STONE SOUR Guitarist Discusses The Making Of 'Audio Secrecy'

AltSounds recently conducted an interview with STONE SOUR/SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

AltSounds: Now, you guys released your latest album, "Audio Secrecy", in September. How's the response been as of yet?

Jim Root: I think it's been good, and obviously it's a very eclectic record — but I think that's what you get when you have five guys who write music and you don't have a lot of time. It's a little bit weird… I'm on the fence with it. I can never look at anything I do subjectively — whether it's a STONE SOUR record or a SLIPKNOT record, I can never really have my own opinion of it, 'cos in my opinion it's all crap [laughs] We never really have enough time to finish. I've heard Corey [Taylor, vocals] saying this, and I keep saying this in interviews, so I'm sorry if it becomes redundant. Corey is very into the movies, he studies editors and directors, things like that, and most directors say that they abandon films rather than finish them. That's how I feel about our records. Everything we do, we've got schedules to line up with and deadlines to meet, and it's even harder for Corey and I because we've got to juggle two bands. I don't ever feel like I've had the time that I've wanted to actually finish a STONE SOUR record — it feels in some ways that they've been abandoned (like the director metaphor).

AltSounds: So does that mean that you feel you could add to the albums you've released? Is there stuff in your head you'd want to include?

Jim Root: Exactly, man. When we go out and play songs from the record, I'm hearing other guitar melodies and lines that could be layered underneath. I'm like, "Fuck, why didn't that hit me when we were in the studio?" Music is like wine, it ages beautifully — and if you spend enough time you can just sit there and listen to it entirely differently. I'll never be able to listen to anything we've done like someone who's just picked it up for the first time.

AltSounds: So did you guys enter the studio with the intention of sounding different?

Jim Root: Nah, man, we didn't have enough time! [laughs] We pooled together what each one of us had written individually. Josh [Rand, STONE SOUR's rhythm guitarist] came over to my house in Florida and we were listening to some of the demos and we kind of started writing a little bit. Then, by the time we got to the studio we were sort of familiar with everyone else's songs — we all brought about five or ten in and by the end of it we had around forty songs. The thing that took most of the time was figuring out which songs to put on the record. In some ways, I wish we had fewer songs to sift through so we could've spent more time in the studio, working on those songs. It was weird…

AltSounds: Whilst you were in the studio, you reunited with producer Nick Raskulinecz, who worked on "Come What(ever) May". Did that make the recording process easier, having that familiar face?

Jim Root: It did in some ways, yeah. There was a lot of time between "Come What(ever) May" and when we started recording "Audio Secrecy", and you tend to remember all the good moments, you kind of forget about the bickering and the arguing. I remember starting to do pre-production and all of a sudden all the shit that happened on "Come What(ever) May" came back and I was like, "Oh yeah! I remember fucking going at your throat". But it was cool, 'cos we chose Nick for a reason, there's a certain comfort level that we have with him. And given the time constraints that we had, we didn't wanna have to put the time into learning a new guy, cos you've gotta learn about how a guy works, how he wants to push you and how he's going to alter the direction of the material. But I don't think we'll do another record with Nick.

Read the entire interview from AltSounds.

Photo below courtesy of Sonisphere festival

(Thanks: www.SlipknotNine.com)