STONE SOUR's New Songs Are 'Turning Out Amazing,' Says Bassist JOHNY CHOW

STONE SOUR will enter the studio in January 2017 to begin recording its long-awaited follow-up to its last collection of original music, "House Of Gold And Bones", a double concept album which was released in two parts in 2012 and 2013. The new CD will take two months to record and one month to mix, with plans to release the effort in the summer of 2017, just in time for the festival season.

STONE SOUR bassist Johny Chow told Meltdown of the WRIF radio station in Detroit, Michigan last week that the band is continuing to be patient with frontman Corey Taylor, who is juggling his duties between SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR.

"What's happening [with STONE SOUR right now] is, obviously, SLIPKNOT's out on their [touring] cycle and they'll be finishing up their cycle at some point this year," he said (hear audio below). "And we — meaning STONE SOUR — will be getting in the studio hopefully January and February of next year. Now, we did those couple of releases of those EPs, of the covers, just to kind of keep us current and keep us moving without actually writing an album — instead of the band just going dark and the web site going dark and three and a half years of nothing happening. It could be a little detrimental at times to pick those pieces back up and convince everybody to come on back on board — 'the band's still here' kind of thing. But we've actually been out to Burbank [California], where Roy Mayorga, the drummer of STONE SOUR, has a studio [called Room 237]; he's converted his garage into a studio, and it's really a kick-ass studio he's got there. And we've been, over the past couple of years, while Corey has been out with SLIPKNOT, we've all been writing a ton of music and passing it back and forth through e-mails. And we were able to finally get out to Burbank a couple of times in the past months and recorded twelve songs already — just demos. And we plan on getting back out to Burbank hopefully within the next few months here. We've got another six to eight songs that we're gonna lay down. And when we go in the studio, we're ready to go. We'll have the songs. We will have sat on the songs for a little bit to figure out what we might do a little bit differently or change here and there."

Chow also talked about the songwriting process in STONE SOUR and how it is affected by the fact that the members of the band are at times busy touring with other projects. He said: "Basically, all of us… we're in the age where everybody's got some sort of a home studio. It's one of those things… When Corey said, 'Okay, guys. I'm gonna be starting up on this SLIPKNOT tour. You know how a lot of it is — it's the 'hurry up and wait' and sitting in that dressing room. So send me any ideas, riffs, completed songs, whatever it may be. Just start sending them my way.' So we have. Whether it's… Christian's [Martucci, guitar] got a whole song. Josh [Rand, guitar] has a whole song, or Roy, or myself, or Corey. Or it's… I've sent Christian… 'Hey, Christian, here's ten riffs,' and me and Christian have pieced together some songs that way. We have some sort of a structured song before we even get there. Then we all fly out, we all get in that studio together, including Corey, when he's got a little bit of downtime in between tours. And it's turning out amazing right now. I wasn't expecting how awesome these songs are. They're really solid. I'm really, really psyched on them. A lot of high energy."

Taylor recently told Loudwire that the band has demoed "about fifteen" new songs that he said were "really, really strong," with plans to complete ten more and then "see where we're at." He praised the new material as "amazing," explaining: "The stuff we're writing right now, it's got elements of metal, it's got elements of hard rock, it's got elements of punk, it's got all these things that we all love and we all share, and we're just kind of shoving it through the STONE SOUR funnel and seeing what happens, and it's all really, really, really good."

STONE SOUR, has released two EPs of cover songs — "Meanwhile In Burbank…" and "Straight Out Of Burbank" — and was slated to issue a third, titled "No Sleep 'Till Burbank", but those plans now appear to have been scrapped. Taylor told the "Someone Who Isn't Me" podcast: "Originally we were going to do three [covers EPs], and now it sounds like we're just going to do the two and just keep the other stuff we recorded as extra content for when we make the next album."

STONE SOUR last year named Christian Martucci as the permanent replacement for Jim Root, who was dismissed from the band in late 2013 after he decided to sit out the group's last tour in order to begin working on the new SLIPKNOT album. Martucci was recruited to play on that tour and was confirmed as a permanent member in March 2015 in a Facebook post.

Root did not speak kindly of STONE SOUR in interviews after he was fired, saying, "Some of the guys in STONE SOUR, I think they just want to be a radio band and write strictly for radio and try to be more of a poppy rock band. And that's not really what I'm into. There's at least one guy in the band that's only concerned about money. I really have no desire to associate with people like that anymore."

Root played on all five STONE SOUR studio records to date, including 2010's "Audio Secrecy" and "House Of Gold & Bones".

Interview (audio):