Watch: COREY TAYLOR Joined By STONE SOUR’s ROY MAYORGA On Stage

Stone Sour drummer Roy Mayorga made a memorable appearance alongside Corey Taylor on stage at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, California, last Thursday, October 5th. The duo delivered an electrifying performance of two Stone Sour classics, “Absolute Zero” and “30/30-150,” much to the delight of fans. The crowd captured this exciting moment on camera, and you can check out the fan-filmed video below.

Corey Taylor’s decision to put Stone Sour “on indefinite hiatus” and embark on his solo career, marked by the release of “CMFT” in 2020 and “CMF2” in 2023, stemmed from a desire to clarify his role in songwriting. He expressed his reasons candidly, saying, “When Stone Sour first started, not only was I playing guitar constantly, but I was also the lead guitarist and main writer. Honestly, one of the reasons why I was very adamant about starting my solo thing is that there was a weird misconception around who was writing what for what band.”

Taylor continued, addressing the issue of credit and recognition, “Maybe this is where my ego comes into play, but I felt like I wasn’t getting the credit for the things I was actually writing. With Stone Sour, it was fairly obvious, but there were a lot of songs that I wrote that people thought [guitarists] Jim [Root] or Josh [Rand] wrote where that wasn’t the case at all. And then, with Slipknot, there was a lot of stuff that either wouldn’t have been written without me, or that I wrote that other people gave [themselves] credit [for].”

Corey Taylor’s passion for creating music was evident as he explained, “As someone who takes great pride in sitting down and creating something from nothing — just from my imagination — that stuck in my craw.” He emphasized that he has always been fair about giving credit to others and felt it was time for people to recognize his versatility as a songwriter.

In a previous interview, Corey Taylor also mentioned that it is easier for him to make solo records than to collaborate within a band, although he maintains a fondness for his former Stone Sour bandmates. “It’s not that I don’t miss some of the guys in Stone Sour; I still talk to them. But at this stage, I refuse to compromise my vision and my art because of certain people’s hindrances. And that’s all I’ll say.”

Regarding the future of Stone Sour, Taylor remained uncertain. He acknowledged his preference for his solo career, explaining, “To me, I’ve done the time doing stuff in a — for lack of a better term — band situation. And the reason I stick with Slipknot is because that, to me, is the one that kind of started everything. But Stone Sour, there’s still so much drama and issues [between the members].”

He also shared his perspective on performing Stone Sour songs, saying, “To me, I would rather go out with a group of dudes who I’ve known forever and have a great time playing these songs and have the audience enjoy it because they see a bunch of dudes up there enjoying it than try to force issues on an audience that nobody really wants to be a part of, let’s put it that way.”

While shelving Stone Sour has been a challenging decision considering the significant effort he put into the band, Corey Taylor’s primary focus remains on his solo career. He concluded, “Now, am I saying that it’ll never happen? No, because you never know. Something might come up, and we could get an opportunity, and we could get an opportunity to do something for charity, and we all get together and we do something really, really cool. But my immediate plans right now — there’s no Stone Sour in the future.”

Stone Sour has been relatively inactive since completing the touring cycle for their last studio album, “Hydrograd,” in 2017. Meanwhile, Corey Taylor has continued to work with Slipknot and has released his solo albums, “CMFT” and “CMF2,” with the latter arriving last month. Fans of Stone Sour can also revisit the live album, “Hello, You Bastards: Live In Reno,” released in December 2019.