Stone Sour
Audio Secrecy
Roadrunner Records
September 7

By Brian Johnston

With the release of their third studio album, Stone Sour lead singer Corey Taylor recently told MTV News that Audio Secrecy was “probably the best thing I’ve done in a long time.”

Zach Redrup of DEAD PRESS! raved about the album and claimed that, “with recent events in the Slipknot camp, you may well be hearing a lot more from these in a gap much shorter than four years at a time. If you’re going to buy any Stone Sour album, make it this one.”

The first single, “Say You’ll Haunt Me,” is much like their previous album, Come What(ever) May, in the sense that there is a lot of deeper meaning in the lyrics than is originally thought because of the fact that the band is still trying to find their own unique image and separate themselves from the Slipknot stereotype in which Taylor and guitarist Jim Root brought with them.

However, after listening to the remainder of the tracks, you can easily get the feeling that they finally let loose and are truly unbound from the genre-specific group that they felt they were linked to.

Especially with “Pieces,” there is no urgency to  compete with anyone else, and nothing to really care about. “You have to find the strength to do it for yourself and not fall into that trap of going through the motions because people expect you to be a certain way,” Taylor explains on ARTISTdirect.com about the song.

The 36-date Rockstar Energy Uproar Festival is just about halfway over, but Stone Sour surely wont have time to rest in the near future with a two month stint overseas in Europe, and they are already scheduled to perform at a handful of festivals throughout February and March in Australia.

Rick Florino, editor of ARTISTdirect.com, also adds that, “Stone Sour gives us a myriad of emotions, ghosts and thoughts, and it’s quite the ride. This isn’t just a band on fire, this is a band that’s about to burn down the entire world around them.”