Since 2001, Springfield, Massachusetts, rock rig Staind sustain released three full-length studio efforts, and all trey have entered the Billboard top two hundred at #1. Three records, three back-to-back chart-topping debuts: 2001's Break the Cycle, which sold 716,000 copies its first hebdomad in stores; 2003's 14 Shades of Grey; and 2005's Chapter V. With Staind's sixth record, The Illusion of Progress, dropping this week, how confident are they that they canful make it four in a row?
Not very.
"It falls short of being four #1 records in a row, I think, with the Jonas Brothers' second week," guitar player Mike Mushok told MTV News on Tuesday, just now hours before the New Jersey-based male child band's LP A Little Bit Longer opened at #1 on the album sales graph, with 525,000 copies gone. "Half of that is more than what we'll sell, and it's good for those guys. All I can tell is, we've been here for 10 years, and this is our sixth record. I feel proud to be able to say that. If it's not #1, it's not #1 � what ar you going away to do?"
Well, there's very nothing Staind lav do to stop the Disney-backed juggernaut from blocking their attempts at making it four straight trips to the tip. They've accepted the fact that they'll probably end up finish second to the Brothers when next week's chart numbers are revealed. With the album's first individual, "Believe," lento working its way up the singles chart and getting more spins on rock radiocommunication, Staind could pull off a miracle upset. But it's doubtful.
"It would be amazing if it happened," frontman Aaron Lewis aforementioned. "But it's just a different version of the boy-band thing all over again ... where it's not hip-hop- or R&B-based; they're playing Gibson guitars. It's Hanson 2008, with Disney behind them. ... How do you contend with that? Can we plead to the parents? 'Just one week � just obtain off one week. You can corrupt it for your kids, just hold off a week.' "
"Let them take that huge third week, not second gear," Mushok joked, just before the band performed at New York's Hard Rock Cafe, as part of the eating house chain's "Ambassadors of Rock" tour.
Ultimately, Staind aren't all that concerned with sales. At the end of the day, they're just glad they've produced a record they can tie-up behind and be majestic of. When the guys first began work on The Illusion of Progress, they went into the process with the uttered goal of coming aside with their heaviest offering. But, Lewis said, it didn't quite work out that way.
"We went in and started writing, and the songs that were coming out weren't the heaviest songs, but they were really good songs," he explained. "We wrote 14 songs, and thither are 13 on the album. There was only one vocal that didn't make it, and it wasn't because it didn't stand up � I just couldn't come up with anything to sing over it. Musically, it was one of my favorite songs on the record � I scarcely couldn't come up with anything that was suitable of it, in a melody and lyrical sense. The songs we were writing were great songs. We couldn't cast them aside and say, 'No, those aren't heavy enough.' If we had, we'd probably still be there, writing."
Mushok � wHO said the band will headline a U.S. trek that begins in October, with Papa Roach and Seether as direct support hopes fans can appreciate the tracks for what they are. "I hope they're 'happy' surprised, and that they can but realize that we wrote the best songs we could," he said. "We work very hard to grow as a band, and I think we made a pretty good step this time."
Mushok and Lewis said that being dads (Mushok of twin boys and Lewis of three girls) has moved the committal to writing and recording process for them in extremely positive � only not constantly productive � ways.
"The only thing I know that really changed for me was, when I should have been upstairs in my way working on songs, I was playing with the kids," Mushok confessed. "Or, if I was up the stairs working on songs, it was just like, 'OK, now I want to go play with the kids.' "
"If anything, it made it more right there," Lewis chimed in. "You're doing it, on the spot, and not really going home and on the job on stuff, rehearsing parts. You're reckoning it out and doing it right-hand there [in the studio]."
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