Sevendust's Blood & Stone is a sturdy slice of 21st Century rock

Unlucky Atlantans’ Sevendust remain defiant on thirteenth album Blood & Stone

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Sevendust: Blood & Stone
(Image: © Rise Records)

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Many a band are described as ‘survivors’, but this Georgia quintet have overcome more adversity than most to make it to their quartercentury with the original line-up intact. 

Near-bankruptcy, addiction and divorce have regularly threatened their existence. Which might be why this new studio album has a defiant air to it. Dying To Live and Blood From A Stone are epic volleys of blazing riffage, machine-gun drums and anthemic vocal swells, but elsewhere, they’re showing a few scars

Lajon Witherspoon’s ever-emotive vocals cut through most strikingly on the epic lament Nothing Left To See Here Anymore, full of weary anger tinged with a bruised despair. 

Their take on Soundgarden’s The Day I Tried To Live might highlight unfavourably Sevendust’s relative lack of distinctive songwriting traits, but this album is still a very sturdy slab of 21st-century hard rock.

Johnny Sharp
Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock.