Vocalist Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour was recently interviewed by Andrew Haug of Triple J’s “The Racket” (which airs in Australia). Listen to the program in streaming audio at the Triple J web site: Windows Media, Real Media (NOTE: The first part of the Taylor interview begins around the one-hour, 25-minute mark). Check out the program’s entire playlist at this location. The interview can also be streamed in four parts using the audio player below.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Source: Blabbermouth.net

Artisan News Service recently conducted an interview with Jim Root (#4 of Slipknot, Stone Sour). You can watch the video interview below.

It’s Stone Sour week on Revolvermag.com, as we count down to the release of their new album, Audio Secrecy, tomorrow. In celebration, we’ve resurrected our 2007 cover story on frontman Corey Taylor.

Whether he’ll be best remembered as the masked frontman of Slipknot or the gregarious singer of Stone Sour remains to be seen. But he is sure of one thing: He’s never going to let his dark past get the best of him.

By Dan Epstein
Photo by Paul Harries

Backstage in a chilly Manchester, England, dressing room, Corey Taylor rubs his newly shaven head and takes a long drag off of one of the afternoon’s many cigarettes. “I don’t know,” he says, his eyes narrowing slyly. “Should I tell you about ‘ceiling-fan night’?” The Stone Sour frontman takes another puff, then chuckles to himself. “Yeah,” he finally says, blue eyes twinkling mischievously. “Let me tell you about ‘ceiling-fan night.’”

To millions of Slipknot fans around the world, Corey Taylor is #8, the dead-skin-mask-wearing singer who serves as the emotive vocal focal point for the ‘Knot’s goat-wrenching brand of sonic chaos. To Stone Sour’s smaller—but equally intense and steadily growing—fan base, Corey Taylor is a down-to-earth rock-and-roll performer who attacks the stage with a Rollins-like ferocity, yet can also hush the crowd with a tender acoustic ballad. But to a certain segment of the Des Moines, Iowa, community where he grew up, Corey Taylor will always be known as “Ceiling-Fan Guy.”

The nickname, it seems, stems from a notorious party that took place one memorably debauched weekend back in the mid-Nineties, when Taylor and about 200 other misfit Des Moines teens invaded the mansion of a wealthy friend whose parents were out of town. Already thoroughly wasted on Jägermeister and cheap beer, Taylor found himself propositioned by two girls, who invited him upstairs for a ménage-a-trois.

“So let me set the scene for you,” offers Taylor, recalling the incident with obvious relish. “We’re up in this bedroom. I have two thighs on my face, and a girl on my crotch. They’re making out, and it kicks ass. Life is great, right? All of a sudden, my best friend Denny Harvey and a posse of about 30 guys bum-rush the bedroom door. The girls immediately dive under the covers, but me being me, I don’t give a fuck. I jump out of bed, take the condom off, and throw it at the crowd. They’re all like, ‘Augh!’”

Red the whole article at Revolver Magazine.

Josh Rand:  I feel like it’s the most diverse work we’ve done to date.  The next level of progression of the group.  We actually spent more time on this record than on the previous 2 as far as the writing, rehearsing and recording.  We’re really proud of it.  It’s a mature Hard Rock record.  That would be the “cut and dry statement” for it.

LoudTrax.com: Singer Corey Taylor had issued a statement that said this album would be darker and more melodic than the previous albums. Now that the album is set in stone, does that statement hold true?

Josh Rand:  I think it’s more melodic than the other records.  I mean Come What(ever) May lyrically is pretty dark.
When he made that statement, it was at the beginning of the writing process .  The album evolved a little bit since then.  I don’t think it’s as dark as Come What(ever) May, but I would agree that it’s more melodic than the previous 2 albums.

Da Capo Press has set a tentative March 1, 2011 release date for Corey Taylor‘s “Seven Deadly Sins” book.

