STONE SOUR's COREY TAYLOR: 'There's Just Not Enough Danger In Music Anymore'

MuchMusic.com recently conducted an interview with STONE SOUR members Corey Taylor (vocals) and Josh Rand (guitar). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

MuchMusic.com: There's a lot of news right now about how guys are "burning up the charts". What do you think about entering the belly of the beast — all these popular acts that you're feverishly against?

Corey: It's a little weird! We certainly weren't expecting it, let's put it that way. We just wanted to do well, and we've done better than well. I look at it as like infiltrating, throwing around a lot of expletives and just talking smack. There's just not enough danger in music anymore and if there is, it's pre-packaged — it's like safe danger. It's pretty danger. When the most dangerous thing about you is your haircut, go home.

MuchMusic.com: Do you ever have inner fights with yourself about being a part of this business or are you in it to make yourself heard?

Josh: I'm a part of it 'cause this is what I want to do. I don't really care about the outside stuff or the glamour. I want to write music, and that's it.

Corey: The lifestyle's very attractive. I was caught up in it for awhile. When the smoke clears, you get yourself healthy and go, "Jesus Christ, I became as bad as the people I was raging against." And that kind of makes you even more angry. I don't really struggle with that so much anymore as I do struggle with the people that kind of want to make us conform and make us a part of the machine. F**k you. I've wanted to do this since I was a kid, because I wanted to make music. I wanted to contribute to music and leave something behind that meant something. Everything that we earn we don't take for granted, we respect it, and we try to hold on to it for as long as possible.

MuchMusic.com: Corey, you're starting a label to represent bands from the midwest. Do you think bands from that area have more to say?

Corey: I think they definitely have no qualms about saying it. I don't know if they have more to say, but I think they have a little more respect and integrity. But then again I only know the bands that I've worked with. I don't know if half the bands aren't just in it to make a fast buck. I do know that the bands that I really love from the Midwest are very genuine, very different, and they definitely have something that they wanna say and that the world should hear. And let me just say that the record label was accidental, let's put it that way. It's not even really an official record label, it was just something so I could release the album that I produced with FACECAGE. Because I shopped it around and it was so different and so out of the mainstream that no record label wanted to touch it even though it was really good. I was like, maybe I don't want the record labels get their hands on this 'cause they won't know how to work it, they won't know what to do with it. So we said screw it. I'll put my own money into it, I'll press a couple thousand and we'll take it on the road.

Read the entire interview at MuchMusic.com.