Stone Temple Pilots drummer Eric Kretz addressed all the fans criticizing the band for continuing after Scott Weiland’s death in 2015, telling Mxdwn:
“I think the fact that we released Scott two, three years before he passed – we already were moving forward because unfortunately with Scott at the end there, STP just couldn’t move forward.
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“We had to move on and then when Chester [Bennington] came in, he was so excited to bring the band, especially in live performances, where we all knew it needed to be, with love and energy and enthusiasm.
“And then from there we just kept writing new material. With the new album coming out it’s going to be really fantastic. There’s so much more left in what we have and we want to present it, we want to keep playing for the fans and keep recording.”
Eric also noted during the rest of the chat:
“The passing of Scott, that’s been weighing heavily on us emotionally.
“Then you throw in that we’ve just completed the 25th anniversary of ‘Core,’ so we were putting together that whole deluxe box set, so there was a lot of material, photos interviews, a lot of stuff there to reflect on all the years with Scott.
“In some ways it was a really good time to bring in someone new. Instead of going forward, we actually had that year to reflect upon where we were so we could delve into that and bring up all the emotions we’ve had since the beginning, the middle and stuff towards the end, and it was a full cabinet of emotions.
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“On top of that, we started being really excited with where the new material’s going and how easy it was for us to write with [new singer] Jeff [Gutt].
“He was very similar to the writing process we had with Scott and Chester in the early days where we just get into a small room, we don’t have to play that loud and we’re just writing, writing, writing, throwing out parts, coming up with great ideas, bringing back some old ideas.
“Just having a vocalist there to cement everything together, that’s the part that’s really, really exciting for the new record.”