Taylor is the hard-living, hard-talking frontman of the bands Slipknot and Stone Sour. Renowned for his flamboyant and disturbing stage presence, Corey has lived it all. Starting in the early ’90s, Corey threw himself into the hard-drinking, hard-loving, live-for-the-moment-life of a small town Iowa hero — Corey “Fucking” Taylor! As his career went stratospheric, and he found himself rich, wanted and on the road, his behavior got more and more extreme. Everything you can think of, Corey’s done it… girls, drugs, excess of every kind. “Seven Deadly Sins” is Corey’s story, told through the prism of the seven deadly sins. His years of excess eventually made him sit down and start to think about what it was to “sin” and whether “sinning” could — or should — be recast as a good rather than bad thing. Yes, Corey’s hurt people, and done bad things, but if sin is what makes the man, then can it ever be wrong? This isn’t a straightforward memoir, this is Corey’s no-holds-barred story told through his own unique philosophy, honed through years of the craziest and most hedonistic excess in rock.

Source: Blabbermouth.net

Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor talks Colts, Tebow and Jim Sorgi’s Manning Hard-o with TheScore.com.

It’s Stone Sour week on Revolvermag.com. In celebration, we’ve resurrected an article from 2007 on frontman Corey Taylor. Who knew he liked chicken so much?

IF THE SLIPKNOT AND STONE SOUR SINGER HAD HIS WAY, EVERY DAY WOULD BE FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD
These are busy days for Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor: The ’Knot have just released the DVD Voliminal: Inside the Nine, and he’s touring in support of Stone Sour’s second hit album, Come What(ever) May. Still, Taylor—who used to make his living as a clerk at the Adult Emporium in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa—found the time to discuss the importance of mashed potatoes, staying awake, and lube.

FAVORITE NUMBER
8
It’s always been my lucky number. [No. 8 is also Taylor’s Slipknot alias.] When I was a kid and stressed out, I counted my steps by eights—all even numbers on my right foot, all the odds on my left. If I misstepped, I had to stop and reset my head. It was weird. But it eventually stopped.

FAVORITE ANIMAL
CATS
My cat, Sylvia, kills bats. I have a hundred-year-old house with these brown bats. Sylvia kills them and leaves them out for people to see. Gruesome.

Read the rest of the article at Revolver Magazine.

YOU’D think being the front man to two of the world’s biggest hard rock acts would mean Stone Sour and Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor would have a free licence when it comes to tattoos, hairstyles and facial hair.

What do you think of the new album? Tell us below.

But like most of us who attempt to sprout a beard, it’s his wife, not him, who has the final say on grooming matters.

“Let’s just say that my wife prefers it when I don’t have a beard,’’ Taylor laughs, after admitting how excited he’d been to be able to grow a full-face of hair for Stone Sour’s new film clip Say You’ll Haunt Me.

“I’ve got that scratchy, gnarly, curly, German-Irish hair and it just gets really brutal after a while.

“And it’s bright red, so I end up looking like some crazy, lunatic leprechaun.

IHeartGuitarBlog.com: I understand you and Josh Rand recorded most of your guitar parts at the same time?

Root: Yeah, about 90% of the songs were recorded at the same time. We record what we call “stripes,” which is basically the entire band with the exception of [drummer] Roy Mayorga, playing to a click track. Then Roy can play along to these tracks and play around them. He kind of pushes and pulls around the click track a little bit anyways. We wanted a polished but still live-feeling record. When me and Josh started tracking live next to each other, it was cool because we would kind of lock in with each other a little bit tighter rather than me going first and then him trying to lock in with the way I play or vice versa. You can hear everything that’s going on, I play a little bit more like him, he plays a little bit more like me, and it’s all very organic.

IHeartGuitarBlog.com: Nick Raskulinecz has produced a great albums for Alice In Chains and Deftones lately, and he did Stone Sour‘s last album, “Come What(ever) May”. What’s he like to work with?

Root: Nick, he’s cool, man. I’ve worked with a few different producers and Nick‘s like a combination of a few different guys. He’s not like “my way or the highway.” He’s very hands-on. He’s very involved with everything from the beginning until the end. Sometimes he can be a little disorganized, but it’s rock and roll, you know what I mean?! We’re not punching a clock. We just figure out what we’re gonna do that day. He’s a little bit like Ross [Robinson] in the fact that he gets you pumped up and he gets you excited about what you’re doing, and he’s a little bit like [Rick] Rubin in that he’s a little bit precise and if shit isn’t sounding good we’ll go back and do it and do it until it does. And he’s really involved with pre-production too, which is a cool thing, especially for us because we don’t have a whole lot of time for that type of stuff. Corey [Taylor, vocals] and I are juggling Slipknot and Stone Sour so it’s basically right off the road and into the studio.

