PressSlipknot: Home Is Where The Art IsBy Robert Mancini If you grew up somewhere where torching the neighbor's woodshed was considered great Saturday night entertainment, would you really want to go back there once you'd made it big and traveled the world? For Slipknot, it was the only option. "Because of where I'm at right now in my life, maybe I can get some changes done, maybe I can try and help," singer Corey Taylor explained during a recent Ozzfest tour stop. Plus, dealing with the "bleak landscape" of Iowa helped the band members tap into their pain and write a dark, heavy record that focuses its anger on all the fakers out there. Slipknot have been previewing the disc, Iowa (August 28), during Ozzfest. Now Taylor tells Robert Mancini that Slipknot is ready to spread the hurt, spill some blood and just maybe quit while they're ahead. MTV: For a lot of people, Ozzfest is serving as an introduction to your new material. How are the new songs being received? Corey Taylor: They're going over really good. They're a lot heavier and a lot darker than the first album, so people are seeing that we're living up to what we said, what we promised - that we would not do what all these other bands had done, that we wouldn't cheese out. We actually went the other way; we went harder, faster. We went darker. MTV: At the Ozzfest kickoff, you only rolled out three new songs. Are you going to start folding in more new stuff? Taylor: We're playing about four new songs, and we play six on our off [Ozzfest] shows, but we're trying to keep the mystique up. We're tantalizing, we're teasing, we're trying to give just enough so people are like, "If that sounds like that, then what does the rest of the album sound like?" We don't want to come out here and blow our load like a lot of bands do. They smear their feces all over the place. MTV: Iowa is a dark, heavy record. Taylor: It was a reflection of how we were all feeling. We went out and toured for two years straight, and the road really beat the [hell] out of us. It was an overall consensus that we wanted to do something a lot darker than the first album. MTV: You've said that the energy's the same and the anger's the same, but it's a little more focused this time around. Where are you focusing that anger? Taylor: The focus of the anger comes [from] the fact that the first album was ... just all over the place. Like when a little kid throws a tantrum, he doesn't really know what direction to throw it, it's just all this energy pouring out. This time around - being in the business and seeing all the things that happen - our focus has turned to the targets that we feel ... are killing the reasons why people [make] music. ... The focus is really a more brutal weapon than just uncaged rage. It hones everything into one diamond-cutting beam that slices through ... the rhetoric. [It] slices through the legend and gets to the heart of the problem in a split second. We were really naive when we came out here, so we met a lot of people that seemed cool and then took advantage of us. That woke us up right away. It's a challenge because, especially coming from a place like Iowa, you want to be able to trust people. You're not bred to automatically not trust people. ... That's why I like going home, because at least I know who's [messing] with me. MTV: Speaking of your home state, do you plan to keep living there? Taylor: Totally. I lived in 25 states before I was 12 years old. But I was born in Iowa, and I kept coming back to Iowa. No matter how much I traveled, I spent the better part of my life in Iowa. ... That's where my family is, that's where my friends and my love is. If I were to transplant myself to anywhere else, I think I would turn into a completely different person. I don't know if I'd be down with that. Don't get me wrong, Iowa is still a stagnant place, but ... because of where I'm at right now in my life, maybe I can get some changes done. Maybe I can try and help. Maybe I can show these people who I had to deal with when I was younger that there's a whole generation of kids in my hometown that hate and despise and completely flip off the authority. Because the authority has taken it upon themselves to suck the life out of their lives and to take away any kind of future they have and any kind of hope. MTV: What is it about Iowa that made it the perfect incubator for this band? Taylor: Everyone in Iowa under the age of 35 has a totally and completely developed personality. Whereas people from L.A., people from New York - no offense to anyone over there - but the majority of the people I've met from there are surrounded with so much eye candy, so many things to do, they act so good. When they were growing up - even poor people - there's so much to do and so many things to see that they just become sort of dull. They become ... unattached to life. They float through and do the things they're supposed to do, and they say the things they're supposed to say. It's very blasé. Whereas in Iowa, we were presented with a bleak landscape, a completely deserted lifestyle, and we were told to thrive, ... and we raged against it. We lost our minds. We sat in our basements and we invented [things]. We'd think of different ways to have fun, like blowing up portable toilets and watching them melt. Get wasted and set fire to somebody's woodshed. That was a great form of entertainment on a Saturday night. It's the banality of a puritanical environment. They wonder why all the kids are pissed off in towns like Des Moines. ... [It's] because they are not taught anything except that anything that makes you feel good is bad. ... If it