STAIND Frontman Explains New Album Title

August 26, 2008

Darren Cowan of Blistering.com recently conducted an interview with STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Blistering.com: "The Illusion of Progress" retains the trademark STAIND sound, but there seems to be some new elements. Please tell our readers about these elements and how you crafted them.

Aaron Lewis: As far as the new elements go, it's not new elements, it's old: old guitar, old amplifiers and classic, recognizable tones.

Blistering.com: You also made a statement about it being your most musical album.

Lewis: Yep, for a lot of the same reasons. From the time we spent in the studio layering and adding different textures to the songs, it's just a good musical collection of songs.

Blistering.com: You titled the album "The Illusion of Progress". That title seems to hold a very skeptical, hopeless view. Why did you use this title?

Lewis: When the title appeared to us, so to speak, it just seemed like the perfect title because of the fact that it can be taken in so many ways and applied to so many different things. The fact of the matter is we were all hanging out, cracking jokes, shooting the shit when we should have been working and writing songs and [producer] Johnny K made a comment about it. He was like, "What the fuck guys? Are you gonna get some fucking work done today or what?" I laughed and said, "It's like the illusion of progress." Then we all just kind of stopped, and it was very obvious to me that was the title of the record. Really, the title is quite shallow, unless you take it for face value. There are so many ways you can view it. You can view it in a political way. You can view it in a societal way. You can view it in much smaller ways; however you want to view it. The title is, as it stands without definition, a little skeptical. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical. You can love this country and still be skeptical; you can believe in this country and still be skeptical. The fact of the matter is we still pick our politicians from a pool of the dirtiest, bought-and-paid-for, from-their-own-agenda people. How are we supposed to pick somebody who is good for the country when that is the pool of which we are picking from?

Read the entire interview at Blistering.com.

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