Staind

Staind formed on November 24, 1995 in Springfield, Massachusetts. After meeting through friends and covering KoRn, Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, 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 Sepultura. The album is generally regarded as the band's heaviest and "rawest" effort. 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.During this time, Staind played a show with Limp Bizkit. When Durst saw the cover of the group's debut album (which featured controversial artwork, including a knife going through a Bible and a crucified Barbie doll), he tried to have the band kicked off the bill, but when he saw the band's show, he changed his tone and befriended them, later singing backup on Aaron Lewis' live, original version of the future Staind song "Outside." Durst was one of the executive producers for Dysfunction and Break the Cycle. He also directed a few videos for the band later on.The band's big break came in October 1997 after Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst witnessed the band open up for them at a Hartford, Connecticut show, eventually signed them to his Flip record label, and co-produced their 1999 breakthrough Dysfunction with Terry Date. Although it is supposed that the band owe a lot of success to Durst, Aaron Lewis has expressed in interviews that the band never had much of a relationship with either the singer or the band, claiming the band 'only worked on four songs with Durst and recorded the rest of the album themselves.' [3] Staind has not been associated with Durst since he directed several videos from their 2001 follow-up. Dysfunction has sold over two million copies in the U.S. alone. The album was given mediocre reviews by critics for being "indicative of the times", but a large number of the band's fans nonetheless regard it as the group's best work. The nine-track LP (with one hidden track, "Excess Baggage") produced three singles, all of which enjoyed radio play. The most well known, "Mudshovel", (which also appeared on Tormented, spelled as "Mudshuvel"), has since become a staple of the band's live shows.Staind toured with Limp Bizkit for the Family Values Tour during the fall of 1999, where Aaron Lewis performed their first mainstream hit "Outside" (a song he was working on at the time but had not yet finished—he finished it on the fly while performing) with Fred Durst to hundreds of waving cigarette lighters, and which set them up for their smash hit 2001 album Break the Cycle, which brought them international success (it went number 1 in both the U.S. and the UK), sold more than 7 million copies, and had first week sales of over 767,000 in the U.S. alone. The album sees the band move away from the nu-metal sounds of their previous album and resort to an alternative metal sound [4] which has spawned five hit singles to date, "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 "Epiphany", and included a track called "Waste", devoted to two teenage fans who committed suicide shortly before the album was released. The album also received mixed critical praise; Rolling Stone magazine called them "the grim genre's most song-oriented, downright sensitive band in years" [3] while New Musical Express referred to the album as "14 tracks of parent-friendly grunge-flavoured soft rock that make Creed sound like GG Allin." [4] (a statement that proved ironic, since Break the Cycle was later included in Hit Parader's The Top 50 Metal Albums of All Time at number 46 and The Top 10 "New Metal" CDs at #3). '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 number 1s (30 weeks) of all time.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 in a row. 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. 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. Staind's best hit called "Right Here" was the longest song to be on TRL in history. It was number 1 for two weeks, then number 3 for an extra 5 weeks, and down to number 3 for 5 weeks, then came back up as number 1 for 1 week, then down to number 5 for 5 weeks, then down to number 7 for 8 weeks, then back to number 3 for 1 week, then it fell down to number 10 for 1 week, then to number 5 again for 1 week, then to number 15 for 1 weeks, then to number 13 for 1 week, then it dropped to number 17 for 1 week, then it dropped to number 19 for 1 week, then it finally dropped to number 20 for the final week of it being on the "TRL Top 20 Countdown" which is played in Times Square MyGen Profile Generator