STRETCHING THE TRUTH

ON TRUTH KILLER, SEVENDUST'S MENACING (AND GUITAR-PACKED) NEW ALBUM, CLINT LOWERY AND JOHN CONNOLLY PONDER THE MUSICAL QUESTION, "HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?"

- GREGORY ADAMS

SEVEN DUST rhythm guitarist John Connolly was loving the sound of the band’s Truth Killer album as they were tracking it in Florida last summer. It’s easy to understand why; the veteran Atlanta hard rockers’ 14th full-length consistently brings the boom through a series of chunked-out, darkly detuned progressions. But the guitarist also recalls one particular moment — a couple of days after he’d locked in a bombastic, inverted bend motif for the record’s “Love and Hate” — where things got a little weird. As bassist Vince Hornsby began laying down the low end for producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette, a bewildered Connolly noticed the piece had accidentally devolved into a tonal nightmare.

“I walked in and was like, ‘Why does this sound…off?,’” Connolly tells Guitar World. “They couldn’t get the bend; something about being down that low just wasn’t connecting. So I played the riff on my guitar, and they were like ‘Ohhhhhh!’ The bass was just [tuned] a half-step off, but I was having an aneurysm listening to it.”

“The menacing sound of that bend is such a big Sevendust thing to me,” lead guitarist Clint Lowery says of “Love and Hate,” though he reveals that the song had been on the chopping block before the group perfected its powerfully percussive edge — and pitch. “It’s got this really simple, Alice in Chains, chromatic, one-fret [descension]. That Jaws kind of energy goes a long way.”