Stone Sour’s new covers EP Straight Outta Burbank was released exclusively for Record Store Day last week, and it’s the second covers record the band have released in the past year. Frontman Corey Taylor has spoken to Metal Hammer about how certain songs where chosen, and with the likes of Bad Brains and Iron Maiden being given the Stone Sour treatment they’re obviously not daunted by tackling the biggest and the best.
“I don’t think we were daunted,” says Corey, “more like excited at the thought of getting to take on some of the songs that we grew up really loving to listen to. It just comes down to having confidence in your skillset, we’ve never shied away from a challenge. We wanted to tackle the bands that inspired us, the ones that inspired us to get where we are. And when you have that kind of positive energy then you just get excited, it really never crossed our minds. We were like ‘Fuck it! Let’s just do it!’ and forgot all of the dumb shit that might cripple other bands. Like I said, if you go in with that positive approach then you feel like you can tackle anything. So, no, it wasn’t daunting to do these songs.”
And, with that kind of positive attitude in the studio, you probably wouldn’t be shocked to hear more covers come from the Stone Sour camp in the near future.
“Well the original plan was to do three EPs,” Corey tells us. “But Straight Outta Burbank came out so well that we decided to sit on some of the other tunes that we did and use them for extra content, like singles and shit. We’ve got this whole other batch just sitting and waiting, so there will be stuff for the fans coming for sure.”
And, given both the eclectic and iconic nature of the songs picked by the band so far, you wouldn’t want to try and second guess what Stone Sour will be doing next.
“Oh it’s got everything on there,” laughs Corey, “we really run the gamut on it. There’s Van Halen, Buzzcocks, Rage Against The Machine, The Violet Femmes… I can’t really think of anything else that we’d like to go after. Not just because we played them well, but because they are just such amazing songs. We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here, we just wanted to represent those bands and bring our spirit to them.”
And the fact that Stone Sour can take on everything from glam metal to indie rock to hardcore punk is a testament to the depth of musical love in the band.
“Absolutely!” Corey shouts back. “We’ve got such a broad, eclectic tastes within this band, but I think that’s because we all just love music and we still love doing this. So many people get bored and can’t get inspired, and they talk themselves out of great ideas all the time. But we don’t, as long as the audience is out there, then we’ll just carry on trying to make it interesting for them. And it never even crossed our minds that you couldn’t have a song like Running Free next to Gimme Shelter. We love both of those songs, so why wouldn’t everybody else?”
