Staind is an American rock band that was formed in 1995 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The band consists of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Aaron Lewis, lead guitarist Mike Mushok, bassist Johnny April, and drummer Jon Wysocki. Over the past 15 years the band has recorded six studio albums: Tormented (1996), Dysfunction (1999), Break the Cycle (2001), 14 Shades of Grey (2003), Chapter V (2005), and The Illusion of Progress (2008). A seventh album is currently in the works.
The band has also had multiple chart topping singles and has sold over 15 million records worldwide. Staind formed on September 23, 1995 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The band met through friends and started covering KoRn, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Tool, and Alice in Chains, among others, in smalltime clubs for a year and a half. Staind self-released their debut album, Tormented, in November 1996, citing influences Pantera and Machine Head. Until recently, the album was difficult to obtain, as only four thousand copies were originally sold. Since then, the band's official website has released the album to meet the demand from fans.
Staind new songs, albums, biography, chart history, photos, videos, news, and more on Billboard, the go-to source for what's hot in music. With Aaron Lewis getting his troubadour fantasies out of the way on his boneheaded country detour Town Line, he’s able to concentrate on the basics for Staind’s eponymous seventh album. Roaring to life with “Not Again,” Staind maintain the same volume and velocity for much of the remaining nine songs, dialing down the intensity only for the closer, “Something to Remind You.”.
The album achieved slow success, with the album reaching the #1 spot on Billboard's Heatseaker Charts almost six months after its debut. In the same week, the album jumped to #73 on Billboard's Top 200 Album Charts. The nine-track LP (with one hidden track, 'Excess Baggage') produced three singles, 'Just Go', 'Mudshovel', and 'Home'.
'Mudshovel' and 'Home' both received radio play, cracking the Top 20 of Billboard's Modern Rock and Mainstream Rock charts. In promotion of Dysfunction, Staind went on several tours, including the Family Values Tour with acts like Limp Bizkit and The Crystal Method, as well as opening for Sevendust's headlining tour.
Staind toured with Limp Bizkit for the Family Values Tour during the fall of 1999, where Aaron Lewis performed their first mainstream hit 'Outside' with Fred Durst. Staind released their third studio album Break the Cycle on May 22, 2001. Propelled by the success of their first single 'It's Been Awhile', the album debuted at #1 on Billboard's Top 200 Album charts, selling 716,000 albums in its first week. The album's first week sales were the second highest of any album that year, a significant achievement for a hard rock band at a time when music charts were largely dominated by hip hop and teen-pop acts. The album saw the band move away from the nu metal sounds of their previous album and turn to an alternative metal sound.The album spawned five hit singles: 'It's Been Awhile' (which hit the Billboard Top 10), 'Fade' (which has been featured on a number of movie soundtracks and television shows), 'Outside', 'For You,' and the acoustic ballad 'Epiphany.' It also included a track called 'Waste,' devoted to two teenage fans who committed suicide shortly before the album was released. 'It's Been Awhile' spent a total of 16 and 14 weeks on top of the modern and mainstream rock charts, respectively, making it one of the highest joint numbers of all time.
On 2001 Break The Cycle sold 4 million copies worldwide making it one of the best selling albums in 2001. Break The Cycle would go on to sell 7 million copies worldwide, making this Staind's best selling album. In early 2003, Staind embarked on a worldwide tour to promote the release of the follow-up to Break The Cycle, 14 Shades Of Grey, which sold two million albums and debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200. The fourteen-track collection was the band's most mainstream yet, and showed Aaron Lewis writing songs about his daughter, as well as moving on with his life and forgetting his past, hence the title representing uncertainty for the future and forgiveness. The album provided two mainstream hits: the lead single 'Price to Play', and 'So Far Away' (which spent 14 weeks on top of the rock chart, and was featured on an episode of Smallville); in addition, two other singles failed to crack the Hot 100—'How About You' and 'Zoe Jane'— but 'How About You' was a fairly popular song on modern rock radio. Their song 'Price to Play' was the official theme song of WWE's Vengeance pay-per-view event in July 2003.
As well, their song 'So Far Away' was featured on an episode of WWE Raw as part of a video tribute to hardcore wrestling legend Mick Foley. The band's appearance at Reading Festival during the 2003 tour had another impromptu acoustic set, this time due to equipment failure. The singles 'So Far Away' and 'Price to Play' came with two unreleased tracks, 'Novocaine' and 'Let It Out', which were released for the special edition of the group's Chapter V, which came out in late 2005. In 2003, Staind unsuccessfully sued their logo designer Jon Stainbrook in New York Federal Court for attempting to re-use the logo he had sold to the band.
They re-opened the case in mid-2005. After extensive promotions, including an appearance on Fuse TV's 7th Avenue Drop, Staind's newest album, titled Chapter V was released on August 9, 2005, and became their third consecutive number one. The album opened to sales of 185,000 and has since been certified platinum in the U.S. The first single 'Right Here' has been the biggest success from the album thus far, garnering much mainstream radio play and peaking at number 1 on the mainstream rock chart. 'Falling' (the video of which does not feature the band members at all) was released as the second single, followed by 'Everything Changes' and 'King of All Excuses.' Staind have been on the road since the album came out doing live shows and promoting it for a full year, including participating in the Fall Brawl tour with P.O.D., Taproot and Flyleaf, a solo tour across Europe and a mini-promotional tour in Australia for the first time. Recent live shows have included a cover of Pantera's This Love, a tribute to Dimebag Darrell.
