Album Review

Stone Temple Pilots – Stone Temple Pilots

• 18th May 2010

Stone Temple Pilots are back with their self titled album. 9 years since their previous release – and despite excursions into the worlds of Velvet Revolver – Scott Weiland has returned to the band that has brought him the majority of his fame.

Sounds like happy times – but this reunion of sorts wasn’t the happiest thanks to studio pressure and miscommunication over getting an album out of the group. But having said that the band do attest that it is work they are proud of.

Pilots dust off their work amiably enough with this brave new record. Some bands that come back often get criticised for sounding too old and outdated. Rose got that when he released his latest Guns N Roses effort last year – pilots may well get similar fingers pointed at them initially, but beyond the opening numbers are all sorts of new sounds to be heard.

With that in mind you have to ask yourself – Do you want a new sound from them, or are you content to hear them as you have always heard them before. Luckily for both parties you kind of get to have your cake and eat it. There is enough leaping around from their old grunge feel to sleaze (Huckleberry crumble, Hazy Daze) and Psychedelic (Hickory Dichotomy, Dare If you Dare) rock to keep fans happy whilst the likes of “Peacoat” revisits former glories very successfully. With all of this they are never a one note wonder.

Whilst it is no wonder that the music needs to be fresh in order to work, and this album is perhaps their most melodically assertive since their earlier work –a huge debt has to go out to Weiland who just know how to rock a tune. There may be others out there that could attempt what he achieves – but it’s a blessing that he decided to take on this project with old friends.

This could well be one of the best rock albums you will hear this year – and if so then it is great to hear another of the classics continuing to provide us with sterling music that grabs you in ways that new bands can’t seem to grasp – probably cause they are trying too hard to be the Stone temple Pilots instead of their own entity.
So does this rate up there with their early classics like Core and Purple… Well that music was for its time and it’s safe to assert that this album is for its time too – It’s a worthy continuation of the bands already impressive discography.