"GET YOUR LIPS READY, GONNA GAG, GONNA MAKE YA SICK!"
Iowa is probably best known as "the middle of nowhere." Most non-residents consider the corn-and-pig-state a geographical black hole. Since rock'n'roll's dawning in the early '50's, Iowa has had no singular voice to put on the musical map. Naming a significant musical identity from the state is inarguably a fruitless task; it simply can't be done. However, nine freaks from Des Moines--draped in industrial coveralls, surrealistic self-made masks, and an attack that combines violently regurgitated "L.A. neo-metal," death metal, hip-hop, and downtuned screeching horror--are about to leap upon the unsuspecting world like a musical of Clockwork Orange. Have you ever thought about what a messed-up hardcore metal band from "the middle of nowhere" would sound like? "Ultra-violence" only begins to descibe it... Meet 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. (In human terms that's DJ Sid Wilson, drummer Joey Jordison, bassist Paul Gray, percussionist Chris Fehn, guitarist James Root, sampler Craig Jones, percussionist Shawn Crahan, guitarist Mic Thompson, and vocalist Corey Taylor, respectively.) Each comes equipped with not only a frightening visual persona and number assignment, but a talent on his particular instrument that combines and collides to form the nine-headed savior/destructor of modern heavy music dubbed Slipknot. Now, with the tools and talents (not to mention complex-yet-infectiously-catchy songs) that this band holds in its grasp, the world has no choice: Slipknot has arrived, and you must now decide how to deal with it. Formed during the latter half of 1995, the band went through necessary lineup changes to arrive at what they now descibe as "a family unit." All native Iowans, their rather unassuming, un-happening locale gave the members plenty of space and time to perfect their unusual take on heaviosity. The band recorded and distributed the self-released debut Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. in 1996, and the ball hasn't stopped rolling since. Attracting the attention of a number of labels, Slipknot finally signed to Roadrunner through noted producer Ross Robinson's I AM RECORDS imprint in 1997 and entered Indigo Ranch Studios in L.A. with Robinson to record Slipknot. From the pummeling Sic and the unforgiving bludgeon of Surfacing to the sublime melodies within Wait And Bleed and the hypnotizing rhythmic drive of Prosthetics, Slipknot's vast array of influences comes seamlessly wrapped up in a 13-song love/hate letter to the outside world. The touring that will follow is promised to be "unlike anything else that's going on out there. Seeing is believing." So says Shawn Crahan. And it's a gross understatement of what actually transpires when it all comes together on stage. Until you hear the sound they create, having nine members in the band might seem ludicrous. Shawn claims it couldn't work any other way: "We've maintained an excellent practice schedule for the last three years. Everybody's on time, everybody's always there, and we always practice as a unit. Our music is so reliant on each other that if one guy, even the DJ, is gone, it just wouldn't be our songs without him. Without one person, something is really, really missing. Everybody has to be present. Even the littlest things make the songs magical." Just as striking visually as they are musically, Slipknot stresses that the visuals do not take precedence over the music. "We never put on the shit we wear to try and get people into us," says Joey Jordison. "We did it because, after being degraded constantly for trying to play music or do something in Des Moines, it just came to be like we were an anonymous entity. No one gave a fuck, no one cared, so we were never about our names or our faces; we're just about music. So we just put it on and it started gettin' people, and it just started to turn into this big thing. The music's the most important, though. The coveralls and masks happened, and for some reason it worked, therefore we had to kind of continue with it. We got stuck with it." Now that they're stuck with it, they hardly feel like themselves without it. Shawn feels that "...the masks are extensions of our personalities. Everybody's got sort of a tweaked, demented way about themselves, and we just alter the masks over time. It feels really, really good when we wear our masks for an hour, and then afterwards we take it off, and the first thing we do is go, 'God, what a relief!', but we always seem to put 'em back on after a show and walk around the place." And the visual presentation will change over time, just as the music certainly will. "I think things will always be changing with Slipknot. Everybody grows older every year, and with that you change, and that's somethin' Slipknot is always going to do." As for the number assignments they wear on their coverall sleeves, they're lucky numbers, significant and vitally important to each member. When choosing them, "Everybody fell into a number," says Shawn. "There was not one person in the band arguing over a number. It was really weird." Thanks to a hefty Ross Robinson production job on Slipknot, Slipknot's vision, part one, has been successfully realized. Shawn feels that Robinson was as highly motivated to work on the record as the band were to work with him. "We're a highly, highly aggressive band, and very seldom do we meet people who are in the realm of our aggressiveness when we play as a unit, and Ross took us into the recording room and was throwing punches at us. He was into it. Ross got up every day and went and worked out so he could be in shape to do our album." When label reps and Robinson himself came to Des Moines to check out Slipknot at their best (on stage), the members were left with little to do for after-show entertainment than go to local strip clubs. After hosting guest after guest, the band were completely burnt out. Now, nobody in Slipknot ever wants to step inside a strip club again (it's Des Moines's leading form of entertainment, incidentally). Shawn grunts in disgust: "Fuck the strip bars. Fuck taking anybody to strip joints. We got shit to do." The "shit" is wrapped up in a pretty little package called Slipknot. It's the discordant sound of the middle of nowhere, a terrain where Slipknot is jester and king...
