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STAIND
Break The Silence: The First Look At New Release Break The Cycle
by Paul Gargano
Staind established themselves as one of music's most compelling forces with 1999's major label debut Dysfunction, capitalizing on tours with the likes
of Korn, Limp Bizkit, Monster Magnet, Kid Rock and Sevendust to solidify their status as a gripping hard rock fixture for years to come. Most impressively, they attained platinum status without the image and
unashamed media exposure of many of their peers, frontman Aaron Lewis' inner-wound torment transforming the band's live show into a therapeutic celebration of exorcising one's demons through art. And fans responded,
propelling interest in the Springfield, MA quartet's independently released debut Tormented to such a fevered pitch, original copies were selling for as much as $500 on internet auction sites including E-Bay. Not
bad for an album whose previous claim to fame was repulsing Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, who was drawn to the band's passionate blend of doom-laden ambience and heavy-handed hardcore subtleties, but offended by
an album cover that he found religiously offensive. Staind re-released the album again, independently through their website last year, making what may have been one of the last low-profile gestures by a band whose
already-bright future would experience a massive upswing thanks to Biloxi, MS, a low-profile city that would light the fuse for Staind's skyrocketing career. It was in Biloxi that Durst joined Lewis onstage for an
acoustic version of the song "Outside," the song was taped as little more than a bonus track for a Family Values compilation, and the seed was planted for a career that was about to blossom at radio.
"Outside" became one of the surprise hits of the last year, and accidentally created a buzz surrounding Staind's Elektra Records follow-up that a team of marketing directors would be hard-pressed to
replicate. Now the pressure was on the band to produce.
While the final mixes of Break The Cycle were still being completed when we sat down with Staind in late-winter for this exclusive preview of their
April 24 release, the band knew they were sitting on an album worth every bit of its hype. While Staind's dark hue still ruled the mix, there was light shining through the tunnel, Lewis' lyrics showing a glimmer of
hope in the wake of his prior despair. The melodies are richer on Break The Cycle, the textures are deeper, and the songs are stronger. Even the rough mixes of the 13-tracks were evidence of a band that has matured
more in two years, than most bands mature in a lifetime. We sat down with frontman Lewis and bassist Johnny April, shifting gears mid-way to turn the spotlight on guitarist Mike Mushok and drummer Jon Wysocki …
MAXIMUM INK: From what I'm told, your lyrics are a little bit more upbeat on this album...
AARON LEWIS: They are a little bit more...
MI: Maybe upbeat is the wrong word…
AL: Not necessarily upbeat,
but more aware, not quite so lost and tormented.
JOHNNY APRIL: I say you're still tormented, but you're more aware [laughing].
AL: Yeah, he said it better than I did!
MI: Psychology 101, starring Staind.
AL: Yeah, it's kind of an awakening of sorts. There's a lot of realization, a lot of just realizing how I am and admitting. The name of the new record is Break The Cycle, which basically is
self-explanatory.
MI: Do you look at it as a different direction for the band?
AL: No, it's the next step.
JA no, it's a natural chang, like the evolution of Staind.
MI: Do you see much of
a musical change with that?
JA: Yeah…
AL: I think we grew musicality wise. I think we were able to write a bunch of really catchy songs that weren't just catchy, they are full of substance, also.
MI:
Did the development lyrically come as a result of the music?
AL: No, life brought me somewhere else. It was just growing up. It took me 28 years to do, if I could help just one person get through it quicker than
that, I'll be happy.
MI: There seems to be a lot of torment on the radio today. Lyrics out there aren't very inspiring, or they are inspiring in a very dark sort of way. Do you see that as a reflection of
what is going on in the world today? Do you think it's necessary to be that dark?
AL:Absolutely… For myself, the darkness is reality, and it's also how you perceive it is, and it depends on how you perceive
it. But the darkness part is reality in this record. The darkness is still there, but I'm finally seeing the light cracking through the door at the end of the long, dark tunnel. There's some positiveness in the
negativity, without a doubt… If that's not totally contradictive!
MI: No it make sense… In a contradictory sort of way, but it makes sense! Was it strange for you to get back into the swing of writing after
being on the road for a year-and-a-half?
AL: It was a breath of fresh air, actually.
JA: Plus, playing out is like your growth period. You get in the studio after that and the band is a little different
than last time…
MI: What were some of the biggest differences?
JA: I don't know… It's not a different Staind, it's a little heavier and a little lighter…
AL: A little bit more grown up, a little more
matured… I think that we just wrote better songs. On a whole, the songs are just better songs this time around. If you go out and tour for 16 months straight and don't get better by doing so, then you're not doing
something right.
