Stone Sour's 2010 album Audio Secrecy was their third overall effort and not quite what the band had in mind. Frontman Corey Taylor tells Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta on his The Jasta Show that the album is the "one hiccup in my career," and recalls that the whole album's process was just a mess. Taylor says Atlantic initially wanted them to work with producer Rob Cavallo to go in a much poppier direction, but they managed to get their usual producer Nick Raskulinecz instead as a happy-ish medium.
Taylor says the label really pushed them to make a pop record, forced them to continue demoing and writing even though the band wanted to hit the studio, and ended up forcing Taylor to put some of his own solo tracks on the record.
"We [were] demoing. We [were] in this mansion in Nashville. I wanna say that we were there for two months writing and working on stuff. We had the album ready and they wouldn't let us go in the studio, because they kept saying that we didn't have the songs. And I'm, like, 'Are you out of your fucking mind?' And our A&R guy at the time just kept beating us over the head. He was, like, 'We need this. We need this. We need this.' And I was, like, 'But we have that. What kind of album do you think we're gonna have? I don't understand this.'"
"I think if we had gone in when we were supposed to, it would have felt so much different and had much more energy. But because they held us back, it sucked the wind out of us. And they made us use a handful of songs that I had written for my solo stuff that the band didn't wanna use and I honestly didn't wanna bring in; it was like a totally different thing. The song 'Pieces' on the album, that was a solo tune. A couple of the other ones — 'Imperfect' was a solo tune. And 'Imperfect' didn't sound anything like [it ended up sounding] — it was a full-band version; it wasn't this slow… It was just a whole different thing; it would have been a lot different. So there was a lot of stuff that we were kind of cornered to do and because we just wanted to get it out there. And then we had to do the mix on the road, because we had stuff booked. And then because you're sandwiched in between Slipknot and Stone Sour, you have to take advantage of the time, so we had to get out there. So we were doing the mix on the road. To this day, I'm not happy with how… There are certain songs where my vocals are just buried, and it's hard for me to listen to. It was tough."
So there you go. Audio Secrecy is not exactly Stone Sour's favorite album, even though it was pretty well received critically.
https://soundcloud.com/jameyjasta/episode-386-corey-taylor
