Artist: Staind
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 2006
This thing wraps up the band’s first 10 years and also raises the question of whether they can keep up this pace for another decade. A greatest-hits album is no small matter these days. Then again, it depends on how you look at it. The title of this compilation sums up its contents just right. A band that has sold millions of albums and left an indelible mark on the mainstream at the turn of the millennium, filling the void left by the shipwreck of “grunge”, has now put a thoroughly deserved “dot on the i” on its big commercial success with this compilation.
Let’s keep it real. Staind are definitely a manufactured product, kicked off by the gears of the capitalist label machinery in its hunger for a safe, guaranteed profit, with no regard for power of expression, musical intellect or a recognizable spirit that would come out of the band’s own clear musical vision. All of the above is unwanted these days, because it means you have your own brain and can talk back to the one holding the scissors and the canvas – the labels, that is – and holding up that kind of mirror to the masses could even have revolutionary consequences. Stained manage to stay a gray mouse that successfully pleases absolutely everyone. And today that’s called a strictly professional marketing approach. Well, if I can be a bit meaner, without the punchy ballad It’s Been A While, you could even say that the nu-metal clown Fred Durst himself got this whole machine rolling. It’s Been A While proves that Staind can definitely write songs and it’s not all just connections and who you know.
The compilation has 16 tracks. No comment. Here are the radio hits It’s Been Awhile, For You, So Far Away and Right Here. Then there’s the version of Outside taken from the Family Values Tour album (1999), where the aforementioned baseball player Fred Durst jumps in on the verses. Of course, something is also in store for the fans. There are three previously unreleased acoustic cover versions: Nutshell (Alice In Chains), which by the way is the most successful of the three, while the acoustic take on Sober (Tool) somehow fails to come alive, simply because of the structure of the original. And the third is the cover of the classic Comfortably Numb, which, by the way, is something I personally wouldn’t recommend to bands of Staind’s caliber, because with it the guys expose their weaknesses as a unit and as individuals (both in execution and in the subtler side of feeling the Pink Floyd original). It’s a bold move, but that’s about all. In short, let me whisper in your ear: a flop that proves Staind’s frequency of understanding rock culture is tuned somewhere else entirely. The biggest travesty would be if something like that managed to become yet another hit for the band, which, given their popularity at the moment, is entirely possible.
So this compilation favors the band’s ballad side, which makes sense, since that’s exactly what contributed most to Staind’s fame. The compilation also doesn’t hide Staind’s obsession with unplugged versions, but of course (thank God) there’s some metal on the album too. Just how angry Staind were back in 1996 is documented right by the opening Come Again from the debut “Tormented”, while the following Mudshovel confirms the band’s knack for serving up a massive riff that immediately fills the soundscape and gets your head headbanging. It often happens with compilations like this that something is still missing. Here you can miss Fade (“Break the Cycle”, 2001) and Just Go (“Dysfunction”, 1999). The track list follows the chronological order of single releases in the first decade of the band’s discography. And the compilation helps cool the impatient heads of the band’s fans during the pause between “Chapter V” and the new studio release.
Of course, there’s yet another purely commercial move by the label behind this release, followed by a simple rhetorical question. Is this move a last wave of the handkerchief in farewell to the band’s swan song, rounded off by the album “Chapter V” (2005), or a genuine milestone marking ten years of work, a new catapult for Staind and proof that the guys are by no means letting up and are capable of staying afloat in the “mainstream” in the future, or even climbing a step higher? It’s all just guesswork. But these days, absolutely anything is possible. Fame goes to those who can’t and don’t know how to play, while those with drive and vision rot forever in basements with room-grade PA systems, where nobody ever learns of their potential, which was valued and sought-after profit for the labels a good 30 years ago.
Lineup
Aaron Lewis – vocals, guitar
Mike Mushok – guitar
Johnny April – bass guitar
Jon Wysocki – drums
Track list
1. Come Again – (remix)
2. Mudshovel
3. Home
4. Its Been Awhile
5. Epiphany
6. For You
7. Outside – (live, Family Values Version)
8. So Far Away
9. Price To Play
10. Zoe Jane
11. Right Here
12. Falling
13. Everything Changes – (live, Acoustic Version)
14. Sober – (Acoustic Version)
15. Nutshell – (Acoustic Version)
16. Comfortably Numb – (Acoustic Version)
Album length: 72:42
