STAIND: New Album Title Revealed

Massachusetts rockers STAIND have set "Seven" as the title of their recently completed new album, due later in the year via Atlantic Records.

Speaking to the Grand Rapids, Michigan radio station WGRD 97.9 FM at this past weekend's Rock On The Range festival in Ohio (see video below),STAIND guitarist Mike Mushok stated about the new CD, "It's completely different than the last record [2008's 'The Illusion Of Progress']. It's more of a throwback to where we came from. You know, 'Dysfunction' [1999], 'Tormented' [1996] albums . . . [But] I don't think there's any rehashed riffs; I definitely think it's fresh. It's a modern-sounding version of a heavy STAIND record. It's pretty cool."

He added, "The last record was, we got together and just had a bunch of different ideas and we decided to pursue it. And it really does kind of stand out as something that was really different for us. But I loved it; it was a lot of fun to make. And as fun as that one was to make was as difficult as this one was to make. It was a tough one. And it wasn't even the music or writing it; it's just that there were a lot of things going on, and it made for a long, drawn-out process, it seemed. But I'll tell you what looking back, now that it's done, I'm really, really happy with it and I can't wait for people to hear it."

When asked if STAIND got a lot of negative feedback from fans for "The Illusion Of Progress", which featured a lighter direction than some of the band's previous efforts, vocalist Aaron Lewis replied, "I foolishly opened my mouth early in the process of 'The Illusion Of Progress' and said that the record was gonna be the heavy record that we wrote this time around. And when we went into the studio, the songs that we ended up focusing on weren't that. But I still think 'The Illusion Of Progress' was a great record for us; it showed a lot of growth and a lot of experimentation, we tried something different. And we ran with it. And it was creatively stimulating at the time, and so was this on this time around. We just kind of went back to our roots and wrote a heavy record."

STAIND recently parted ways with drummer Jon Wysocki after seventeen years of playing together. Drummer Will Hunt (EVANESCENCE, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, TOMMY LEE) will sit behind the kit for STAIND for the next couple of shows before the group secures a more permanent replacement for Wysocki.

The new disc will be STAIND's final release under its contract with Atlantic Records, and Lewis told The Pulse Of Radio that the quartet plans to explore other options in the future. "There are different ways of doing it that are much more favorable to the artist if the artist has a core fan base that are gonna want to continue to get their music regardless of whether it comes out of a music store on a CD or not," he said.