Dustin Schoof of The Express-Times recently conducted an interview with STONE SOUR guitarist Josh Rand. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On touring:

“I went through all of Europe seven times, got to go to Japan twice. For the next tour, we'll probably go to South America. It's pretty amazing to have it be your job and get paid to do it. I think a lot of people in the industry take it for granted.”

On the success of the band's latest effort, “Come What(ever) May”:

“It's surpassed the (first album). We've grown as a band that it has made our fan base bigger is even cooler. We've worked our butts off and it's kind of like being rewarded for staying true to what we do.”

On STONE SOUR's breakthrough in 2002 when frontman Corey Taylor's acoustic ballad “Bother” appeared on the “Spider-Man” soundtrack and became an overnight hit:

“The band at the time was still putting (the first album) together and Corey got approached by (RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE guitarist) Tom Morello's wife, who was putting the soundtrack together. Corey's a huge Spider-Man fan, and she called him up to see if he wanted to submit a track. He only had three days to do it, so he ran and did it by himself. We loved it and carried it over for our first album.”

On whether the band was worried about alienating SLIPKNOT fans when it came to crafting STONE SOUR's more melodic hard-rock sound:

“Honestly, going into it, Corey thought there was going to be super backlash listen, whether it's hard rock, country, rap – at the end of the day, everybody likes certain things. Something about certain songs pulls them in. For us, that's what it was about. For him, it was a different way of expressing himself, something he couldn't do in SLIPKNOT. The three of us (Rand, Taylor and guitarist Jim Root) were friends before we could play anything. We've always written stuff and that's how it all came together. The band became an outlet for him and became way more than anybody thought it would.”