When Stone Temple Pilots debut album Core was released in September 1992, there was a mixed reaction from critics and fans alike. While Core produced several radio hits like “Plush”, “Sex Type Thing”, and “Creep”, the band drew the ire of critics that felt the band was just another Seattle grunge ripoff. Some critics felt they were just a band from California that altered their sound to cash in on the mainstream success of grunge. However, in 1994 STP released Purple, which had a very different tone than their debut album and showed the range the band had. Some songs felt like they could have been in Core, such as “Meatplow” and “Silver Gun Superman”, while the song “Pretty Penny” sounded like it was straight off a David Bowie album. Still, Purple contained now classic songs “Big Empty”, “Vasoline”, and the mega-hit “Interstate Love Song” which continued to increase the band’s popularity. Okay I’m breaking the fourth wall here for a second, Purple is a masterpiece and I encourage everyone reading this article to listen to the entire album!
Stone Temple Pilots would experiment with their next two albums Tiny Music (1996) and No. 4 (1999) which produced popular songs such as “Big Bang Baby”, “Lady Picture Show”, “Down”, and “Sour Girl”. However, with a combination of the music scene shifting away from grunge and singer Scott Weiland’s unfortunate but frequent drug issues, STP’s popularity decreased in the later half of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. The band split up in 2003, and Weiland would join former Guns N’ Roses members Slash and Duff McKagan to form the short-lived Velvet Revolver. Weiland eventually tragically passed away in 2015 at age 48 from an accidental drug overdose. The remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots would continue to juggle lead singers for a few years (including Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington from 2013 to 2015), before finding singer Jeff Gutt (a former X-factor contestant) as their new singer. Jeff Gutt has been the band’s lead singer since 2017 and has brought stability to the band. STP released albums in 2018 and 2020 and has toured consistently.
As the 1990’s was coming to an end, the music scene had shifted but elements of grunge remained popular in rock music. The genre that would later go on to be recognized as Post-Grunge and Nu-Metal that would, like Stone Temple Pilots, have an initial mixed reaction followed by a strong and undeniable popularity. Bands such as Candlebox, Bush, Collective Soul, and Days of the New would continue to keep elements of grunge rock in the mainstream until the late 1990’s. Godsmack was formed in 1995 in Massachusetts and released their major label debut album in August 1998 with the self-titled Godsmack. Godsmack was a major success and spawned singles “Whatever”, “Keep Away”, and “VooDoo”. Lead singer Sully Erna’s vocals seemed like the perfect mixture of Metallica’s James Hetfield and Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley. Combined with guitarist Tony Rombola’s distorted but distinct riffs, Godsmack had a winning formula. As with many new bands, critic reviews were mixed, with some critics claiming Godsmack sounded too much like their grunge and metal predecessors (a common and mostly unfair complaint on the nu-metal/post-grunge genre as a whole). Still, Godsmack achieved more mainstream success with their next two albums Awake (2000) and Faceless (2003), the latter of which produced mega-hit “I Stand Alone”, which reached No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
Godsmack has continued to tour consistently and has avoided the lineup changes and other issues that disrupted Stone Temple Pilots troubled history. Godsmack released the piano-laden track “Under Your Scars” in 2019, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart for two weeks and showed the range of the band and Erna’s songwriting.
When Stone Temple Pilots and Godsmack come to Kansas City on June 12th to perform at the brand new Morton Amphitheater, audience members will have the opportunity to watch two rock bands perform that not only produced many notable hit songs from the 1990s and 2000s, but are two bands that epitomize rock and roll history in the United States for the last thirty years.
