Seether

Unless his girlfriend, Evanescence singer Amy Lee, finally gets around to finishing the follow-up to her band's blockbuster 2003 debut, Seether frontman Shaun Morgan can expect to see quite a lot of the road this year. Even in a family populated by two rock stars, somebody's got to bring home the bacon, a product Seether's music sort of resembles: fatty, tasty, and probably not altogether good for you.

Nothing on Karma and Effect, the South African band's latest, rivals "Broken," the excellently overwrought 2004 Morgan-Lee duet that probably provided a tidy down payment on a sweet L.A. mansion for the happy couple. Too often, Morgan depends on the post-Eddie Vedder bellow that's come to define post-grunge hard rock; at times it's easy to imagine the frontman as an understudy for ex-Creed frontman Scott Stapp. Still, "The Gift," Seether's current radio hit, proves that Morgan can summon top-notch alt-metal melodrama when the spirit (or Lee) moves him.