STONE TEMPLE PILOTS Have Been Making Music With New Singer

STONE TEMPLE PILOTS hope to announce the results of their singer search in the next few weeks, nearly two years after the passing of original vocalist Scott Weiland and more than two months following the death of Weiland's replacement, Chester Bennington.

"We've been working with someone — I don't want to name names yet — and we're making music," bassist Robert DeLeo told Rolling Stone in a new interview. "I don't know if he's well known or unknown; I don't look at him as 'well known.' But we're writing music and we're hopefully looking at finishing a record and putting it out soon."

Guitarist Dean DeLeo told Los Angeles radio station KLOS on Friday (September 22) that STP's search for a new singer was "looking good, man. Looking good. New music. And it won't be too long."

STP has been without a vocalist since November 2015, when Bennington — who joined the group in early 2013 — departed to spend more time with his main band LINKIN PARK.

Weiland, who reunited with the group in 2010 after an eight-year hiatus but was dismissed in 2013, died in December 2015 of a drug overdose while on a solo tour.

STP last performed live, with Bennington on vocals, for a one-off reunion performance in California in March 2016.

The band held an open call for singers last year, reportedly receiving thousands of submissions and narrowing that down to a handful of prospects with whom the group members got together to jam.

Two of the names that have been widely circulated among fans are one-time "X Factor" contestant Jeff Gutt and Filipino vocalist John Borja. Gutt reportedly rehearsed with the group last May, while Borja recently applied for a U.S. work visa and has hinted at joining the band.

The DeLeo brothers are currently promoting the twenty-fifth anniversary expanded reissue of STP's debut album, "Core", which arrives this Friday (September 29) — twenty-five years to the day of the LP's original release.