Break the Cycle by Staind

Break the Cycle, Staind's third album, came out through Flip and Elektra in May 2001, and it's the record where the band's brooding hard rock found its way to a much bigger audience. Josh Abraham produced, with Aaron Lewis on lead vocals, Mike Mushok on guitar, Johnny April on bass and Jon Wysocki on drums.

It's post-grunge with a nu-metal crunch still lurking underneath. The riffs grind and churn, but the songs keep pulling back into quiet, wounded spaces where Lewis sounds like he's working through something on the spot. "It's Been Awhile" is the heart of it, a slow, heavy ache that swells up into a full-throated roar, while "Outside" strips things back to a bare, pleading hush. "For You", "Fade" and "Epiphany" spread the gloom around, each one heavy in its own way.

It's the band's most successful album, the one that broke them into the mainstream. It spent three weeks at number one in the US, sat in the top 10 for weeks in America, the UK and New Zealand, and moved 4 million copies or more before 2001 was out; on September 3, 2026, it was certified 7× platinum for more than seven million sold in the US. It came after Dysfunction and was followed by 14 Shades of Grey.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.