MI: You played in front of a lot of different audiences over that 16 months, and a lot of them weren't your own. Did you feel a stronger connextion to any audience in particular?
AL: Well,
we got very lucky in that we were brought on tour with people who had a huge audience already. Those fans were exposed to us, maybe for the first time, and we had the opportunity to be out with some really cool
bands like Limp Bizkit and Korn. With Fred on Family Values and on Limptropolous every night, I'd come out and I'd sing,"Rough Sex" with him. And on Korn, for the second half of the tour, every night when
they all walked off stage, we'd go out and do a cover of "Need To." And those were just very cool things for them to do. It was almost like they were giving their blessing to us for the fans.
MI: Do
you think it's important to have that endorsement in today's market?
AL: I think it's just as important, period. I mean, you have to get out there somehow… It goes back to being all the people you know, I guess.
MI: Not to sound negative, but does it really boil down to having friends in high places?
AL: No, it doesn't boil down to that.
JA: They'll get you there, but you have to earn it.
AL: It might open a
couple doors for you, but you still have to stand on your own two feet and produce. And, produce a product that these people that might have opened the door for you are proud of and happy with.
MI:
Expectations are really high for this record, especially with the setup "Outside" is providing at radio. Does that set you up for more disappointment, as well?
JA: Personally, I think this record is
going to do better than the last one. As much as I love the last one, I find myself driving around in the car singing Aaron's lines from this record, and I didn't do that last record. It's a great thing to really
love your own band's music. That might sound funny, and people think that, "Of coarse you love your own music." But when you really do, and it means something to you, it's very strange. I was just
telling Aaron, I can't wait to get home and practice our recordIt's going to be like playing a Van Halen record! I can't wait to do it. Like when I was a kid, I was really excited playing my own stuff.
MI: Did you feel that way about the last record?
JA: I did, but it was a little different, because last time we weren't sure what was going to happen. "Is anybody going to like it?" So we were really
cautious about getting hyped up for anything big happening the last time, but now we are really hoping.
AL: I'm always super-critical of myself and I'm my own worst critic, and I haven't found anything that
bothers me with this record, and I've already listened to this record more than I've listened to both of the last records put together.
MI: Was it a natural record for you to write?
AL: Yeah, it was
natural. It was under some severe pressure, but it was still natural. I mean, it came out when it came out, and it just so happens that it came out right down to the wire. I don't know if that was me subconsciously,
putting myself under pressure on purpose because I know that I perform better under pressure, but the songs that came out of me being out of stuff, are some of the best songs on the record, I think. There's some
good shit that came out of me not having anything.
MI: Do you find it easier to work under the intense pressure of deadlines?
AL: I'm an improvisationalist. I don't sit down and write lyrics, they just
kind of come to me.
MI: So it's not like you sit down and go, "Alright, I'm in a shitty mood today, so I'm inspired to write something."
AL: No. I can't sit down with a piece of paper and write,
because by the time I've gotten one line written down, I'm 10 lines ahead in my head. What I do is, the music is done first, and it just comes. It comes out, and it might come out 10 times, 10 different ways, but
each of those 10 times, something stuck with me. And after those things stick with me, me changing things around another 10 ways, or 10 things that have stuck with me every time, you know the song is done. Then I
have to figure out what it's about.
MI: Do you tape yourself singing with guitar?
AL: No. With the music, once the structures for the songs are done and they've been arranged and everything is all
done, then I start working on them.
MI: So the band is already done with their work?
AL: that's for the most part'm not saying that every single song is done like that. But for the most part, that's how I
work. Every once in a while, a song will come to me more as a poem than as a song, then it will turn into a song. There's a song on the new record called "Open Your Eyes," that was a poem that I wrote back
in like tenth grade. The words were actually to a different song before, and I'm listening and listening, and all of a sudden those words started going through my head and just started to fit perfectly to where
everything was supposed to be. There was a melody going through my head, and they fit with everything else. That song is an old song that I wrote the lyrics for way back when, and nothing else even compares to how
that was written.
A knock on the door indicates that it's time to swap members, and Mushok and Wysocki shuffle into the room as Lewis and April make their leave…
MAXIMUM INK: A lot of times, bands will outgrow new material before they release the record. Did that happen with Break The Cycle, or do you feel that
this is a fair representation of where Staind are right now?
MIKE MUSHOK: Yeah, I actually do. It's a different record…
I was probably as excited about the last record when it was finished, but now that
we were on the road playing those songs for a year-and-a-half, I can see a difference. We just played a show recently, and while it was still fun to play all those songs and I had a great time doing it, the new
record really is a lot better. I mean, every band says that, but in this case it really is.
JON WYSOCKI: It sounds so cliché, but it's true. Not to use another cliché, but the music has matured. It really has.