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Studio Videos:(they have thier masks off but you cant see thier faces cause thier jumping around a lot so dont worry you cant see thier faces guys :) )
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742617000027 Just a sample track. The title of the song is the barcode number from the bands boiler suits, and the Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat album. Corey is plainly saying "the whole thing I think it's sick..." again and again with his voice remixed by Craig (Samples). (sic) (sic) is a literary term that an author includes after a line of text that indicates that s/he knows it's wrong, but s/he's including it. Eyeless You can't see California without Marlon Brando's eyes ... When the band visited New York for the first time to sign the record deal with Roadrunner, Mick says "That all came from a schizophrenic street person in New York. He was running around, screaming it at every one. Though I think his choice of actor was pretty cool. He was off his shit (the schizo that is)." Joey says "It's not necessary about Marlon Brando's eyes, it's a pivotal figure of Marlon Brando being the untouched guy that he is and eye's being such a strong word, because that song is about Corey's dad and how he doesn't know him. So we're using a figure that everyone knows to amplify the song and with California being such a big fucking state. Like we just use them as articles or examples of a picture. Like the whole motto is unless you're going to be strong enough or realize what the outcome has been in life, don't try to see something that you're not going to fucking see." Wait and Bleed "It's about this guy thats keeps having repetitive black and white dreams of himself lying in a bath of blood with his wrists slit...and one day he wakes up and he finds this dream a reality but he doesn't want to believe this so he trys to fall back asleep and wakes up normally so he basically 'Waits and Bleeds'" Spit it Out "Spit It Out" was written in retaliation to childish mud-slinging by a handful of individuals who worked at a local radio station in Des Moines, Iowa. These individuals worked hard to keep Slipknot off the air. The song was broadcast in fragments on Mancow's Morning Madhouse after the station threatened to pull Mancow's show from their station. It was also right after Slipknot were pulled from a slot on a live concert in Chicago hosted by Mancow; thanks to same said individuals at aforementioned radio station. Purity "I still think its real. See the thing whether it's true or not, it's a real story, that we read about, that fucked our whole world up. Can you imagine a girl being buried in a box and having all this lecherous bullshit drip down on her from this guy? and thinking that there is hope, because this kid is taking some bizarre note to this guy he doesn't even know- thinking that you are holding on to the shirt of hope -and you wake up and you're dead you're buried in mud -they find the note about a week later shoved in a library book for gods sakes -it just hurts your head- it's a case of what is good and bad in people- the box alone is reason enough to be like, 'I cant stand to be fucking human'- how can someone fucking do this to somebody? What is inside of us that is so fucking wrong? he had written quotes from Edgar Allen Poe and lots of fucked up things on the box" - Corey Taylor Prosthetics "The song's based loosely on a 1960's movie called the collector- it is about a guy who kidnaps this girl and basically adds her to his collection and keeps her there -it's a weird kind of psychological thing, and prosthetics takes it a little bit further -where he is put into a deep sick psychosis and he goes through the whole collecting thing, at the end of the song he ends up killing her and having sex with her." - Corey Taylor Eeyore "It's the hidden track- Slipknot was based on the theory that we would never give up any style of music that we loved to play - for anyone- that we would gel things together under the name Slipknot- it goes from all styles from beginning to end." - Shawn Crahan. "Eeyore is just about this one fucking guy from Des Moines, Iowa - he has long blonde fucking hair and he is a prick to people in the fucking pit he's a Thor looking jerkoff. He loves our band but he's a dick to everyone in the pit. He likes to hit fucking chicks. The song is about me losing my mind and just tearing the shit out of him" - Corey Taylor
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