Staind is Aaron Lewis-Vocals, Mike Mushok - guitar, Johnny April - bass, Jon Wysocki - drums

This is the staind story according to Flip Records:

"This shit is real. Watch out, cuz they're not gonna stop!" So says Fred Durst about Staind, and he should know. As the frontman of Limp Bizkit, Fred has sold over half a million albums, making Bizkit one of the most notorious new bands along with Korn, the Deftones and Tool. With Dysfunction, their major label debut on Flip/Elektra, Staind are ready to prove that they share the family values that made those artists such upstanding citizens. Staind's roots go back to a Christmas party in their hometown of Springfield, Mass., where guitarist Michael Mushok and singer Aaron Lewis met. Their conversation ended abruptly, as Mike reminisces, "when the drunken host smashed his head through a wall and kicked everyone out of the house." With the addition of drummer Jon Wysocki and bassist (who would be soon replaced with current member Johnny April), they played their first gig in February of 1995. After a year and a half of steady playing in New England, Staind self-released their debut album, Tormented, in November 1996. Nearly a thousand rabid fans attended the release party, and over the next two years they sold 4000 copies. Of the band and album, Lollipop said, "Unlike many a band, especially heavy bands that rely more on strength than dexterity, Staind has songs. Songs you get to know. Songs you move with, go the distance with. This is a band to watch." They continued playing in the region with groups like Honkeyball, Shed, Kilgore, GWAR and God Lives Underwater, drawing attention for their fierce live show. Northeast performer said, "Staind's musicianship is striking, and their live performance takes their recorded material one step further: pushing the envelope, ripping up the envelope, then jumping up and down all over the envelope 'til there ain't a damn thing left." But by the fall of 1997 they were ready for bigger things. "We wanted to expand our base," Mike says. "So when our friends in Sugarmilk invited us to play with them and Limp Bizkit in Hartford, we jumped at the chance." What appeared to be their first big break didn't go so smoothly, however. "Fred's a spiritual guy," explains Mike. "The artwork on our first album was a bit, uh, graphic. [If you consider a bloody Bible impaled on a knife, with a Barbie hanging upside down from a cross to be graphic.] Twenty minutes before the show, Fred saw it, and he got in our faces, asking if we were devil worshippers, which we aren't. He threw the CD across the room and tried to get us kicked off the bill. Here we wanted them to like us, and they hated us before we played a note. So much for our big break." Thankfully, Fred was persuaded to let the band perform. "When we came offstage, it was a different story," Mike reports. "He told us we were the best band he'd seen in a long time and that he wanted to produce us for his new company. So he obviously paid attention to what we did." They exchanged numbers, and Mike called and called, but to no avail. Undaunted, they took their new four-song demo to a Bizkit/Deftones show the night before Thanksgiving. "We knocked on the bus door, and DJ Lethal remembered us," Mike says. "We never saw Fred, but we left the tape. At two in the morning, Fred called with our demo playing in the background. He loved it." Durst invited Staind to his home and rehearsal space in Jacksonville, Florida. "We had a gig the day after Christmas, and we left after the show at 4:00 a.m. and drove straight through. A thousand feet past the 'Welcome to Florida' sign, the van died. Fred and a tow truck had to pick us up. " "When we finally got there at 3:30 a.m., Aaron started playing an acoustic song, 'Black Rain,'" Mike continues. "Fred said, let's do it right now." Durst liked it, played it for Jordan [Schur, president of Flip] over the phone, and Staind became the newest signing to the Flip roster. "Fred pointed us in the right direction," Mike says. "Back home we played with a lot of hardcore bands, and we were always trying to be heavier. But Aaron has a great voice, and Fred helped us to see how we could be more melodic to take advantage of it." The idea that Dysfunction could somehow be less heavy than its predecessor may be hard to believe for the first-time listeners to the band. This is serious stuff - aggressive and dissonant, but also hypnotic and subtle. From the stomping album opener "Suffocate" to the molten groove of the first single "Just Go," from the melodic "Mudshovel" to the disorienting "Crawl" to the killer cover of the Public Enemy-by-way-of-Anthrax classic "Bring the Noise" (built around Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and featuring Limp Bizkit's Durst and DJ Lethal), this isn't just hollow bluster. What gives the music its startling impact is a rage that's tempered by vulnerability, a maelstrom that's balanced by moments of beauty. Lyrically, the songs offer introspective glimpses of personal apocalypse - anger, sadness, loneliness, desolation - and a desire to climb into the light. "I get pretty deep, talking about shit that I haven't told people before," Aaron, the band's lyricist, relates. "I use the word 'you' a lot, and it can refer to many different people. I try to leave it open to interpretation. But if you know me, there's a lot of me in the songs, things that happened to me when I was young. I try to get it out in a positive way. The lyrics are a combination of everything I've been suppressing for 26 years. Dysfunction was produced by the band and Terry Date, whose impeccable credit includes albums by Pantera, Soundgarden, White Zombie and the Deftones. "Terry was great, really easy to work with," says Mike. "We even finished the album a week early. He basically told us to do our show in the studio, and he occasionally offered advice on things that needed work. He let us be ourselves." Aaron adds, "This album is leaps and bounds better than our first, in every way - writing, playing, sound, everything." Staind was recently introduced formally to the heavy rock world when they played at Limp Bizkit's gold record bash. The thrill of everything that has happened is felt keenly by the band. "Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones...that's what I listen to," Aaron says. "The fact that we're part of that family is just fucking amazing. If you told us we'd be here a year ago...." He doesn't finish the thought, but his message is clear. Mike adds, "We hadn't even met Fred a year ago, and now we've been produced by Terry Date, our number one choice for producer, we're on Flip/Elektra and the album's coming out in spring '99" And a year from now? "Well, it would be nice to be on our own tour playing for 5000 people every night," Mike says, "but I just want people to appreciate the music and enjoy it as much as possible. We need to get out there and start spreading the word." 1/99

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