We put a lot of thought into it before we actually got together and started making music. We got ideas when we were on tour, put some ideas on tape, and went in there with some idea of what we thought we would do.
It had to be right, and we thought it out.
MM: I'll probably end up telling this story a thousand times, but here is the first of the thousand times... You would think that sometimes after hearing the songs in
the studio so many times, and after playing them again and again, when the album finally got finished you wouldn't want to hear it. But a friend of mine stopped by the other day, and even though we were kind of in a
rush trying to get somewhere, I ended up playing him the whole record. I didn't want to play him just one song, so I was like, "I've got to play you this one. Now I've go to play you this… Wait, one
more...." Next thing you know it's 50 minutes later.
MI: I presume there's a meaning behind the title Breaking The Cycle?
MM: Yeah, there is. Aaron [Lewis, singer] writes the lyrics, obviously, and
the lyrical content is kind of where it comes fromHe describes it as finally starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Things are going well for the band, things are looking up, we are doing well, and things
are getting a little bit better for him. This is a point where we're kind of trying to break the cycle.
JW The first record was Tormented, and the second record was Dysfunction, and those words played into the
lyrics of those records, now this one is Break The Cycle, which if you listen to the lyrics of the record, is someone trying to get out of the pattern they're in.
MM: It's also trying to talk to kids that come to
the shows and say, "I can really relate to what you're saying." To an extent, that kind of gets to everybody, because there were some serious things that were talked about on the last record. We're just
trying to put out some glimmer of hope that things can get better, will get better, and do get better. It's part of growing up, and something that everybody goes through.
MI: Music today seems to really
focus on problems. It's not as escapist as it once was. That has definitely been the case with Staind.
MM: Absolutely.
JW: A lot of itand this is just me talking, not the bandis unnecessary… Most of it,
actually. I suppose it
sends a message, "Why is everyone so pissed off?" But there's the other side of the coin, too...
MM: Well, at least for me, that was part of the reason why I wanted to be in
this band. It came from me just being very upset with me, and things that were going on in my life, and I just wanted to write. As far as guitar playing goes, I changed the way I played to do this, but it was for a
reasonI felt it, and wanted to do it. For me, it was a good way to deal with it.
MI: It was therapeutic?
MM: Yeah, and now, the songs can still be heavy and aggressive, and there's obviously still an anger
factor, but this record is much more musical than the last record. There's melody in the guitar parts and the vocals, and they are really strong songs. To me, there are more extremes on this record. There are a
couple of songs that are lighter than what was on Dysfunction, yet there are some on the other end of the spectrum, where there are songs that are heavier than anything on that record.
MI: Jon, you said that
you thought a lot of the anger in music is unnecessary?
JW: Well, to meand for a lot of peopleI just don't buy the anger from certain bands. I think that people are just doing it for the fact of doing it.
MM:
Instead of putting on spandex and teasing their hair, now they're just angry guys.
MI: True. That fashion was the escape from reality, though. At the other end of that spectrum, we had Metallica, Slayer,
Megadeth, and the bands that were pissed off. Today, everyone seems pissed off. Do you think your audience is that pissed off?
JW: Or do they just feed into it?
MM: I think that today there are a lot more
things that you have deal with as a kid, even more than 10 years ago when we grew up. I think that there are single parents everywhere, no one's parents are married, there are fathers in their twenties and kids that
are 16 having kids…
JW: It's a steady decline, and I think it just makes that more difficult for a child growing up.
MI: If you own a radio, you can't escape from "Outside," Aaron's duet with
Fred Durst. That sounds like it could have come from the same lyrical path as the last two recordsTormented, especiallyyet it's on the new album.
MM: That's on there too, but there's also some of the "light
at the end of the tunnel" kind of thing. There are songs about things that came up on the road, tooOne of the songs is about a mother that came up to Aaron at a show, and she told him that her son killed
himself, and was really into the band. She was crying outside the bus, "Why did he do this?"
MI: So there's a bit more of the band looking for answers, rather than just singing about problems?
MM: Yeah.
MI: Sophomore releases can make or break a band. Do you feel a lot of pressure heading into this record?
JW: We did, but I feel like now that it's done, everyone is happy with it. For me, and I
don't know if this is for the other guys, too, I feel like the pressure has been lifted a little bit.
MM: Oh yeah, I know what we got home from tour, and I just wanted to take some time. I mean, seriously, I just
took two days and unpacked and did some laundry, put all my stuff in the cellar were we rehearsed, and then starting playing these songs. Then, the next thing I knew, I called these guys three days later going,
"You know what? We need to write these songs, because I'm not going to feel good till we get together." We hadn't practiced in a year-and-a-half, and we hadn't written a song in over a year-and-a-half,
because when we were on the road, we were all pretty tired at soundchecks. I don't like doing things like that anywayI like four guys in a room, I don't like the whole crew standing around watching you when you're
trying to write a song, that's weird to me.