does not fall under these completely safe guidelines and rules and statistics, it is a bad thing and you are not allowed to do that. If you tell a kid he can't do something, what's he gonna do? He's gonna do it twice, 'cause he's gonna learn how not to get caught the second time. I don't think this band could have come from anywhere else but Des Moines, just for the fact we don't care about eye candy. We don't care about the frosting on the cake, the pudding in the middle ... the top surface. MTV: Do you ever worry about not being able to find the right headspace for the type of music you're writing? Do you foresee a day when you won't have that kind of energy anymore, that kind of attitude? Taylor: I think by the time that happens I won't be in this band anymore. This band won't be around because this band can only be what it is, and that's a sick, out-of-control beast that makes great music [and] does great things live. We might not last another album. You never know what is going to happen. But if we do decide to put it down, it will be because it made sense. It's not going to be because the money wasn't there or whatever. It's just going to be because I don't feel this way anymore [and it's] time to move on. A lot of bands that try to [go on forever] eventually start to suck, and I don't want this band to suck. I don't want anybody to ever say, "Man, Slipknot used to be so good." They probably say that now, but I don't [care]. I'm loving my life right now. But if it got to the point [where] I'm 35 and I'm like, "God, I have to put this mask on. I have to put these damn coveralls on. I got to go out and jump 10 times on this one part, then I have to jump off a riser, then I have to hit myself in the face," that's formula and it's cheap. It's cheating [and] I don't want to go out like that. MTV: Iowa sounds like a very personal record. Did that come naturally, or was it difficult to mine some of those feelings? Taylor: It's natural. Everything I write is. There's definitely some stuff on there that I don't talk about, and there's definitely some stuff on there that I don't deal well with. But was it hard to express myself? No. Because you've got to realize all lyrics should be a reflection of the emotion [the] music is bringing out of whoever's writing the lyrics. And that's what I felt when I was listening to that music [on the album]. ... Every note is baring its soul, so why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I step it up and say, "Guess what? This is me, and these are the things I've had to deal with, and it sucks and I cry about it." ... Because if it helps one person, then I've helped myself a thousand times more than anybody else has. MTV: In recording these songs, do you think you've managed to exorcise some of those feelings? Taylor: I don't know if I let anything go ... but it's a long, therapeutic road. Maybe someday I'll have a breakdown onstage and I'll wake up the next day and go, "I feel better about everything." Right now, all I can say is I am very, very proud of what I did on this new album. I think I've said something for the very first time. It's almost like learning to speak. MTV: On opening night of Ozzfest in Chicago during your set you said you were sick of bands who say that they're heavy and then come out and "pull the balls off of heavy music." Who were you talking about? Taylor: To bring up names would give them more credit than I'm willing to [give them]. The bands know who they are because they have completely different reasons - ulterior motives - for doing this. I'm letting them know that I'm onto them. ... It's gotten to the point where you listen to all these songs on the radio and they all sound like the same band, and that to me is almost a mirror of what's going on in our society. [Forget] individualism, be blah, blah, blah. These bands that tell everybody to be different, well everybody's already different! What are they talking about? That is the biggest, stupidest statement anybody can say. ... That's like saying something's natural. Everything's natural - everyone is different. I tell people to be who they are and to be proud of what they are, who they are, how they are. ... I wish somebody would have said it to me when I was a kid. MTV: You seem to have inspired fans to explore their own take on your experience. Kids come out to your shows and express themselves by making their own masks. They're not all trying to look exactly like you. Taylor: That's what rules about them. I see so many kids who make replicas of our masks, and that's not bad; it kicks ass. But at the same time, I see all these kids who really, really think about their mask. Their mask - not my mask or a version thereof. [It's] their mask, and they really get into it. That, to me, is them getting it. I'm not saying the kid who makes copies of one of our masks doesn't get it. I'm just saying they're missing the underlying statement. Be yourself. You are your own mask. The mask you wear every day is going to be 10 times more painful than the one you put on to go to our shows, so why would you wear somebody else's? I see people wear masks every single day and then take them off when they come home. All it is is a smile, a wink, a handshake, "Thank you, sir. I'll take another dish of your dog sh-- that I have to swallow. Thank you very much. I'm very glad I'm making minimum wage here in this food shop." That is a mask. We're pointing it out, and kids are seeing it, and they're not taking it anymore. The fact that kids have really grasped this whole mentality is just another reason I get onstage and beat the sh-- out of myself. |