Stone Sour isn't the first successful Slipknot side project; the Murderdolls (just barely) beat them to the starting gate. Like that group, though, Stone Sour actually started out long before Slipknot, but was ultimately revisited as an alternative to the Slipknot grind. Knotmen (if you will) Corey Taylor and Jim Root and their Stone Sour brethren offer nu-metal that's fully as hard-hitting as that of their day-job group, but with considerably more thoughtful compositional techniques and melodic sensibility. Sure, Taylor occasionally breaks into a gut-wrenching scream, but just as often he's twisting his voice around a serpentine melodic line that brings Alice in Chains to mind more than anything in the nu-metal lexicon.