It does not happen often, but metal - or, perhaps more accurately, appreciably accessible subgenres of metal - occasionally manage to reach the rarified air of the number-one spot on the Billboard 200, the chart ranking the most popular albums and EPs in the US, based on sales and streaming metrics. Release Date Rivals is a feature that looks back on a specific date in history to note the simultaneous release of two albums - one a well-known and historically appreciated album by a commercially successful artist, and one lesser-known record that arguably deserves equal, if not more, time in the spotlight as its better-known competitor.ĭate: MaThe champ: Pantera, Far Beyond Driven Now I’ve just gotta not screw it up.Pantera (Photo: Paul Natkin / Getty) and Unwound (Photo: Reuben Lorch-Miller) Image: Karl Gustafson “If the DeLeos walk in and say: ‘I’ve got a song’, you think: ‘Well this is going to be great!’ It’s been a huge thing for me to join such amazing dudes. “It’s so refreshing to be in a band of professionals,” Gutt enthuses. And they’re all rightly proud of this year’s album. He’s fully restored now and raring to go, but for the time being he and the other three Pilots are biding their time, writing at their homes in LA, offering up live-streamed performances. But even before COVID could do its worst, the tour was cancelled when a disc in Jeff Gutt’s spine disintegrated, leading to invasive replacement surgery and a painful recovery process. In a parallel universe, 2020 would have seen the band take the album on tour the foundation of an acoustic set encompassing those more subtle, unplugged moments of the past nearly 30 years. If these iconic rock implements are on Perdida, then they’re dialled down to a tasteful level, in keeping with the downbeat quality of the album as a whole. We took a lot from Jobím, from all that great sixties and seventies pop – the stuff Richard Carpenter was writing – but we’d play it on a Les Paul through a Marshall.” “If you go back to Core, it was always about staying away from typical ‘rock’ power chords, and using beautiful, non-conventional ones. “That was always the blueprint,” says Dean. The DeLeo Brothers’ eclectic musical sense was forged in the late 60s/early 70s, as they grew up in a multi-generational, music-loving household in New Jersey, where you could be soothed by the sounds of Antonio Carlos Jobím, serenaded by Andy Williams or grabbed by the throat by Hendrix. As a listener I find Brazilian and bossa and country music to be very soulful, and that’s kind of where my expression comes from and goes to.'

“Everyone has a style they listen to, but it really comes down to what’s deep inside your soul, and that can come out in many different ways. “This time we dedicated a whole album to that expression rather than flavours of it,” says Robert. They’ll always be known for amped-up anthems like Sex Type Thing, Plush and Interstate Love Song, but the roots of this latest album are in the band’s softer moments, such as Creep (from that 1992 smash debut Core), And So I Know ( Tiny Music… Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop), A Song For Sleeping ( Shangri-La Dee Da). Looking back at the STP catalogue, they’ve always flavoured their heavier moments with sweeter, gentler interludes. We had time on the road to express to each other where we were and mould this into what it became.” And he did feel exactly where it needed to go. After making one record and then going on to this, you either feel it or you don’t. It is a very personal record, and he really did amazing work at seeing where he was with this music personally. His vocal performance on this album is incredible.” Jeff had this really great sense of what each song was asking for, and a great sense of melody and delivery.

That was the beautiful moment when the album opened up and allowed me to really know what the songs were going to be. When Gutt first auditioned for the band (to replace Chester Bennington, who in turn had replaced original frontman Scott Weiland) it clearly helped that he could punch the same tonal buttons as Weiland, who helped the Pilots secure their place at grunge’s top table back in the 90s with their early albums.Ĭrucially, Gutt also has real songwriting simpatico with the longstanding members – Robert DeLeo, guitarist brother Dean DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz, in whose Pasadena studio Perdida came together.ĭean remembers sitting with Gutt, an acoustic guitar in his lap, “and Jeff was coming up with his melodies, and that’s when we felt the songs were really taking shape.

Stone temple pilots poster