BELIEVE IT OR KNOT
Slipknot plays Rexall Place Sunday
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
Corey Taylor laughs heartily when I tell him that, in 2015, it’s rare to hear management say you’ll be talking to the singer.
“You’d think it’d be right in my title: I’m the vocalist,” he says. “I can talk anybody’s ear off.”
The Slipknot singer will go on to do so, in the least overbearing manner. As frontman for the masked, costumed metal band, he’s used to explaining the Grand Guignol of their stage act, with nine members contorting and caterwauling in jail-hell coveralls and gimp masks from some Clive Barker meth-deathtrip. Bloodcurdlingly hailed by their “Maggot” fan base, derided by (some) critics as a clown gimmick, Slipknot has reigned as one of metal’s most notorious and consistently salable acts since rampaging out of an Iowa cornfield in 1995. Kerrang recently rated their 2001 album Iowa fourth in its 50 Heaviest Albums list.
Taylor is talking from Buffalo, N.Y. What’s it like in those them masks, anyway?
“It’s pretty hardcore, man,” he says. “Luckily, over the years, we’ve ... I don’t want to say ‘got used to it,’ but we’ve been able to adapt. We’ve become very adept at adapting. Because none of us take our masks off during a show. I mean, we’re that nuts. So we’ve learned to pace ourselves to do whatever we’ve got to do for the show, for the audience.”
And to adapt onstage.
“We get oxygen backstage, we have cold towels that we wrap around our necks. It’s that important for us to not only go out there and deliver, no matter what the weather is, but it’s important for us to do it smart. Because in the past, we would just go up there gung-ho and kill ourselves, you know? You go back to (the album) Iowa — we kind of went out of our way to kill ourselves on that album. Not just from a psychological point of view, but we made our coveralls thicker, we added buckles and all this crazy metal stuff, and made the masks even thicker and more durable, because it just meant that much to us.”
Those who mock the band may be leaving out a few details beyond the cathartic video-game vengeance of the subject matter: the berserk extra percussion, turntables and samples give Slipknot a pummelling sonic attack.
“The people who’ve tried to minimize what we do — whether it’s talking about the band in the Halloween masks or the fact that for a lot of people we’re regarded as a little kids’ metal band — they just don’t get it. And that’s fine. You don’t have to. But we have millions of fans who do get it. And that’s my proudest thing. Not only do we have old-school fans, we have a whole new generation coming.”
The latest album, .5: The Gray Chapter, has been hailed as a fusion of ferocity and more song-like elements — especially gratifying to the band, because it is named for bassist Paul Gray, who died of a morphine OD in 2010, and of whom Taylor once said: “The only way I can sum up Paul Gray is love.”
“It’s the difference between having a band and having a family. Paul Gray was the biggest advocate for this band. In my eyes, the biggest contributor, biggest cheerleader. Till the day he died, he loved this band and the guys in it.”
And in confronting the loss, “I knew that I was gonna have to go somewhere that was really, really hard for me.”
Taylor has been sober for six years. “It’s tough; anybody who’s ever had to do it will tell you. But also probably the best thing you could do for yourself. Not only cleaning yourself out — you’re also getting in touch with who you really are as a person. Once you get rid of the chemicals, the destructive behaviour, it’s about taking a look in that mirror and asking, ‘Who do I want to be?’ And I realized that I wanted to be a good father, husband, bandmate, friend, brother, across the board. Whether I’ve succeeded yet is still to be resolved.”
What has been resolved is that Slipknot will go on.
“Absolutely. At some point, the dedication has to be about more than selling albums, making money, having sold-out shows. It has to be something deeper. And I don’t think we’ve ever lost that. The reasons I make music have never changed since I was 13. I have a monstrous passion for it.”