COLUMBUS – It was 8 p.m. and when Seether’s Shaun Morgan (vocals, guitar) took the stage, his bright red hair looked like it was on fire.

The red spotlight from the stage lighting seemed to be the culprit enhancing Morgan’s hair.

A pale, white face with black eyes spans Seether’s backdrop and peered out into the crowd while two angel montages stood at each end of the stage.

And despite this angelic setting, Seether screamed their anger into two microphones on stage.

Though the band graces American stages now, the beginning of the band traces thousands of miles away to South Africa.

There, Morgan and Dale Stewart (bass, vocals) headed up Seether. When they began recording and sent their album across seas, a scout in New York picked it up.

From there, the band grew to include Pat Callahan (guitar) and John Humphrey (drums) and reached audiences here in the States.

Now, Seether are on tour with 30 Seconds to Mars and Audioslave promoting their third album, “Karma and Effect.”

In its first week alone, “Karma and Effect” pushed 82,000 records.

“I was in the middle of ‘Star Wars Episode 3’ when I got a text message from one of our managers,” Humphrey said backstage. “After all the hard work you put into it, to have that happen the first week, it’s pretty cool.”

Stewart agreed. After a very hands-on approach with their first album, “Disclaimer,” the band took a different approach and recorded “Karma and Effect” in three weeks – a stark contrast to “Disclaimer’s” two-month production time.

“Our album release was quite painless,” Stewart said. “It was the album we’ve always wanted to make; it is very intimate. I think in certain situations, it’s fine to record for two months, but with this album, we already had songs written so we didn’t need two months for it.”

Back on stage, Morgan lead into “Fine Again,” a song about wasting away in a city that has nothing to do. He dedicated it to the audience.

“This song should mean more to this city than anywhere else,” he said before tearing into the song.

Morgan’s hands moved in power chords, quick and exact. When he finished, the audience exploded into a rocking force of cheers.

Morgan paused for a minute behind the hair that blocked his eyes from the crowd.

“I can smell that marijuana cigarette in the crowd,” he said, “and it smells like a good time.”

More explosive applause came from the audience as Seether broke into “Remedy,” the most recent single from “Karma and Effect.”

At this point it was hard to tell which was louder: the music or the crowd. In the center of the floor seats, a couple sang into a cell phone to a friend on the other end.

“You play the songs and see people singing and it’s instant gratification,” Stewart said before the show. “It’s adrenaline and it’s that thrill, it’s that drug that makes you want keep going. You get on stage and you think, ‘That’s awesome, I want to do it again!’ And we get to do it every night, so it’s really cool.”

That drive to perform stems from the bands that influenced Seether before most of them even knew each other.

Though the band was split between two continents, they all named the same bands as their influences: Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the many other bands that created the Seattle music scene.

As Morgan finished his last riffs, he dedicated the next song to “all the Seattle music fans in the audience.”

Morgan plunged into the first riffs of “Drain You,” a song released by Nirvana in 1991.

From then to now, Seether not only progressed as musicians but people as well.

As the song closed and the band exited the stage, Stewart referenced this very progression.

“I think you grow as a person, as an artist, as a player. It’s a natural progression,” he said. “If you’re really angry, there’s nothing better than picking up your guitar and playing some really heavy riffs.”

For more tour dates, visit www.seether.com.