JW: By the end of the tour we were getting to the point where we wanted to have something a little fresh, we wanted to have something that's new, we wanted everyone to
be excited. So we got home off tour, and were planning to take a little break. Mike gets on the phone with me and Johnny, and we got together and tried to get something going so we could have some piece of mind and
get right on this thing.
MM: There was some anxiety there, too. We hadn't done this in a couple years, we've been out touring. We wrote these songs in like a year, and for the last record we had more time.
Honestly, within four or five weeks we basically had the whole record written and we were doing a song or two a day.
JW: We go tot the point where, when we got to the end, we had like 10 songs and we were like,
"Man, did we rush this too much?" We assembled the songs quickly.
MM: So when we got to the studio, the songs were like 80-85% done, and Aaron's lyric content was probably about 15-20% done. He had
enough choruses to muster through songs, and there were a couple he didn't have anything for, but he was happy with the arrangements, so we were able to go in and follow the music, work on what you want to do. It
wasn't until right before Christmas that we went down to finally finish up some vocal stuff, and when I left Miami with that CD, I was like, "You know what? This is a fucking great record!"
MI: How
long did the album take, from start to finish?
MM: We started recording in the beginning of September, tracking in LA, and we spent like a month doing all the music except for some second guitar parts, because I
was doing them Aaron was finishing vocals. But in the middle of it, we had given Aaron two, three weeks to work on a couple of songs, and we had gone down to Miami to finish up in a week-and-half or so. So the whole
time we were in the studio was maybe three months all together.
MI: Dysfunction went platinum. Do you feel more pressure now?
MM: I'd be lying if I said no, so yeah, I do feel that. But you know what? In
listening to it, I'm really happy with it. I can't wait for people to hear it.
MI: "Outside" is on Break The Cycle. Does Fred Durst sing on the album version?
MM: No, we redid it as a band and
Fred is not singing on. We added bass drums and added another guitar part to the acoustic part, it rises when it should rise, and climaxes.
MI: How was it originally recorded?
MM It was just Aaron playing
guitar and singing
MI: How did "Outside" happen? You couldn't ask for a better setup for the album.
MM: It was a total mistake, actually. It was a song that Aaron and Fred worked on
in Jacksonville, FL, where the chorus came together. Aaron wrote some verses to it, but he's never really singing the same thing on the verses. Even with our songs, he does the same thing, and that's how songs grow.
Aaron was in an acoustic bandJon was actually the drummer in itand he would play a couple of nights a week, when Staind wasn't playing, and that's one of the songs that they would do. Fred heard it, and they had it
done on the whole Family Values Tour, we were in Biloxi, and it was being taped for Family Values. Aaron and Fred were talking, and it just came up 10 minuets before we were supposed to go onstage, "Why don't
we do that song since it's the last night of the tour?" And they did it, it was filmed, and they decided to put it on the CD as a bonus track. Radio picked up on it at home, and they started playing it, and it
just did this natural kind of growth, other stations started hearing about it, started to see how well it was doing in our area, and the next thing you know the K-ROCK in L.A. is playing it all the time, now KROQ in
New York is playing it all the time. It was just kind of this organic growth that just blossomed.
MI: So you guys played out when Staind wasn't on tour?
JW: Yeah, but this is before the record actually
came out.
MM: This is when we all had jobs and we were all still working in Springfield, trying to get signed.
MI: So it's actually an old song?
JW: Yeah, it is an old song, and Aaron wrote the whole
thing, top to bottom. We just accompanied him.
MI: Do you approach your writing differently now? Do you think with radio in mind, in terms of what might make a better single? It is a hit-driven market.
MM: Basically, like with the last record, we never thought that, we just wrote the songs that we wrote. That definitely crept in a little bit, but we are just going to write the songs that we are going to write.
Hopefully, it worked before where people thought, "This sounds like this could be a single," and I think it kind of worked again. We just really did what we do. As stupid as that sounds, it's true. We just
kind of went down there and went back to the way we used to do things. Just rehearsed, worked on ideas, and put them together.
JW: You do have it in the back of your mind that you do want to appeal to as many
people as possible, but you also have to be yourself, and I don't think anyone in this band was trying to be something else.
MM: I think there are a lot singles on this record if we wanted to go that route, but
it didn't come from us saying, "Oh my God, we need a single." It came from us writing the songs, and from us really writing and developing our ideas into a good song.
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