Stone Temple Pilots Talk New EP, Future Plans, + More

Today marks the first official release from the "new" Stone Temple Pilots featuring Chester Bennington line-up entitled "High Rise." To help celebrate the release of the debut E.P. for this version of STP, Chester and Robert Deleo made the media rounds that also included a phone call to the Q103 studios during the 90s Nooners.

The conversation covered a wide array of topics concerning the band, including the "nerves" of making the new singer announcement, the writing/recording process, releasing future materials, and more.

To start things off, we talked about how Chester is a long-time fan of the band and had been friends with them since touring in the early 2000s. So how did Chester get involved with the band to become their new lead singer?

Chester - One of my colleagues said, "Hey, you know STP let Scott go and want to move forward with a new singer. they brought up your name, would you be interested?" And I said "yes" right away.
Within 24 hours we had eight new song ideas. Out of that came "Out of Time"... and I mean everything came out of that.
We just jumped right in.

The band revealed the new line-up in May of this year, along with releasing their debut single "Out of Time." One would have to think there were nerves among the band members as to how the fans of both bands would react.

Robert - Always.
First off, terminating your singer is not and was not an easy decision to make. I whole-heartedly feel that on that point Dean, Eric, and myself did everything we could. It was pretty clear to see that any more STP records made like that.
This is a new chapter of STP. People can still enjoy the old chapter and Scott performing live. We wish him all the best but this really is a new chapter for us.

In the past, the remaining original line-up of STP had several "side projects" with bands called TALK SHOW and ARMY OF ANYONE, which featured Filter singer Richard Patrick. So with the other projects in the past, why continue on now as Stone Temple Pilots?

Robert - Because... it's ours. That's why. We terminated the singer and it belongs to us.
Chester - From an outside perspective, when they did Talk Show and Army of Anyone - there wasn't the thought process of moving-on, forward doing 'those things.' There was still a chance for STP to move forward, so there was no reason not to call them STP because STP was still together.
Robert - I kinda look back at Talk Show and I look back at Army of Anyone. There was a reason behind doing those things. If STP was in a healthier place, would we had done those? I don't know.
I can remember what seeing "Tiny Music" was like that at the time. To be honest, while we were writing and doing pre-production for that - me, Dean, and Eric were writing the Talk Show record too. That was a back-up because of the way things were going in 1996.

We also talk about the "fresh" feeling of the band, what fans can expect when seeing the band live, and how they will release music in the future.

Check out the two part interview in full below.

Stone Temple Pilots - Part 1