Seether’s growth is on display on latest album

May 7, 2015 at 12:00a.m.

Rock act Seether had yet another radio hit last year with hard-hitting regret-filled tune “Same Damn Life.”

Someone who has no problems reliving his same damn life is Seether drummer John Humphrey, who in a previous life was in ’90s band The Nixons. The alt-rock act scored a few radio songs, including “Sister,” before breaking up and falling into obscurity.

“That was the classic story of getting a record deal with The Nixons, and moving up from a van to the bus and then losing the record deal and going back to the van,” said Humphrey, calling from Cincinnati. “Yeah, you go home for a while and try to pick up the pieces and try to figure out your next move.”

Humphrey wasn’t sure he’d get another shot at stardom; however, eventually, a former Nixon sound engineer recommended him for the Seether gig in 2003. The percussionist said he was the last of five drummers auditioning for the band. While he had gained mainstream attention with The Nixons, Humphrey said he was humbled by the band’s downfall.

“I had done my homework and didn’t take the audition for granted,” Humphrey said. “I wanted the opportunity, and I was really still hungry and wanted to keep doing it. I felt there was a lot left unaccomplished with The Nixons that I wanted to do with Seether.”

Today, Seether is touring in support of its sixth studio album “Isolate and Medicate,” which came out last year. The Shaun Morgan-led band, which has 11 No. 1 singles and worldwide sales of 4.5 million releases, returns to Northeast Ohio for a show Tuesday at the House of Blues.

Humphrey said the seeds for “Isolate and Medicate” actually were planted during a recording session for the group’s 2013 greatest-hits album. One of the songs the outfit came up with was “Words as Weapons.”

“That was like a song we had in our back pocket, and I think it really set the bar for the album,” Humphrey said. “Any material written and recorded after that needed to live up to that. We felt it was too good to add as a bonus track to the best-of CD, so obviously it was good enough to be the lead single for the album.”

The drummer points to other albums tracks “Crash” and “Save the Day” as exemplifying a certain amount of emotional growth and maturity that defines “Isolate and Medicate.”

“‘Crash,’ which is one of my favorite songs, I feel is very linear,” Humphrey said. “I wouldn’t compare us to Muse, but it’s sort of in that vein. Seether needed to take some chances, and I think, musically, we do that and do sometimes catch our listeners off guard.”

Seether finds itself in a unique situation with rock radio, which inherently is repetitive in nature. Some of that is the band’s own fault with its slew of hit songs (“Broken,” “Remedy,” “The Gift,” “Fake It,” “Rise Above This” and “Breakdown”) still receiving plenty of airplay.

So Seether must walk a difficult line of exploring its style without leaving behind a sound that has resulted in numerous gold-selling albums (2002’s “Disclaimer,” 2004’s “Disclaimer II,” 2005’s “Karma & Effect” and 2007’s “Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces”).

“I think there’s always songs that don’t necessarily fit the band, so we have that in mind,” Humphrey said. “But we’ll never put out a polka album or anything like that.”

And what if in the future Seether does put out a roll-out-the-barrel type of accordion-driven album?

“I guess that means Seether has gotten really bored,” Humphrey said, laughing. “I guess you have to take some chances. Maybe that’ll become the hipster thing — polka — but I don’t think that’ll ever be the case.”