STONE SOUR drummer Roy Mayorga was interviewed by Underground's Voice before the band's July 11 concert at Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon, Portugal. You can now watch the chat below. Asked how he and the rest of STONE SOUR felt when guitarist Josh Rand announced in January that he was leaving the band's tour to seek out treatment for "an alcohol and Xanax dependency," Roy said: "Oh, we felt horrible about that. But you know what? We were behind him all the way. He's our brother. Whatever time he needed to take off to take care of whatever he needed to take care of, we were there for him; he's our bro. But, yeah, it was definitely a bummer to do it without him, but he told us, 'I've gotta go do this.'" Moyorga went on to say that Rand "seemed fine at first" when STONE SOUR began touring in support of its latest album, "Hydrograd". "And then we started seeing… definitely feeling something," he explained. "And by the end of our last tour, he was, like, 'Yeah, I've gotta sit this one out,' so he did." Rand emerged from treatment in April and admitted he had been struggling with Xanax and alcohol dependencies. He told the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3 that he was first prescribed Xanax eight years ago for anxiety related to flying. He added: "And then over the course of the last couple years, I started drinking and when we started touring, I was basically day-drinking. But not drinking to get messed up, but just to maintain, I guess. Or to be able to cope, to have this buzz." The guitarist said he just started feeling "horrible and miserable" and that things came to a head for him in January on the ShipRocked cruise. Rand recalled: "We were flying from Florida back up to Canada, and, basically, we were in the airport and I just had made the decision that I had to come home. Luckily, I had the support of the other guys and my family to make that decision. I had hit a wall and knew that I needed to regroup and deal with my stuff. So that's what I did." STONE SOUR enlisted a temporary replacement for its Canadian tour, which started at the end of January in British Columbia. "Hydrograd" came out in June 2017 and features the chart-topping rock radio hit "Song #3". STONE SOUR will support Ozzy Osbourne on the initial North American leg of the legendary vocalist's "No More Tours 2" tour, which kicks off August 30 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
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