Staind appeared on The Howard Stern Show on August 10, 2005, to promote their new album Chapter V. They performed acoustic renditions of the single Right Here and Beetlejuice's song 'This is Beetle.' Their rendition of 'Beetle' is immensely popular with fans and listeners alike and became a staple of the show. Staind also performed a version of 'Comfortably Numb' by Pink Floyd.
Kevin Lofton, who does all the animation for the Howard Stern website, created a black-and-white animated video for the song. During a January 2006 Episode of WWE RAW, a tribute video to then WWE Champion Edge featured the band's song 'Right Here'. In early November 2005, Staind released the limited edition 2-CD/DVD set of Chapter V. The set included several rarities and fan favorites— music videos; a complete, 36-page booklet with exclusive artwork; an audio disc with an acoustic rendition of 'This is Beetle'; the original, melodic rendition of 'Reply'; the previously released B-side singles 'Novocaine' and 'Let It Out'; and live versions of 'It's Been Awhile' and 'Falling', among many others.
On August 19, 2008, Staind released their sixth album, The Illusion of Progress. A limited edition of the album was also made available to fans, which included 3 bonus tracks and a year membership in the Staind Fan Club, along with other items (the first 200 fans who pre-ordered the album through Atlantic Records received a signed copy of the album by the band). Prior to the album's release, the track 'This Is It' was available for download on the iTunes store, as well as for Rock Band. The album debuted at #3 on US Billboard 200, #1 on the Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums Chart, #1 on the Top Digital Albums Chart, and also #1 on the Top Internet Albums Chart, with first week sales of 91,800 units.
The first single on the album, 'Believe', topped Billboard's Top 10 Modern Rock Tracks on September 5, 2008. The band has also been supporting Nickelback on their 2008 European tour. The second single was 'All I Want', that came out on November 24. The video continues the story of first single and was available on Staind's MySpace on December 12. The single also became Staind's 13th top 20 hit on the rock charts. In Europe the second single was 'The Way I Am', released on January 26, 2009.
The final single released from the album, 'This Is It' was sent to radio stations across the country on May 4, 2009. The single was also included on the successful 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – The Album' released in late June, 2009. Aaron Lewis stated in an interview that he has begun writing for his upcoming solo album later set to be released this year. Staind embarked on a fall tour with the newly reunited Creed. In March 2010, Aaron Lewis stated the band would start working on their seventh studio album by the end of the year. Lewis had finished recording his country-tinged solo album and has recently started a nonprofit organization to reopen his daughter's elementary school in Worthington, Massachusetts. Lewis was able to get her school reopened thanks to the benefit concert Aaron Lewis and Friends, which featured performances by Seether, 3 Doors Down, Lo-Pro and more. Guitarist Mike Mushokstated in a recent question and answer session with fans that the band is looking to make a heavy record, but still 'explore some of the things we did on the last record and take them somewhere new for us.'
In a recent webisode posted on the band's website, Lewis stated that eight songs are written and that 'everyone of them is as heavy or heavier than the heaviest song on the last record.'
The line-up of this US alternative metal act, comprising Aaron Lewis (vocals), Mike Mushok (guitar), Johnny April (bass) and Jon Wyscoki (drums), came together in February 1995. The following year, having established themselves as a leading live draw, the band recorded and distributed their debut, Tormented.
The album went on to sell over 4,000 copies by word of mouth, and also gained them a high-profile support slot for Limp Bizkit's Connecticut show in October 1997. An initial misunderstanding about Tormented's satanic cover art almost saw them coming to blows with Fred Durst, but Limp Bizkit's lead vocalist was impressed enough to invite the band to record demos for his production company. A contract with Flip Records ensued in early 1998, and the band decamped to Pearl Jam's studio in Seattle to record their major-label debut with producer Terry Date. A reworking of Public Enemy's 'Bring The Noise', featuring Durst, was left off the final tracklisting.
This proved to be a good choice, as the songs on Dysfunction eschewed the overt hip-hop influence of Limp Bizkit for a more traditional style of hard rock rooted in the early 90s sound of Alice In Chains. The band's second album, Break The Cycle, debuted at the top of the US album charts in June 2001. They came a really long way.
Sadly, some people don't appreciate all genres of music. I'm always open to opinions, however, who does it help to write rude comments? There's a difference between stating an opinion and straight insulting someone's hard work. I would never write something so blatantly insulting about any musician no matter how much I disliked them. I find it very sad that I keep seeing comments like that in many of these review sections of the Discogs site.I have been a fan of Staind since the release of Dysfunction.
They are very talented musicians and Aaron Lewis' voice is beautiful yet haunting at the same time. Aaron takes the very personal issues and struggles in his life and makes them the subject of most of his lyrics. The lyrics have definitely helped me when I was younger - and still today - to feel like I wasn't alone, and that someone else out there feels exactly the way I feel. In my opinion, that one of the things that make a great band. If you ever saw Aaron Lewis face while he's performing ballads, you know what i'm talking about here.
Its the look of a sad man struggling with constipation. His pain is so unbearable that he just can't take it anymore and he just have to record some of that painful material and sing it to fans.Seriously, though, i can't imagine how they are able to sell millions of copies of CDs, since its almost exactly the same. Take a bit of Tool, a pinch of Alice in Chains, table spoon of Nirvana, put it in a blender and press 'mix'. And you won't know whether its called Staind, Cold, Crossfade, 10 Years or anything else, since they're pretty much the same.