STONE SOUR Guitarist JIM ROOT: 'Life Is Pretty Good At The Moment'

Graham Finney of Planet-Loud.com recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT/STONE SOUR guitarist Jim Root. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Planet-Loud.com: Onto the new [STONE SOUR] record ("Come What(ever) May"). What did you want to achieve with it?

Jim: "We've always wanted to do a polished, more thought-out record and this record is more in that direction. The first record was basically a live in the studio record recorded in under month then mixed then put out there. On this record we had more time to work with it, more of a window, we were able to think about the artwork, the track listing and we were able to record sixteen of the thirty-odd songs we wrote. In some ways we were rushed on this record but in others we had time to hash out the demos, the songs and I think we pretty much achieved a step in the right direction of where we want to go as a band with this record."

Planet-Loud.com: Do you think being able to spend more time on this record shaped the way it sounded?

Jim: "Definitely, we seperated everything — the drums, the vocals, the guitars. We were able to bring a lot more instruments in and think about everything, we had more time to experiment on this record."

Planet-Loud.com: You had a few guests on this album, like Shannon from GODSMACK. How did that come about?

Jim: "Well, when Roy [Mayorga] joined the band, he came in and did all the drum tracks — fourteen tracks in something like five or six days. He had already promised SEPULTURA he would go on tour with them over in Europe so we lost him before the album was completed. We had two songs left to track drums for and we've known Shannon from the AMEN days and he has been a good friend of ours and he is a monster of a drummer so we just invited him in and, like with most things on this album, most things fall into place. It just so happens he was in Las Vegas recording a video for GODSMACK so he came in and played drums on these two songs. I'm glad he did."

Planet-Loud.com: I was going to ask, what do you get out of STONE SOUR that you don't get out of SLIPKNOT?

Jim: "It goes deeper than just music. Someone asked me before do you really need SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR to get your musical opinions out but it goes deeper than the songs and playing them live. You're talking about a whole different set of people and a whole different set of songs. SLIPKNOT is a combination of personalities and egos while STONE SOUR allows me to explore more musical avenues. It gives me a lot of freedom and allows me step outside of SLIPKNOT and look at everything objectively and reassess everything."

Planet-Loud.com: You've described life as a big learning experience what lessons have you learned?

Jim: "I've learned that no matter what you do and who you think you are, life can be taken away at any moment. I've also learned that no matter how bad you have it, it could always be worse. A lot has gone on with us in the past couple of years. I broke my wrist towards the end of the last SLIPKNOT touring cycle which meant I missed a month of touring and at a time when I was feeling similar to the end of the 'Iowa' cycle, I was just aggrevated and over it. I then started thinking what it would be like if it was taken away and, when I had the accident, it was and it's not a good feeling. Having said that, I could say that everything is dismal and we're all aggro and stuff but, you know, life is pretty good at the moment."

Read the entire interview at Planet-Loud.com.