Stone Sour – Hydrograd

Stone Sour are back with a new album.  While there’s no news on if/when Slipknot will make a new album, Corey Taylor is using his time productively and has given us a new Stone Sour album, with a tour due later in the year.  It’s the first Stone Sour album since the departure of Jim Root, but listening to it the album is so good that Corey Taylor has clearly found a great replacement.

At over an hour in length it’s a long album – and it’s not paded out with a few overly long songs either, you get an intro track (Ysif) then fourteen proper rock songs.

“Taipei Person/Allah Tea” is a strange song title, but listening to the song lyrics then the title starts to make a little more sense – “Taipei Person/Allah Tea” can be spoken as “Type A personality”.  A type A personality is impatient, often hostile, and very competitive and driven, much of which could describe Corey Taylor who is clearly driven.  It’s a great track.

“Fabuless” takes aim at the celebrity culture with people becoing famous for less and less.  Corey warns “It’s all downhill from here” and bellows out classic song lines such as “It’s been a long time since I Rock and rolled” and “It’s only rock and roll but I like it”.

“Song #3” is Stone Sour’s take on a love song.  It’s not a typical love song and is all the better for doing things differently.

“St Marie” is the only ballad on the album (well this is a rock album and it’s almost mandatory to include a ballad). The use of the lap steel gives it a bit of a Country feel.  It’s a great song and serves to change the pace and break things up nicely so that when “Mercy” kicks in you get the full impact of how heavy it is whereas you’d lose some impact if all the songs were heavy.

It’s a great album.  It’s not as radio-friendly as say Nickelback – it’s got a much harder edge to it still, so it sits somewhere in that middle ground – some radio-friendly stuff mixed with much heavier hard rock.  That’s a good thing in many ways – it’s heavy enough to keep the existing fans happy as well as a lot of rock and metal fans, but the songs are commercial enough to start to draw in a wider audience.

The more I listen to this album, the more I’m looking forward to the Stone Sour UK tour in November.

Track listing:

1. Ysif
2. Taipei Person/Allah Tea
3. Knievel Has Landed
4. Hydrograd
5. Song #3
6. Fabuless
7. The Witness Trees
8. Rose Red Violent Blue (This Song Is Dumb & So Am I)
9. Thank God It’s Over
10. St. Marie
11. Mercy
12. Whiplash Pants
13. Friday Knights
14. Somebody Stole My Eyes
15. When The Fever Broke