audition took place at Leads Rehearsal Studio. Among sixteen others, Nick Oshiro auditioned and joined the band in 2001. Seether would also enlist guitarist Patrick Callahan in the fall of that year after performing alongside his then-current band in Philadelphia.[3]
Disclaimer was released with ten different cover variations.[4] These feature images from the "Fine Again" music video with people holding signs depicting a negative outlook or a poor situation in life. The concept to implement it through the album cover was headed by the video's director, Paul Feeder. According to bassist Dale Stewart:
"[Feeder] came up with the idea of the people bearing [sic] their souls and holding up the signs and we thought it was a good concept. It's kind of like a thread that runs through the whole album, the fragility, or whatever you want to call it, you know in people. People are always screwed up about something, even if they act like they're not."[3]
In regards to recording and single output, the band allegedly faced a considerable deal of label pressure compared to future albums. According to a reflective Shaun Morgan in 2005:
"...With Disclaimer, we were still pretty green and all the say-so was made for us. We really didn't have much and most of those decisions, I felt, were bad ones. Last time around we had a manager from South Africa. She wasn't very good at what she was doing and she was letting [the record label] walk all over us."[5]
Seven of the tracks that appeared on their previous album Fragile appeared re-recorded on Disclaimer. They were "Gasoline", "69 Tea," "Fine Again," "Driven Under," "Pride," "Your Bore," and "Pig". "Gasoline" had originally been a bonus track on Fragile. Eventually, it became a single along with "Fine Again" and "Driven Under", which had preceded it.
Songwriting
"69 Tea" was the first song that Shaun Morgan remembers writing. He has said:
"We'd written songs in bands prior to that. I mean, I wrote that when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. So for me it was like, wow, this is just me by myself and nobody else. I spent a lot of my teenage years just in my room playing guitar. I used to have tapes and tapes of songs that I would just sit and record. Unfortunately, I've lost all of them but luckily some of them would stick with me and as the years went by, I'd show them to different bands and some of them managed to sort of hang in there. But that was the first one I remember writing. That was actually our first single in South Africa, which basically put us on the map. That's a pretty fond memory."[6]
At the age of 23, Morgan experienced heartbreak, which inspired the song "Broken". Morgan's wife did not follow him from their homeland of South Africa to the United States, and chose to live in South Africa with their daughter. Morgan thus felt he lost his best chance to have the family experience he always wanted. He explained:
"I really wanted that family, and I really wanted to be part of that family unit. And I really thought this was going to be my nucleus and my happy place," Morgan lamented. "Ever since then I have had a hard time feeling like I'm worth anything. And ever since then I have had a problem caring. I feel like this emotional desert."[7]
Musical style
Disclaimer gained comparison to grunge acts such as Nirvana. According to AllMusic's Jason D. Taylor, the album "follows the path that bands such as Staind and Cold have capitalized on in the 21st century". He also states that the band's "moody rock edge borders on the formerly prominent grunge style once championed by another trio, Nirvana".[1]
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