STONE SOUR Guitarist: 'European Fans Don't Take Anything For Granted'

Morten Bager of Antenna.nu recently conducted an interview with STONE SOUR guitarist Josh Rand. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Antenna.nu: Is [the new STONE SOUR album, "Come What(ever) May"] a hard rock album or a metal rock album?

Josh Rand: "I don't know… we just want to be us! I'm gonna quote METALLICA back in the mid-Eighties when they said, 'We're not a thrash band or whatever, we are just METALLICA — we are just us…' Hopefully I can make the same statement, you know [laughs]. You can't put us in any genre, because we are just so diverse!"

Antenna.nu: What is the most obvious difference between plying in Europe compared to America?

Josh Rand: "The fans! The European fans don't take anything for granted. Today there has been several sitting outside the venue for hours! That ain't gonna happen in the U.S.… Here it's a spectacle... an event. People come here to let loose. In the U.S. people take it for granted and stand with their arms crossed saying 'Impress me.' [Sighs]"

Antenna.nu: During the recording, did you feel a certain need to distant yourselves from the obvious comparison: SLIPKNOT? Don't you always have that nagging thought in the back of your mind?

Josh Rand: Oh yes… [pausing and thinking]. You're right — and you are the only person who has ever touched that subject! There were actually two songs that I had written that didn't make it to the album because of that. With Corey's [Taylor] voice on it sounded too much like a SLIPKNOT thing… Yes and no — none of us say that we can't sound like SLIPKNOT, but at the end of the day we all pay attention to that."

Read the entire interview at Antenna.nu.