UPDATE: Stone Temple Pilots have premiered "Meadow," their first song with the band's new vocalist Jeff Gutt, via Rolling Stone. "That was one of the ones that came earlier on in the process," Gutt told Rolling Stone of the track. "It was one of the first songs we did." Drummer Eric Kretz added, "It sounds like STP. It has all the elements. It's modern but still has that classic sound. So it kind of jumped out at us as a good representation."
It's been over a year and a half since Stone Temple Pilots formally launched their search for a new lead singer. 15,000 submissions later, it seems the search is finally over. Following last month's oblique announcement that they'd begun working on new music with "somebody that fits the bill" as lead vocalist, the grunge stalwarts have finally revealed his identity: Jeff Gutt, former lead singer of the nu-metal band Dry Cell and a contestant on the reality show The X Factor. The band broke the news on Eddie Trunk's Sirius/XM radio Volume 106 show before breaking in the singer at an invitation-only concert for SiriusXM subscribers tonight (November 14th) at the Troubadour in West Hollywood. Below, you can see Gutt's X Factor performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," which drew international acclaim and went viral online.
Stone Temple Pilots have been without a vocalist since late 2015. The position was previously held by the late Chester Bennington, who came aboard after the group split with their co-founding frontman Scott Weiland in 2013. Bennington teamed with the band for an EP, High Rise, that same year, before parting ways to focus on Linkin Park two years later. Meanwhile, Weiland went it alone, recording and touring as a solo artist until his death in December 2015.
