Holding onto Strings Better Left to Fray - Seether

“I feel so alive tonight,” Shaun Morgan sings in one of the happiest Seether songs to date, “Tonight.” And feel alive, the listener will—and sorrowful, betrayed, and uplifted—all in the course of twelve songs and five bonus tracks.

The album starts with one of the heaviest of its tunes, “Fur Cue.” The pounding guitar is no example of the lyrics within, however. While the verses are filled with lines of bitter deception and defiance (“You must know I won’t play your game”), one of the sweetest lyrics included on the album is thrown into the thick of the distortion (“Stay ‘cause you make me smile”).

Track two, “No Resolution,” offers a glimpse of frontman Shaun Morgan’s plaguing former drug addiction with lines like, “I’m still getting high” and “I love the way it feeds me.” “Forsaken”—the last track—speaks of the same idea (“If I feed, I’m stronger/I don’t feel no longer”), but with a finalizing closure (“I’ll never forsake myself again”), which really showcases the journey one takes when listening to the record.

It’s personal, and it radiates. 

From the darkness of “Master of Disaster” to the helplessness of “Country Song” (“You keep on thinking you can save me”), it’s a heartrending voyage, but one that’s interspersed with elevating gems like “Tonight” and “Here and Now” (“You’re my savior after all”).

“Pass Slowly,” written about the suicide of Morgan’s brother Eugene, is a tearjerker like no other song on the album. The arrangement—complete with strings and a chorus-like backing vocal—is haunting, but merely the poignant lyrics (“Courage takes too much”) could easily bring many to tears. Especially yours truly, who cried during Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The bonus tracks—“Dead Seeds,” “Yeah,” “Nobody,” and “Effigy”—are perhaps the catchiest of the track list, despite their status as afterthoughts. And “Here and Now (Deconstructed)”—the iTunes pre-order special—has a lingering feeling of tenderness not quite displayed to its full potential in the original track.

“There’s no comfort in song,” Morgan croons in “Yeah.” But that is perhaps the one untruth told in the path of the disc, because Holding onto Strings Better Left to Fray exudes comfort in the fact the music industry hasn’t quite crashed yet, since the record debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 in the United States.

“Keep on coming on.”

Please do, Seether.

"Pleasure Is My Business" - Criminal Minds - S04E16

IMDb Summary: A high-priced call girl that is killing her clients must be found and stopped.

When one ponders serial killers, sympathy is not what comes to mind. Confusion at how a human could possibly commit such brutality, devastation at the results, fury at both the murderer and the world for making them such--yes. But sympathy? Sympathy for the killer rather than the victims? Rare. Very rare. But in "Pleasure Is My Business," an unapologetically raw episode of crime show extraordinaire Criminal Minds, sympathy is on the mind.

The episode is centered on big league call girl Megan Kane. She's beautiful, versatile, and deadly. The first scene shows her scantily clad, walking towards a man of high stature and low morals. He takes a sip of champagne.

And dies.

Megan watches her poison drain the life out of him as she receives a call engendering another "appointment."

Cut to Special Agent Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner speaking with Patrick Jackson in Texas, the man in charge of a case of serial murders pertaining to--guess who--a high-end hooker. The case is a delicate one. If any of Megan's clients become known to the public as such, their careers as judges/senators/etc. are down the drain. Acknowledgement is dangerous to their reputations, but Megan is dangerous to their wellbeing. As such, Hotchner and his team will have to tread lightly.

Meanwhile, Hotch boards an elevator up to his hotel room, where he makes polite small talk with a professional-looking blonde woman typing on a Blackberry. Like stated: versatile, because little does he know, the woman just feet from him is the one he's about to so desperately seek.

The episode's concept in itself is unique to both Criminal Minds and society in general. Female serial killers are far less abundant than that of males, and it's proven that their motives vary greatly. Most male serial killers are sexually motivated--in it for the chase and subsequent torture when faced with a victim of their sexual preference. Child molesters, too, fall into this category.

"99% of abducted children who are killed die within the first 24 hours, 75% within the first three hours." - Dr. Spencer Reid in the episode "Seven Seconds"

However, in "Pleasure Is My Business," the scenario of the female serial killer is explored in more depth--along with her motives.

Normally--and as with Megan--the female has to have suffered a personal affront by her victim, such as physical or emotional abuse. In her case, the offense was at the hand of her father--Andrew Kane.

As discovered as the episode continues, Megan herself came from regal breeding before her father left her mother for his own call girl, cutting off both her and her mother emotionally and financially. Ironically, all Megan has left of her father is the purity ring he gave her and the list of clients she bought from another escort with Andrew Kane's name glaringly in the repertoire.

As clients are crossed off the list and await burials, Aaron and his team race to find their murderer. Their major break in the case comes in the form of marriage--those of the defunct variety. Penelope Garcia, the team's technology analyst, uncovers the fact that all of the victims had several marriages under their belts, all of which for they were not paying alimony, despite their excessive riches.

"18 cars, 6 houses and 3 boats. Can you even boat in Dallas?"  - Dr. Spencer Reid

It's revealed that Megan--in a psychologically disappointed state--is taking out her loss of a father figure on those who are similar to him: those who ignore their families in favor of a loose lifestyle and unreliable ethos.

As she "devolves," her intent to kill those only like her father weakens, and she no longer sticks to her profile. She talks with Hotchner on the phone, shooting another man--one whose wife died of cancer almost a year previously--as they speak. The need to catch her before she unravels further intensifies.

The team--made up of Dr. Spencer Reid, Agents Derek Morgan, Jennifer Jareau, Emily Prentiss, David Rossi, and, most importantly, Aaron Hotchner--finally come to realize Megan and Andrew Kane are going to meet at a pricey hotel, for Andrew wants to manipulate his daughter into giving up the list of her clients.

She gives her father the phone assumed to hold the information, and he escapes moments before the agents storm the hotel room.

Megan sits on the balcony, an empty champagne glass beside her. Poison. Dying slowly, she begs Aaron to stay with her for her last minutes. She gives him the memory chip containing the names of clients from the phone she surrendered to her father. 

She asks him to reveal the immoral men's names to the public. Her objective is unveiled. She was a little girl left abandoned, and what she became is at the fault of not her but her father. 

The viewer, at such a point, is overcome inevitably with pity and sympathy. The kills were not to be justified, of course, but the mental damage inflicted upon Megan due to the deprivation of true family and warmth do make one watching sad for her.

"You're the first man I've ever met that didn't let me down," Megan says to Hotch with her last breath.

And even with the unspeakable crimes she's committed, a melancholy sigh escapes the viewer when her eyes close for good.