STONE SOUR To Release 'Hydrograd' Album

STONE SOUR has set "Hydrograd" as the title of its new album, tentatively due this summer via Roadrunner Records. The disc is being recorded at Sphere Studios in North Hollywood, California.

During this past weekend's NAMM show in Anaheim, California, STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor told Rock Cellar magazine about the upcoming album (see video below): "We are doing everything old school. We're recording it live and then layering stuff on top of it. We are doing a song a day, and we've already done nine songs; we're about halfway done. And, yeah, it is incredible; it's the best stuff we've ever written."

Taylor recently told Matt Pinfield about the musical direction of the new STONE SOUR material: "It is such a great amalgam of all of these different styles that we just absolutely love. It's got a little bit of the heavy, like we like to do, but it's also way more hard rock — way more rock 'n' roll and hard rock than heavy. I mean, there's even a little bit of punk in there. And there's an energy there that is gonna decimate and blow away a lot of stuff that comes out [this] year. That's how excited I am."

Regarding the recording sessions for the next STONE SOUR album, Corey said: "We're [co-producing] ourselves with a good friends of ours named Jay Ruston, who has done a lot of work with a lot of different people. He has produced and mixed STEEL PANTHER, ANTHRAX [and] a bunch of different other people. He also mixed the two 'House Of Gold And Bones' albums that we put out, and he mixed the two covers EPs that STONE SOUR put out as well. So we have a great relationship with him, and he's somebody we really trust and we absolutely love to work with."

STONE SOUR, has released two EPs of cover songs — "Meanwhile In Burbank…" and "Straight Out Of Burbank" — and was slated to issue a third, titled "No Sleep 'Till Burbank", but those plans now appear to have been scrapped.

STONE SOUR in 2015 named 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 in March 2015 in a Facebook post.

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 the band's last collection of original music, "House Of Gold And Bones", a double concept album which was released in two parts in 2012 and 2013.