Staind – Staind

Staind is back with the follow-up to 2008’s The Illusion of Progress, bringing the world the self-titled Staind, an emotional epic that will make fans begin itching for another chance to see the Massachusetts rockers live. The album starts with a riveting drum line followed up with a hard-hitting guitar line with Lewis coming in screaming. This album is by far the Staind’s heaviest, most emotional album to date and Lewis does a fair larger amount of screaming on this one too. It’s pretty clear the band wanted to go back to the sound they had on their early records like Dysfunction and Break the Cycle. They did more than this. They set the bar pretty high for their future releases. Staind take their emotion, throw it on record and throw it into your ears at full-blast and have no regrets and take no prisoners. It’s almost like Aaron Lewis wanted to make a statement and tell us he can still rock our worlds after country-frying it up for a bit.   The opening track, “Eyes Wide Open,” gets your adrenaline pumping and ready to rock out for the rest of the album. Don’t listen to it on a highway, though, or you might get pulled over for driving at a higher-than-legally-allowed-speed. I could tell after “Eyes Wide Open” and into “Not Again” that this was going to be one of the most personal records Staind has released in a long time and that I was in for an adventure of hard rock and heavy metal that would make me want to listen to the album on repeat. “Failing” brings back the ever-popular softer Staind sound and offers a rest from the head banging that ensued on the first two tracks. It also shows the band still has their softer mellow side and that they can still slow it up. Regardless of what song you listen to on this album, Staind gives you something you will love on their seventh release. Long-time fans will love the record and those who aren’t too familiar with the band or who haven’t heard them at all are destined to become die-hard Staind fans on this one. This one may be the band’s strongest release to date, if not, it’s definitely up there. There’s not one mundane moment on the record. Just when you think it can’t get any better, it does just that and more. Rating: 9/10