New single ‘Meadow’ from Stone Temple Pilots is out now on all major digital and streaming sites – (watch the new lyric video here). It precedes a hotly anticipated new full length album coming Spring 2018 and the world watches to see if new lead singer Jeff Gutt (pronounced ‘goot’) can fill the boots of both Chester Bennington and original singer Scott Weiland.
If it’s true that it takes the forge of pain and turmoil upon which to
write great music then that goes some way to explaining how Stone Temple Pilots are still producing quality new material after 25 years. A band famed for it’s unique sound faces a hard choice in attempting to last that long after such momentous early success: either it must reinvent itself and risk losing all their fans completely; or continue with the original formula and risk regurgitating the old songs in new packaging. STP seemed to have chosen the latter path with a two year cameo from Chester Bennington and lately with the appointment of new singer Jeff Gutt, who was found via an online audition search that saw them trawl through 15,000 submissions.
This first release heralds a solid performance from Gutt but time will tell if he can bring something new to match, or top their former glories …or if indeed the risks will outweigh the rewards. As someone for whom STP provided the soundtrack for my rites of passage through my teenage years I still believe in Stone Temple Pilots and am excited by this first glimpse of what is to come. Classic outfits like the Pilots will be judged all the more harshly by their former success; but even if the new material is not quite ‘Vaseline’ or ‘Meatplow’ the quality is still there – if this was an anonymous new band I’d be enthusing about ‘Meadow.’ It’s all there; hooks, drive, melody, verve: very listenable and I reckon good for a sweaty old horn-handed mosh too, so check out their tour dates for later this year while you have a listen.
Gutt start STP, very gutt!