IHeartGuitarBlog.com: So your approach to guitar in Stone Sour — obviously you have a lot of room to throw in different styles and things.

Root: I kinda get to do a lot of everything in both bands. I don’t really go into a record with a certain goal, like I’m going to do this, or I’m going to play this certain way. I just live in the moment as it comes, and it’s a lot more natural and organic. If there’s a tune we’re working on that someone else has written, I like to approach that song — like, I’ll learn that song in preproduction, obviously — but when it comes to laying different guitar tracks and coming up with different melody lines and stuff, I like to hit that on the spur of the moment, because usually what happens is, nine out of ten times, the first thing you come up with right off the top of your head ends up being the best thing. And then you’re chasing that the rest of the time. You can always take that first thing, as long as it’s been captured on the computer — I was going to say tape but you don’t use that any more! As long as it’s captured and it’s there, even if there’s a clam or a bad not you can be like, “That’s the vibe of what it is,” and you can build on it from there. To me that’s where the most natural and hookiest stuff comes from.

Read the entire interview from IHeartGuitarBlog.com.

When he was at Sonisphere Festival, AltSounds.com sat down for a chat with Stone Sour front-man Corey Taylor to talk acoustic sets, coffee and Stone Sour- even pulling some 1994 demo’s out of the vaults! Click on the player below to check it out!

Source: Roadrunner Records UK

As some of you may remember, the song “Imperfect” was part of Corey Taylor and The Junk Beer Kidnap Band‘s performance during the 2009 Sonisphere Knebworth Festival.

Corey Taylor also performed a short set at Clown’s 2009 Birthday Art Show, during which he performed the song “Imperfect”. The song was intended to appear on Corey Taylor‘s solo record, but it is now featured on Stone Sour‘s third studio album “Audio Secrecy”.

Below you can watch Corey Taylor playing “Imperfect” live at Shawn Crahan‘s Birthday Art Show back in September 2009.

Thanks to StoneSour.com.br for noticing this fact!

Every evening from September 6th, Corey will be playing his personal favorite tunes interspersed with tracks from, ‘Audio Secrecy’. While you can expect more obvious tracks from Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Megadeth, Corey promises you’ll be in for a surprise when you tune in.

Says Taylor: “Call it a week of eclectic pleasure. I have many different tastes and that’s going to be reflected in what I force upon you. I’ve got my Hello Kitty diary full of notes – I’d love to get a hug from Debbie Harry and smell her hair. Kim Wilde’s Kids in America is a great song. Elvis Costello is great and I have a Chrissie Hynde story but I’m not going to tell it because it would get me in trouble.”

Tune in to Rock Radio, from 6pm GMT Monday 6th – Friday 10th September on 96.3FM in West Scotland or 106.1 FM in Manchester England. You can listen worldwide at www.rockradio.co.uk.

Source: Roadrunner Records UK

It’s Stone Sour week on Revolvermag.com. In celebration, Revolver Magazine has resurrected an article from 2006 on the band, around the time they released Come What(ever) May.

Cast in Stone
Four years ago, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Jim Root proved their band Stone Sour was no mere side project. Now, with a powerful, political new album, they’re truly here to stay.

“There’s all kinds of ear candy on this album,” says Corey Taylor, as he treats Revolver to an advance playback of Stone Sour’s new record, Come What(ever) May. “We layered the shit out of everything and just made it sound huge. It’s everything the first album fucking wanted to be, and it’s everything the first album wasn’t.”

It’s been four years since Stone Sour’s self-titled debut shocked the rock world—not to mention the band members themselves—by selling more than 500,000 copies and spawning a massive radio hit with the song “Bother.” First seen as a Slipknot side project, thanks to the presence of Taylor and ’Knot guitarist Jim Root, Stone Sour turned out to be an appealingly melodic hard-rock band with an identity all its own.

