Stone Sour - Hydrograd

2017 saw Stone Sour bring out their sixth album “Hydrograd”. Its hard to believe this band have been around since 1992, although they didn’t release their first self-titled album till 2002. Stone Sour are a pretty big band having achieved top selling albums right from the offset.  In saying that it was only until a friend at work introduced me to them this year when I finally got around to listening to them.

And boy what have I missed! The first album of theirs I listened to was this album, their latest, “Hydrograd”. This definitely falls into the rock and roll category with larger than life rock songs with great choruses. The two biggest and probably most popular songs on the album are singles “Song 3” and “Fabuless” and I have differing opinions on them both. “Song 3” is such a good song. It has a great upbeat rhythm to it and when I was talking about great choruses on the album this is one of them.

 “Fabuless” on the other hand is a strange one. It feels like it has a lot of ideas but not quite sure what direction it is going in leading to a very disjointed song. It uses very famous Led Zepplin and then Rolling Stones lyrics at one point, but delivered in a metal like way. Its just weird doing that on an album track never mind a single.  Fair enough doing this kind of thing live gets a big reaction as an ad-hoc thing but to me just ruins the song a bit. The song does get good though once you get into the part where it goes “It’s all downhill from here….”. But in terms of the album, it certainly does not go downhill from here….

The highlight for me on this album is one of the lighter moments of the album in the shape of “St Marie”.  An acoustic number which shows off Corey Taylor’s voice in its full splendor. Another more tender moment on the album is album closer “When the fever broke” which has some great wee guitar parts in it. The album maybe could have done with a few more moments like this as it is predominantly heavier rock. But at the same time the quality of these heavier moments is generally high, so you can’t really complain. Some of the songs on the album like “Whiplash pants” and “Somebody stole my eyes” see Taylor almost in Slipknot territory such is the ferocity of his singing in parts, but the chorus brings it back to Stone Sour.

Overall, if like me you had never heard Stone Sour before. This is a great entry point to decide whether you like them or not. Since then I have delved further into their older stuff and there really is some absolute gems in their back catalogue. This album though stands on its own two feet and shows a band that really do know how to do rock music.