New STONE TEMPLE PILOTS Music Is 'Rawkin'', Says Guitarist DEAN DELEO

On February 18, Mistress Carrie of the Worcester/Boston, Massachusetts radio station WAAF conducted an interview with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS guitarist Dean DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz. You can now listen to the chat below.

Speaking about the new STONE TEMPLE PILOTS material the band has been recording over the course of the past few weeks, Dean said: "Although we've been trying for many, many years to get away from ourselves, we always keep coming back to our same spot — that person in front of the mirror. It kind of sounds like us. It's not anything we've… I'd like to think it's not anything we've done before; we definitely don't wanna repeat ourselves. It's just about kind of stumbling and writing some new musical terrain we haven't really explored before. But it's definitely R-A-W-K-I-N. Rawkin'."

Added Eric: "When we were writing these songs, it was just, like, 'Man, what gets us off on stage live?' We wanna make sure that it has those elements where we're excited not just to present a good song, but something that has great performances on all our parts and something that the audience can just really enjoy."

Asked if the songwriting process has changed since the departure of singer Scott Weiland and addition of LINKIN PARK frontman Chester Bennington, Dean said: "No. It's really remained the same. [We] come into a session with lots of material on our hands, and it's just a matter of sifting through it. Sometimes a song will stand on its own, sometimes I'll walk in with maybe one or two parts to a song, and Robert [DeLeo, bass] will say, 'I've got another part for that,' and there'll be a musical marriage there. The greatest thing about it is there's no rules. It's just, like, whatever the final product does… If it's putting that little tingle in your knickers, you know you've got something."

Dean and Eric also talked about Chester's recent leg injury which forced the cancelation of LINKIN PARK's U.S. tour.

"He's healing pretty quickly," Dean said. "He's just of that mindset and physicality where he wills his body to do that. He's got youth going for him, for goodness' sake."

He continued: "He hurt himself badly. I mean, it was not only a break, but the guy tore darn near every ligament in the ankle. They had to go in on each side. He has about a five-inch incision on each side of the ankle, and they had to go in and kind of assemble a big bowl of spaghetti."

Added Eric: "Even with LINKIN PARK, he's played with a broken arm, he's performed with a broken shoulder… I mean, he's very physical and kind of hurts himself sometimes, but he knows how to recover."

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS will head out on the road this spring as well for its first new tour dates since late 2013. The trek kicks off on April 8 in Seattle, winding down on April 30 in Philadelphia.

A special BLABBERMOUTH.NET presale began on Wednesday February 18 at 10:00 a.m. local time in several markets listed below, which you can unlock by entering the promo code "BLABBERMOUTH" when prompted. Following the presale, tickets will go on sale to the general public on Friday, February 20 at 11:00 a.m. local time. VIP packages are available through Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

One dollar per ticket on the new tour will be donated to Music For Relief, a nonprofit organization dedicated to disaster relief and environmental protection that was launched in 2004 by LINKIN PARK. Funds raised will support long term Hurricane Sandy recovery in New Jersey.

STP's first foray into the studio with Bennington, an EP called "High Rise", came out in October 2013 and yielded the No. 1 single "Out Of Time".

The band toured at the end of that year, but plans for more recording were put on hold so that Bennington could work on the new LINKIN PARK CD, "The Hunting Party", which arrived in June 2014.

Bennington told The Pulse Of Radio in 2013 that STP fans had been won over by the new lineup after seeing them live. "People come in, they all have their judgment goggles on to a certain degree, and then they watch the show and they're all chanting 'STP' and losing their minds and going out and being vocal about what they saw," he said. "They're seeing that this is real and that this is legitimate, and what we're doing, we're doing with a lot of joy and we're doing with a lot of emotion and passion, and we're having fun, and we're connecting with them in a way that I think they haven't had a chance to do with STP in a very, very long time."

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS tour dates are as follows:

Apr. 08 - Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre (Tickets)
Apr. 10 - San Francisco, CA @ Fillmore (Tickets)
Apr. 12 - Anaheim, CA @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 13 - West Hollywood, CA @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 15 - Denver, CO @ Fillmore (Tickets)
Apr. 17 - Dallas, TX @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 19 - San Antonio, TX @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 20 - Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom
Apr. 22 - Chicago, IL @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 24 - Silver Spring, MD @ Fillmore (Tickets)
Apr. 25 - Montclair, NJ @ Wellmont Theatre (Tickets)
Apr. 27 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza (Tickets)
Apr. 28 - Boston, MA @ House of Blues (Tickets)
Apr. 30 - Philadelphia, PA @ TLA Center (Tickets)