Stone Sour

It may appear Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor's biggest problem would be comparisons to his other band - masked nu-metallers Slipknot. The truth is the vocalist is more concerned with the band's connection to an alcoholic concoction.

"It's a very unfortunate drink - whiskey, sour and orange juice and it's quite gross - it's never on our rider," Taylor says. "We look at it like the Metallica syndrome. At the end of the day Metallica doesn't mean anything as a word but as a band and a body of music it means everything. That's the way we look at it, we define it by the music we make."

Thankfully an early attempt by the band at a clever promotion backfired.

"The second show we ever did we had this stupid idea to basically set up a deal at the bar for dollar Stone Sour shots," he says. "We all did one before the show and we almost puked. It was like, 'Wow, this was really not a good idea.' Of course they only sold five at the end of the gig and all five were to the people in the band. It was a lesson learned - we try and get as far away from that connotation as possible."

Slipknot is Taylor's better known musical venture but Stone Sour was his first. He and guitarist Jim Root formed the group in 1992 before both left in '97 to don evil masks and join the Slipknot camp. In 2002 the pair, looking for a new musical outlet, resurrected Stone Sour.

"I wanted to do something different and Slipknot was so different to anything I'd ever done," Taylor says. "But there was a sense of diversity that kind of got weeded out when we did the first two [Slipknot] albums. I think that's why I started looking around for something different, right around the Iowa album. Luckily, Stone Sour was here. Now I've got both."

The second album, Come What(ever) May, was released last year. The five-piece have a starkly different sound to the angst-ridden metal laid down by Slipknot. Still delving into heavy rock, Stone Sour have lighter melodic moments with Taylor using his full vocal range.

Despite a hectic work schedule, Taylor and Root appear content to let the two projects run side by side.

"You lose a lot of sleep; you're not always that healthy but at the end of the day it's worth it," he says. "My whole thing in this business is legacy; the money can come and go, the fans are great but at the end of the day if you don't leave something behind that's worth s--- then why even do it? I hope that's what I'm doing. "