Slipknot

WHEN SLIPKNOT came hurtling out of the cornfields of Iowa in the late 90s, spitting and snarling and huffing dead crows, nobody knew what the hell to make of them, mainly because there’d been nothing like them before. There was the blitzkrieg of noise they made, the lunatic-asylum-escapees image, the psychopathic live show that took sonic and physical violence to new levels, the ever-growing following of ‘maggots’ they drew in along the way. Twenty years on, and Slipknot have become the greatest metal band of the modern age. Their landmark debut album, released in the feverish summer of 1999, ushered in the new millennium six months early. Each subsequent release only strengthened their position at the top of the metal heap. The journey hasn’t been easy. The volatility for which…

Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan can remember the point when he knew that all the blood, sweat and pain that he’d invested into Slipknot had paid off. It was the end of May 1999 and the band were playing that year’s Ozzfest, sandwiched between industrial-metal heroes Static-X and rap-rock B-listers (hed)p.e. on the second stage. Their self-titled album was a month away from release, but the buzz surrounding this masked-and-boiler-suited nine-piece from the Midwestern backwater of Des Moines, Iowa was growing louder by the day. “We used to watch people running from watching a main-stage band to come see this new thing called Slipknot on the second stage,” says Shawn today. “I remember them sprinting to get there. I knew it was the punch in the face the whole fucking world was…

“IF TRUTH BE TOLD IT WAS really my wife who persuaded me to sign Slipknot”, recalls Roadrunner Records A&R supremo Monte Conner, the man who signed Slipknot. “I really wasn’t sure. I liked them but I was prevaricating. That and a character that they had in the band at that time – called, I think, The Baby [actually the mentalist Cuddles] – swung me.” Welcome to the mid 90s, a period that seems almost as remote as the Dark Ages in terms of the phenomenal changes that we have seen in heavy music and in the lives of nine [or so] crazy kids from the Mid-Western USA who had an idealistic dream to scare the living piss out of the whole motherfucking planet. “Slipknot is still the heaviest album ever…

“I was lying in the shower naked with two girls peeing on me”♣ ♦COREY TAYLOR ♠ ♥ WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? “I was born on December 8, 1973 in Broadlawn Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa.” WHAT WAS HIGH SCHOOL LIKE? “I got kicked out, basically, my junior year. I started a riot in a lunch room, because of the atrocious food. They kindly asked me to leave and I threw a chair at the vice principal.” WHEN DID YOU START OUT WITH MUSIC? “The first live gig I ever did was actually with Stone Sour. This was in ’92, I was 19 years old and I was so nervous, man. We would do originals and covers, and we would play three one-hour sets a night. We would do…

NOBODY EXPECTED Slipknot to have a successful album. Nor to actually stay together long enough to make a second record. The band were generally expected to disintegrate under the corrosive inference of their own angst, pain, fury and sheer bile. However, 1999’s self-titled debut had confounded all, by not only selling vast quantities, but also getting the band mainstream media attention. Not since the arrival of Guns N’ Roses in the late 1980s had a genuinely dysfunctional band captured the media’s imagination in such a manner. This wasn’t an image, it was a war against the world, raged against ignorance and indifference. But how do you follow up such a phenomenon without caving in to the pressures of compromise or repetition? Easy, if you’re Slipknot. You refuse to listen to…

“WE WANTED TO KEEP DOING WHAT WE’VE ALWAYS DONE: KEEP BRUTALISING THE MUSIC!”COREY TAYLOR WE MIGHT ALL BE obsessing about Slipknot’s brand new, shiny release We Are Not Your Kind, but let’s take a little stroll down memory lane to a simpler time… Back before Tom Cruise met Katie Holmes, when we could finally kick our Walkmans to the curb and enjoy our music minus the skipping, thanks to the very first iPod. When one little hobbit found himself in possession of one powerful ring and when denim on denim was still a thing. Yes, you guessed it, we’re talking about 2001. It was also the year when our favourite masked metallers were due to release their eagerly anticipated second album. Could Slipknot follow the devastating success of the 1999…