STONE SOUR Has No Choice But To Wait For COREY TAYLOR

STONE SOUR guitarist Josh Rand says the band has no choice but to be patient with frontman Corey Taylor, who is juggling his duties between SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR.

Taylor's touring schedule with SLIPKNOT means that STONE SOUR is effectively on hiatus until sometime next year when the band is expected to begin work on the follow-up to its last collection of original music, "House Of Gold And Bones", a double concept album which was released in two parts in 2012 and 2013.

Rand tells Music Radar: "The reality is this: Corey has obligations in SLIPKNOT. We are working on new material, but right now there's no timeline because we couldn't realistically support putting a record out."

STONE SOUR has just released a new covers EPs to follow up last April's "Meanwhile In Burbank…""Straight Outta Burbank" features covers of songs from the BAD BRAINS, SLAYER, MÖTLEY CRÜE, IRON MAIDEN and THE ROLLING STONES. Another EP, "No Sleep 'Till Burbank", which is expected next year, will focus on tunes from VAN HALEN, THE VIOLENT FEMMES, THE BUZZCOCKS, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and AC/DC.

Rand tells Music Radar: "We live all over the U.S., really spread out; there's no city we all call home. So why not jam and do a few covers? We've all been influenced by different styles. For example, I really didn't know much about BAD BRAINS before this. I'm not much of a punk person, so doing that was like a whole new world to me. All in all, though, this came together pretty easy."

Taylor told The Pulse Of Radio this past summer that he had written "about eight songs" for the follow-up to "House Of Gold And Bones". He said: "I've got a bunch of new songs, bunch of new music written. Everybody in the band has stuff. So we're gonna start kind of putting that together early next year, kind of just trying to get demos together to see where we're at. And then maybe in the fall go in and start making a new album."

Taylor said in a radio interview that his new STONE SOUR material is "kind of going in a different direction than the older stuff — like a little more rock 'n' roll, a little more expanding the range again." But Taylor added that STONE SOUR won't record until he is finished with SLIPKNOT's current touring cycle, saying, "I've got SLIPKNOT until June of next year. So it's gonna be just kind of, where I can, filling in the blanks and getting everything ready for when that happens."

STONE SOUR recently named guitarist Christian Martucci as the permanent replacement for Jim Root, who was dismissed from the band in late 2013 after he decided to sit out the group's last tour in order to begin working on the new SLIPKNOT album. Martucci was recruited to play on that tour and was confirmed as a permanent member on March 18 in a Facebook post.

The situation made things awkward for Root and Taylor, but Root noted that the pair "didn't really have a lot of time to spend together" in the studio during the recording of the latest SLIPKNOT effort.

Root did not speak kindly of STONE SOUR in interviews after he was fired, saying, "Some of the guys in STONE SOUR, I think they just want to be a radio band and write strictly for radio and try to be more of a poppy rock band. And that's not really what I'm into. There's at least one guy in the band that's only concerned about money. I really have no desire to associate with people like that anymore."

Root played on all five STONE SOUR studio records to date, including 2010's "Audio Secrecy" and "House Of Gold & Bones".