Taylor originally formed Stone Sour in 1992 with drummer Joel Ekman, bassist Shawn Economaki, and guitarist Josh Rand, and Root joined up three years later. Disillusioned by the band’s inability to move beyond the Des Moines, Iowa, club scene, Taylor quit Stone Sour in 1997 and joined Slipknot; Root followed suit soon after. But while the two musicians found success beyond their wildest dreams with Slipknot, they still craved an outlet for the more straight-ahead and tuneful sounds they heard in their heads—hence, the return of Stone Sour in 2000.

The group’s power and melody are well-represented on Come What(ever) May (Roadrunner Records), which was produced at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in Los Angeles by Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Danzig, Velvet Revolver). The band (now featuring ex-Soulfl y drummer Roy Mayorga, who took over for Ekman in late March) rocks out like “Black Album”–era Metallica on “30/30-150,” “Made of Scars,” and the title track, while cuts like “sillyworld,” “Through Glass” (the album’s fi rst single), and the closing piano ballad, “Zzyzx Rd,” showcase Stone Sour’s ability to use acoustic instruments and hearttugging hooks to devastating emotional effect. “We’ve got heavy tendencies, but we’re a rock band,” Taylor explains. “We grew up listening to bands that could blur the lines, instead of just standing on either side of them. And that’s why our stuff is so diverse. We’ve never looked at it from a ‘genre’ standpoint. It’s about what fucking turns us on, what gets us excited.” In this exclusive interview, Revolver gets the lowdown from Taylor and Economaki on the differences between Stone Sour and Slipknot, the making of Come What(ever) May, and the meaning behind several of the album’s songs. (Hint: Bill O’Reilly won’t be adding this record to his collection anytime soon.)

REVOLVER: The last time you guys got together to do a record, it was a total no-pressure situation. This time it was a little different, right?

SHAWN ECONOMAKI: Just a little bit. [Laughs] With the first album, there was no label pressure, there was no fan base to keep happy. This one is a totally different animal.

COREY TAYLOR: If anything, the pressure has pushed us to make it better than the first record. With the first one, we were like, We have no idea if anybody’s gonna dig this—we have no idea if we even have an audience. But we went out and worked our asses off, and now we have all these fuckin’ fans that love us, and we don’t want to let them down.

Read the rest of the article at Revolver Magazine.

Stone Sour are set to release their critically acclaimed third album Audio Secrecy this weekend and are confirmed to tour nationally as part of Soundwave in 2011.

Signalled as the band’s best work to date, Audio Secrecy sees Stone Sour return with a newfound maturity and depth.

To celebrate the return of Stone Sour, Nova FM is offering their fans the chance to win the ultimate Soundwave experience with Stone Sour.

One lucky fan will win:
Complete Stone Sour back catalogue (Stone Sour, Come What(ever) May and Audio Secrecy);
Block mounted Audio Secrecy album poster;
Audio Secrecy album stickers;
Official Stone Sour t-shirt.

It doesn’t end there, however, with the winner also scoring this once in a lifetime Stone Sour experience:
Two tickets to Soundwave Festival in their closest participating city;
Meet and greet with Stone Sour at Soundwave Festival;
The chance to watch Stone Sour’s performance from side of stage at Soundwave.

Simply enter using the form below for your chance to win!

Stone Sour’s Audio Secrecy is released Friday 3 September through Roadrunner Records.

For more information please visit Roadrunner Records’ website.

Soundwave Festival tour dates:
Saturday 26 February – RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
Sunday 27 February – Eastern Creek Raceway, Sydney
Friday 4 March – Melbourne Showgrounds
Saturday 5 March – Bonython Park, Adelaide
Monday 7 March – Steel Blue Oval, Perth

For more information regarding Soundwave please their website.

Source: NovaFM

continued...

The album’s first single, 'Say You’ll Haunt Me,' was released on July 6th. 'Audio Secrecy' was made with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice In Chains, Deftones) and was recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville.

While making the album, Stone Sour also recorded webisodes covering the recording process and answering fan questions. These can be viewed at stonesour.com.

What do you think of the album?