Press

Interviews: Slipknot

By Rob Kinsella
Guitarist
--.--.2001 (Ozzfest)

Mick Thompson and Jim Root play guitar in Slipknot, bringing old school thrash riffs to the planet's hottest metal act - just dare to use the 'nu' word in their presence!

Thompson and Root both tower over six feet in height and may or may not be responsible for the barrage of media criticism and outrage that has followed the band since their self-titled debut album was released in 1999. But that matters little right now. What is important is that they know their guitars and when they talk, people listen. Forget the masks, forget the boiler suits and let's focus on the fact that Slipknot are highly accomplished musicians.

It's 3pm, backstage at Ozzfest (wake-up time) when Guitarist greets a talkative Mick and a pensive, brooding and mostly nodding Jim...

The guitar parts on all of Slipknot's material are complex and brutal. How did you learn to play in such a technical way?
Mick: I taught myself how to play by ear, by listening to really intense shit, progressive metal, shredder metal, all the old classic thrash, speed metal plus Sabbath, Maiden, Hendrix, Johnny Winter... good old stuff, Al Di Meola, all that old kind of thing. So I was no stranger to weird time signatures, I just didn't know what it was called.

Everything I wrote was in weird times, you know? All sorts of crazy sounds were going on. I don't know why, it's just how I wanted it to sound, kind of like Death [pioneers of the genre]. You listen to them, they're very technical, very progressive. From what I understand, Chuck (Schuldiner, Death guitarist), doesn't know any music theory, however it helps.

I've been playing guitar for 17 years and it was only about seven years ago I finally figured out theory. I mean, I could already shred, I could play like a mother fucker, I just didn't know why, why did it all go together? Once you know how to play, it's so easy to learn.

If you've been sitting around and you know what you're doing, you've been playing for a while, you have your skills down and you've got control of your hands and shit, definitely learn theory. I can compose for the rest of my life but it doesn't matter what kind of style of music I'm into, I know what I'm doing. I know how to do it and I can apply it. If you want to be serious as a musician it's absolutely important.

Did you read guitar magazines when you were younger?
Mick: When I was kid, you'd have Satriani talking so far over your head. That's when you're 14, but then eventually one day you come around. I was about 20 when I felt like picking up music theory and went back and looked at all those old guitar magazines and was like, Shit, I know what this means now, cool. I put it to some use.

Mick, you used to be a teacher. When did you fully turn your attention to the band?
Mick: I taught for three years. I quit teaching right before the first Ozzfest (1999). It was up to that week that we left; I needed the money. It's really cool to be playing here because last time we didn't get to play over here. Our first tour was with Black Sabbath. We started off big, you know, what else is there? There's only a few bands that we've played with that have made me go, Oh my God! We got to play with Iron Maiden at Dynamo last year. I mean, I was 10 when I listened to Maiden records! But they are still one of the greatest bands in the world and that's what means a lot to me.

I got to meet Ray Alder, the singer from Fates Warning at Dynamo. Fates Warning are the greatest progressive metal band that ever existed. Anybody that likes Dream Theater needs to check out Fates Warning: albums like No Exit and Perfect Symmetry. I got to meet him and a lot of people were, like, Who's he? He's the greatest metal singer ever, and for the kind of stuff he does, no one can touch him!

What is so special to you about your guitars: the Warlocks and the Jacksons?
Mick: Live, it's obviously extremely aggressive, compared to everyone else who plays their four-four time rap metal shit with their Paul Reed Smiths, which are fine guitars but a bit tame; same as Les Pauls, Strats. It's the same old shit you've seen your whole life.

When I used to teach at the guitar shop I had the opportunity to go to the NAMM show. I'd been there a couple of times as a buyer for the shop and I'd checked out everything on earth but I was really impressed with B C Rich, the way everything is built by hand. It's not like a big assembly line; the guys make every single one of them. I respect that. What they do is hard and they take the time, that means more to me than a huge company that spends lots of money on advertising.

I use VHT amps now; greatest amps in the world... but good luck finding one. They are a small production company where they put love into it. As far as the Warlock goes, I'm very aggressive on stage and it's very aggressive looking. It fits.

