One misty morning Corey Taylor and his crew of merry men climbed aboard the good ship Stone Sour and set sail on a course towards the new album. An album that would see them entering into uncharted waters, waters that would spawn something altogether ‘darker’ than their previous outings. Now, whether it was faulty sat nav or maybe they had the treasure map upside down, I honestly couldn’t tell you, but somewhere on their travels the ship veered off its course. They had arrived not in the edgy territory they had aimed for. Alas they were several miles away in a mystical land, a land where others had been before them and the footprints of Nickleback and Seether lay across the shoreline. One by one they stretched their leather trousered legs upon the beach, scrunching their toes in the warm sand and began digging with their bucket and spade for some new tunes.
That may or may not have happened.
Ok, it’s not quite Nickleback. It’s a good album, on initial spins I thought it was a great album. The great rating being given on the basis of the first few songs. Opening with the non entity of the title track ‘Audio Secrecy’ the album officially starts with ‘Mission Statement’, a promising start with textbook Stone Sour riffing, reminding me of a more mature ‘Get Inside’ from their debut. There really is something for everybody, it’s a veritable buffet of the rock genre. Stick your finger anywhere in the first 7 tracks and you have potential singles. Tracks like ‘Dying’, ‘Digital’ and ‘Say You’ll Haunt Me’ are all chart bothering material but there really is little or non of the promised darker sound, it’s all fairly buoyant and upbeat. There’s nothing here that’s going to upset your Mom, in fact she’ll probably borrow it off you. ‘Hesitate’ for me is the finest moment on the album, a heartfelt ballad that really hits the mark, Corey’s vocals switching from the rousing to fragile and vulnerable. The track also sounds like it was written by Reo Speedwagon (gulp). It’s at this point the album takes a dip south. It’s all a bit familiar from here on, the momentum never really gathers again in the later half of the album, I must admit it lost my interest. The further towards the back end of the album you get, the weaker it gets before eventually fizzling out like a faulty firework on the final track, ‘Threadbare’.
‘Audio Secrecy’ will ultimately please the established fans and probably gain an army of new ones from the amount of airplay it will no doubt get. I was left feeling that Stone Sour do have that brilliant album in them, this just wasn’t it.
