Chester Bennington Is Stone Temple Pilots’ New Singer

Stone Temple Pilots

Chester Bennington Is Stone Temple Pilots’ New Singer

Stone Temple Pilots

It’s genuinely not easy to keep track of the Stone Temple Pilots family tree: The band’s instrumental core (brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz) have now parted ways with vocalist Scott Weiland three times. In 1997, they went on hiatus, which led to Weiland releasing a solo album, while the DeLeos and Kretz formed Talk Show, with vocalist Dave Coutts. STP re-formed in 1998, only to split again in 2002, after which Weiland joined up with a handful of Guns N’ Roses castoffs to form Velvet Revolver, while the DeLeos teamed up with Filter vocalist Richard Patrick to form Army Of Anyone. STP got back together again in 2008, only to split once more, earlier this year, when the DeLeos and Kretz unceremoniously fired Weiland. Now STP has joined with another veteran vocalist — Chester Bennington of Linkin Park.

The Bennington-fronted STP made their debut yesterday, at KROQ’s Weenie Roast, playing a bunch of old material and one new song, “Out Of Time.” Both parties are thus far being kind of coy about their future together — Bennington went to some lengths to make it clear that Linkin Park is still his first priority — but the fact that they’ve released a studio version of “Out Of Time” (which you can download here in exchange for an email address) as well as some promo shots (like the one above) suggests that it’s not a one-off. Surely Weiland won’t be out of work long; with Soundgarden reunited, maybe Audioslave needs a frontman?

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