Nightmare After Christmas
US Bank Arena – Cincinnati, OH – 1/29/2011
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| Photo by CassandraX used via Creative Commons license |
Stone Sour is currently touring as a support act for Avenged Sevenfold on the Nightmare After Christmas tour. Typically, I only blog about one band at each show, because my memory doesn’t have the required capacity that it takes to recall all the details for two entire sets, but Stone Sour is a band that I have been wanting to see for a while now, so I paid extra attention (read: drank two less beers) because I wanted to blog about them as well. Thanks to the beautiful Indianapolis weather right now, I have lots of free time…so, here goes blog #2 from that the Nightmare After Christmas tour.
My interest in Stone Sour stemmed quite obviously (for those that know me) from lead singer Corey Taylor’s “other” band Slipknot. Going in to this concert, I thought that Corey Taylor was a premier front man in the country, and Stone Sour was a solid side project for him. That being said, I severly underestimated how good their live show would be.
The History:
Quite honestly, I have not been a Stone Sour fan that long. Being that Slipknot is my favorite band, Stone Sour was an obvious transition for me, and I have known a handful of their songs for some time. The few songs I did know were kind of all over the place, and so I had trouble giving the band an identity in my own head, sort of putting them in the right “sector” of the musical realm. Combine that with the fact that they didn’t tour at all between 2007 and 2011 (which is when my concert obsession was born), and that led to me giving Stone Sour the moniker “Slipknot’s Side Project that has a few good songs.”
In early 2010, after touring the hell out of their last album “All Hope is Gone”, Slipknot decided to take a break, and Stone Sour resurfaced on the music scene. I considered boycotting them, because going to Stone Sour concerts meant I couldn’t go to Slipknot concerts, but after a while, I was craving for some Slipknot influences, and so started listening to Stone Sour a little bit more. (To be fair, I also checked out other Slipknot derivatives, like Murderdolls). In the summer of 2010, songs began to leak off of their third studio album, entitled “Audio Secrecy”. The new album wasn’t a game changer (in fact, it was quite a “game-stays-the-samer”), however, it was good enough for me to go out and grab the rest of the other two albums. As I listened to all of their albums (primarily their 2006 release entitled Come What(ever) May), I liked them more and more.
However, I still struggled to come up with an identity for them. They had songs that were all over the place; acoustic ballads, Slipknot-ish metal songs, slow songs, etc. I was really looking forward to seeing them in concert, not only because I liked a lot of their songs, but to finally put a style to the band and be able to put Stone Sour in a category. This show in Cincinnati would be my first chance to do so.
The Venue:
I talked about U.S. Bank Arena in my blog about Avenged Sevenfold, who was the headliner for this show, so I will use this space to mention that the tickets we bought for this show were fake, and so we spent the entire two opening shows bitching at the box office, trying to figure out what to do, etc. I was quite worried that we would miss some of Stone Sour as well, but the concert Gods were smiling on us, and after smuggling half our group to the floor who didn’t have floor tickets bracelets, we settled in, and looked up at the stage right as Corey Taylor walked in. Phew.
I will also use this space to remind people not to buy concert tickets on Craigslist.
The Show:
Stone Sour opened with a song off their new album called Mission Statement, which was kind of a surprise to me. In retrospect, it’s one of their fastest and most popular songs on their newest album, and so its a logical opener, but for some reason it struck me as an odd choice at the time.
It was during this first song, no more than about a minute into the show, that I noticed something that blew my mind. Corey Taylor was the only person on the entire stage, the ENTIRE concert, that had a microphone. No mic stands for the guitarist, or the bassist. No headset on the drummer. The vocals were totally and completely him. More about this later.
The songs Reborn and Digital followed the opening song, which are both great songs. They both got the crowd moving, especially during the scream part of Reborn. (Interestingly enough, I remember the crowd moving more during this song than a large majority of Avenged Sevenfold songs, which is just dumb.)
More Corey Taylor awesomeness followed when he slowed the show down and sang Hesitate, which is a great ballad off of their most recent album. He also played the guitar for this song, which I didn’t know that he did at all, let alone live. I was really impressed with how captivated I was during this song, as well as the other slow songs that they played (Bother, Through Glass). Typically, even when I like slow songs that a band plays, I use that time to collect my thoughts, say something to somebody in my group, grab a beer, or whatever. During this, however, I was completely focused on the show. Partially, I’m sure, it was because I am a huge fan of Corey individually, but also because he did a fantastic job of portraying emotion across the mic and into the stands, even when there were no drums or guitar to hide behind. Its got to be difficult to stand in a spot light in front of thousands of metal fans with an acoustic guitar and sing a ballad without at least some people getting ancy. He absolutely nailed it.