[Looking at Jim]: He played my guitar! You go for a certain tonal quality in the studio. We went through PRSs and Jacksons - seriously - all my B C Riches and everything. We ended up using my black one with the white binding for every guitar track, except the dropped tune shit. We used my black stained quilt-top Warlock for that, which kinda bummed me out, because I'd suffered some damage to my Warlock and I wanted to send it to the factory to get it fixed. It turned out that it sounded the thickest of all my guitars so we ended up using it, so it's still not fixed.

But when you're in the studio you have no idea how good or bad a guitar sounds, when you put on your studio ears and you're in their with every little thing that you're so obsessive about. That's why this is the best guitar I have, it made me appreciate it more.

You are anything but nu-metal. How do you feel when you get associated with it?
Mick: I don't like being mentioned in the same breath as a lot of other bands that are called that. That's what people always ask us. Even five or six years ago people where like, So what are you? We're just Slipknot. We are what it is when we get together and write songs, that's all we are. People are like, Well you're a death metal band. Huh? No way! Listen to death metal bands and then try to tell me that's what we are. A lot of it is just the lowest three frets, drop-tuned, high-gain pop, that's not my thing. I'm very unpopular for my opinions but hey, fuck ya.

How do you see the general state of guitar playing today. Is it in demise or ascent?
Mick: I think it's getting better. There's a few bands out there that are actually starting to play again, like Shadows Fall and In Flames. I stopped buying new stuff for the longest time and somebody told me to check out Shadows Fall. I was like, Yeah sure, whatever. And I'll listen to it for 30 seconds and be like, What the fuck? I'm really impressed with those guys, so there is hope.

That obviously shows there's still an underground. I used to sit in my bedroom for eight hours a day. There are still people doing that, so at least there's some hope. The good stuff is never going to completely go away; it's always going to be underground to a certain degree and every once in a while it's allowed to peak and come back up. Hopefully that's coming back around and I hope that we had something to do with the fact that it's acceptable to do more.

But if I hear one more band going, Dun dun dun du dun... Oh god! That's what's funny, because basically Korn single-handedly opened up that whole chugging style and while I'm not a fan of their stuff I still think they probably do it better than the millions of imitators out there. Oh Jesus! Then you get your different factions; there's some other band that sort of bit onto what they were doing, but added their own thing to it, and then everybody bit them and then it just spread.

Do you use many effects?
Mick: No pedals. Well, I take that back. Now on a song called' Disasterpiece', I actually use an Electro-Harmonix Bass-Balls at the beginning. I use a BOSS noise supressor pedal, the greatest noise supressor on earth. I have a BOSS rackmount effects unit that I do all my effects with.

Fortunately the new record doesn't have so much effects and my tech makes the switches for me anyway, so I don't have to tap dance.

So how do you get your distinctive sound?
Mick: As a guitar player, I don't know! I hope every guitar player has their own sound in their head, you know? It's exactly what you want to hear, but at the same time I wouldn't want to have someone else's sound.

I've got some VHT Pittbull Ultra-Lead amps now. They are sickening, sickening. They're the biggest, meanest sounding shit you've ever heard. I was really happy to be able to use those in the studio and I've got them live now and they are just huge. My guitar sound has always been huge with a load of bottom end but no mushiness. I like a really big but really tight sound, without sounding compressed and synthetic.

Right now, Jim is mixing an old Boogie with an Eddie Van Halen 5150. EMG 81 pickups. I put my first EMG in an Ibanez Sabre when I was 17 and I couldn't believe it! That's all I've played since then. There again, obviously I have different pickups at home in different guitars. I've got P90s in my Les Paul for that tone but for playing metal it's the only combination. If you look back to all the old classic death metal stuff, see what they were using. It was all EMGs through Marshall Valvestates.

For such thick sounding guitars, you must use some heavy duty strings and tunings?
Mick: We have two different tunings now. Well, three if we play Scissors. For my D tuning, I use 11, 15, 18, 28, 38, 58, which I adjust individually. Half of our new album is tuned to A, so I use a 68 on my lowest string.

My guitar, when you play it, doesn't feel bulky. I have a super low action, set up like my shredder guitars at home. The strings are bigger but seriously it feels like a guitar tuned to E with nine-gauge strings on it. That's the tension I go for; not too loose but not too tight. I've spent years experimenting with different gauges to achieve different tensions and finally I've got exactly what I want in a guitar.

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