STAIND Frontman Says He 'Made The Mistake' Of Reading Comments On BLABBERMOUTH.NET

The members of STAINDAaron Lewis, Mike Mushok and Johnny April recently sat down with longtime friend, Mike Karolyi of the WCCC radio station in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss their new self-titled album in a syndicated FMQB Productions radio special, "Staind: The Whole Story" (audio available below).

On the future of STAIND following drummer Jon Wysocki's departure and the end of the band's deal with Atlantic Records:

Mushok: "Obviously [STAIND will] go out and promote the record and play some shows and we'll have to see where things end up at the end of the day. I know I'll have songs and riffs, it's a matter if we still want to do it. We set ourselves up in a situation where we could go record a song tomorrow. We have a studio and everything set up and don't have to rely on anyone else at this point. It's like working towards that free agent year, and we actually made it there. It would be nice to be a free agent and see where that takes us."

On whether the stressful environment in the recording process contributed to Wysocki's departure:

Mushok: "It's 16 years. There was really no question that it was the making of the record that brought things to a head. Being in a band is like being married to three other people... It's four people, and it's work to stay together. Look at the track record of most bands out there. Even bands who are super successful, there's times where you lose somebody along the way. That was another piece of the pie. Part of the thing that was so stressful was figuring out how this was going to get handled and what was going to happen. A lot of that stress was watching it come unraveled too. And seeing it unravel right in front of your eyes and knowing that it was time for us to part ways."

On the dangers of reading criticism online:

Lewis: "I made the mistake of going on to Blabbermouth. There's two postings on there of good things that I'm doing. Like the school, and I'm going over to Kuwait and I played for the troops. And they had nothing to say but bad things about that. There's just people out there who have nothing better to do than sit at their computer and talk smack about everybody and anybody that they want to. How does it bring somebody pleasure in some way to do that? That's why in the [new STAIND] song ['Wannabe'], I'm like, 'Why don't you focus on your misery instead of me?' You have to be pretty miserable to choose to take time out of your day to seek out places to comment and just lay into somebody for no reason whatsoever."

"Staind: The Whole Story" can be heard in its entirety using the SoundCloud player below.

In other news, STAIND's new documentary, "The Making Of Staind", debuted today on YouTube and can now be seen below. The documentary reveals the tension within the group that nearly caused the breakup of the band during the making of the new album. "It's painful for me to even watch," admitted Lewis.