As the show progressed, it just got better and better. I absolutely love their song Say You’ll Haunt Me, which they played about half way through and came through really well live, and they also played Made of Scars, which has a really cool tempo. Finally, they closed the show with my favorite of their songs, which is called 30/30-150, and absolutely rocked. This was the perfect closer, mostly because its one of their hardest songs, but also because it gave everyone an outlet to vent the rage that built up during the previous three songs (Bother, Through Glass, and Hell & Consequences).
Side Note: I’ve been trying for a long time to figure out what 30/30-150 means. Most think that it’s a reference to a .30-30 shotgun shell, with 150 grain. That sort of fits with some of the lyrics, such as “30/30-150 remembers / 30/30-150 HATES”, and “This is where it begins / This is where it ends”. However, I’ve read several times that Corey Taylor has talked about how the song means to never forget where you came from and who you are, and not to give into pressures, and I don’t get how that fits with a shot gun shell at all. I’d love to hear your comments or be pointed to evidence that anyone can find that talks more about what it means.
Alright, lets revisit the whole “one microphone” thing. I’m assuming most of you know this already, but if not, singing vocals for metal/hard rock music is not the easiest thing in the world to do. Bands typically use at least two vocalists for two reasons:
- One, metal music is incredibly challenging technically. It involves a lot of different types of sounds (depending on if you are singing clean vocals or unclean vocals (i.e. screams)), which requires several different techniques and amazing control of your diaphragm and breathing. Also, it requires huge lung capacity, as there are a ton of words per measure and not a lot of breaks to breathe. This is often why back up vocal tracks come in, to allow the lead to retain control of his (or her….) breathing. (Don’t want to offend the women of metal….have you ever seen the chick from OTEP?? Yeah, I’ll stay on her good side thank you very much.)
- The second reason that most bands use two, three, or four vocalists is that having only one vocal track can be incredibly limiting and one dimensional. Backing vocals come in to make the song more interesting and have more depth and complexity. It can either be an echo of the melody in a different octave, or a true harmony part, but either way, it makes the song much more interesting. Examples are below
- All that Remains often adds depth to their vocals using screams. Check out the opening phrases in Agressive Opposition here. You can hear the scream in the background is the same part, but in a lower octave, than the vocals as they sing “Let us. Defy.” at the very beginning of the song.
- The entire chorus of “Beast and the Harlot” from Avenged Sevenfold has harmony vocals laid in. You can see that here, at around 1:28 of the song. There are two distinct different parts that go together.
(My high school vocal teacher would be proud of me right now. Cheers, Moebius!! 🙂
However, in Stone Sour, Corey has written the songs so that all the vocals can be done by one person. While this is quite unique, he is talented enough to pull it off. His voice has incredible depth and carrying power by itself, and because of his time with Slipknot, he has been forced to develop huge lungs.
But the truely amazing thing for me this entire concert was his ability to change his voice to sound completely different. He flawlessly transitions from clean to unclean vocals, without having to breathe or reset in any way. It’s really incredible. For an example of this (and the place during the live show that really impressed me), listen to the second time through the chorus in Say You’ll Haunt ME here. He sings the entire chorus in full voice (twice), and then immediately transitions into screams for “Together, Together, We’ll be together. Together forever” and then sings “I belong to you”, and then back to screams… and so on. There’s no breath in between, his voice just flawlessly goes from one style to another. In every other band I follow, things like this are handled by two different vocalists (See: Adam D. of Killswitch). The fact that Corey Taylor does it all on his own is just really impressive to me.
All in all, I thought it was a really good show, and I finally realized what Stone Sour’s identity is. They are Corey Taylor’s creative release. I believe that he has so much talent as a song writer and performer, that all the material he comes up with doesn’t fit into the well-honed and quite blatant “persona” that Slipknot has built for the last 15 years. The overflow built Stone Sour, and that’s why their material is sort of all over the place. (Obviously this is just my speculation….)
Fun Facts
1. Before they sang the song Digital, Corey Taylor dedicate it to (I’m paraphrasing) a generation of kids who need to unplug and live their lives. Less than 20 minutes later, he asked a stage tech to bring out his blackberry so he could take a picture of the crowd and upload it to his twitter account. Ironic much? (If you’re curious, that pic is here. http://twitpic.com/3uou9w)
2. I had no idea that Ray Mayorga played the drums for Stone Sour. He was the original drummer for Soulfly back in the day, and was good friends with Mikey Doling (the guy I know from Snot. See the Sevendust blog). Just found that out today.
3. I encourage you to post your thoughts on this blog. (or the blog in general, or anything about anything) I would love feedback. I’m going to have to start commenting on my own blog pretty soon, and thats just lame.
– “They called us a dead generation / They said we wouldn’t survive / They left us alone in the maelstorm / As you can see, we’re plenty alive.”