Drummer Matt Sorum of GUNS N' ROSES, VELVET REVOLVER and THE CULT, will issue his new album, Stratosphere, under the moniker MATT SORUM'S FIERCE JOY, on March 11th on Rok Dok Recordings via Kobalt Label Services. Listen to 'The Sea' now:

Gary Graff of Billboard recently spoke with Sorum, who sings all lead vocals and plays acoustic guitar and piano, but no drums on Stratosphere. "It really shows my love of different styles of music. I'm a huge TOM PETTY guy. I'm really into NEIL YOUNG, BOB DYLAN, DAVID BOWIE, early BEATLES. I said, 'I'm gonna base the album on how I write the songs.' A lot of it was written on acoustic (guitar). I wrote a few of them on piano, and I've always wanted to do an album with live strings, so I did that on about three or four of the tracks. I dabbled in some time signatures that were super different than what I can do in my rock world - 6/8, 5/4, some cool time changes, some crazy string arrangements. It was a lot of fun."

Sorum feels that approach also helped him with his singing on the album. "I thought it really worked for my voice," he says. "I could sing in a lower register, be relaxed. Some of them I sing a little bit harder. I like where my voice sat on the record, what I was feeling vocally. I'm very happy with it."

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.

A series of five webisodes about the making of Stratosphere can be viewed below:

Stratosphere tracklisting:

'Intro - Stratosphere Part 1'

'The Sea'

'What Ziggy Says'

'For the Wild Ones'

'Goodbye To You'

'Gone'

'Lady of the Stone'

'Ode to Nick Drake'

'Blue'

'Josephine'

'Land of the Pure'

'Killers N Lovers'

'The Lonely Teardrop'

'Outro - Stratosphere Part 2'