STONE SOUR's New Album To Include Comic-Book Tie-In

Kerrang! magazine conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT/STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor at this year's edition of the Download festival, which is being held June 8-10 at Donington Park in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. You can now watch the chat below.

When asked about the progress of the recording sessions for the fourth STONE SOUR album, Taylor said, "It's nearly done. We have about a week left of recording. I have a handful of vocals that I need to finish up. And then it's just going in and finishing up some guitars, some ear candy here and there. But it's fantastic. It's so immense. It's probably the biggest thing that I've tried to do. There's a lot of multimedia involved. There's a whole story that's gonna go along with the albums. And it's all under wraps right now. There's gonna be a bunch of big announcements next week that I'm gonna unleash on Twitter, and I'm just gonna start giving people more information, including the titles. But we're actually working on getting a comic together for DC Comics. We're trying to figure out how we can do it. And they've never done anything like this before, so it's gonna take some time. But hopefully… We're definitely gonna have a digital version up online and then probably a couple of months later the hard-copy version. So as a comic fan, I'm kind of losing my shit right now."

As previously reported, SKID ROW's Rachel Bolan laid down the bass tracks for the new STONE SOUR CD, which will end up becoming a double effort. He has described the material on the record as "fucking fierce."

Taylor recently told Revolver magazine about STONE SOUR's forthcoming CD, "Picture [PINK FLOYD's] 'The Wall' crossed with ALICE IN CHAINS' 'Dirt' with some good heavy blasts in there," Corey said. "The heaviest song is a total ass-kicker that sounds as if SLAYER and ANTHRAX had a baby. Then, there's a darker bluesy dirge that has the vibe of LED ZEPPELIN's 'In My Time Of Dying'. There's even a little industrial vibe. It's definitely going to blow people's fucking minds.

Taylor added that he came up with a very ambitious concept for the disc.

"The album is a morality play about a man who's standing at the crossroads of his life trying to figure out what to do next," he said. "He's going, 'Do I move foward and evolve? Do I become more responsible or do I run backwards and pilfer the basket of youth?' Sometimes it's romantic to live in the mistakes that you made when you were 20, and condemn yourself to perpetual adolescence."

The album is being recorded at Sound Farm Studios, just outside STONE SOUR's home base of Des Moines, Iowa, with producer David Bottrill (TOOL, MUSE, STAIND).

Guitarist Josh Rand recently said that the CD will be "another progression for the band," adding. "Musically, we have always challenged one another to push things to our limits, and this record is no exception."

STONE SOUR parted ways with bassist Shawn Economaki earlier in the year. The band's guitarist Jim Root stated about the split, "A lot has happened in the past year… We need to move forward and [there will] be more detail when the time is right. He's still a great friend and we're in touch."

Economaki left STONE SOUR in April 2011 in the middle of the "Avalanche Tour" to deal with "personal issues." He was temporarily replaced by Jason Christopher, who has since joined Sebastian Bach's touring band.