Slipknot Part 1 - The Facts

Hi Kids,


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I hope you all had a fantastic festive season filled with all that you wanted. Now it's back to the same old day-jobs, same old crappy routine, same old financial status (or the absence of afore mentioned status), same-old-same-old, BUT in a New Year... So forget your resolutions already, you know you not gonna stick with them anyway...

You'll notice that there has been an absence on my part. I wish I could attribute this to a long vacation on white sands and blue seas, but alas, I've had none of that. No, the real reason I've been so quite is that I decided to do this Band Feature / Artist Profile on Slipknot. It's taken me quite a while to put it together, not cause I found it difficult, but because I found it so easy to write about them. So I'm sitting with pages and pages of info that is just way too much to force down your respective throats in one gulp. So, I'm going to split the feature into a few featurettes, of which this is the first. So gather round kiddies, because it's time for yet another story from your own personal Lounge Critic...

 The instant I put the disk in the player and that high-pitched, whiney noise accompanied by a voice that repeats: “The whole thing I think is sick...”, comes on, I feel the energy swell up like a burning fireball inside of me. There are very, very few bands that accomplish the translation of emotion into music, and even fewer that can give me that overwhelming feeling of raw, untamed power. You know, the kind of emotion in song that makes you want to jump rite in the middle of a raging mosh-pit and thrash it out against other living, breathing bodies. This is the feeling I get when I listen to Slipknot, and I’ll do my best to translate that feeling I get into words, here...

Slipknot is to me the most influential and inspiring band of their genre and this era. Not only as a musician, but also as [in the words of Nathan Explosion], a “regular jack-off”. As musician, Slipknot is to me as musically challenging as their lyrics and themes are thought provoking. As music fan, they make me want to hit beer kegs with baseball bats!!!

Formed in Des Moines, Iowa in 1995 by percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray, they had many changes in their early line-up, but for most of their supreme reign they have been the nine-piece brute force I know and love today. Slipknot is:

Current

(#0) Sid Wilson – Turntables (1998–present)
(#1) Joey Jordison – Drums (1995–present)
(#3) Chris Fehn – Custom Percussion, Backing Vocals (1998–present)
(#4) Jim Root – Guitars (1999–present)
(#5) Craig "133" Jones – Samples, Media (1996–present)
(#6) Shawn "Clown" Crahan – Custom Percussion, Backing Vocals (1995–present)
(#7) Mick Thomson – Guitars (1996–present)
(#8) Corey Taylor – Lead Vocals (1997 present)

Former
Donnie Steele – Guitars (1995–1996)
Anders Colsefni – Lead Vocals, Custom Percussion (1995–1997)
Greg "Cuddles" Welts – Custom Percussion (1997–1998)
(#4) Josh Brainard – Guitars, Backing Vocals (1995–1999)
(#2) Paul Gray – Bass, Backing Vocals (1995–2010)

Slipknot's mix of grinding, post-Korn alternative metal, Marilyn Manson-esque shock rock, and rap-metal helped make them one of the most popular bands in the so-called nu-metal explosion of the late '90s. But even more helpful was their theatrical, attention-grabbing image: the band always performed in identical industrial jump suits and homemade Halloween masks, and added to its mysterious anonymity by adopting the numbers zero through eight as stage aliases. There is some speculation on the reasons for the mask and jumpsuits. Corey Taylor explains: “it's our way of becoming more intimate with the music. It's a way for us to become unconscious of who we are and what we do outside of music. It's a way for us to kind of crawl inside it and be able to use it.: Add to that a lyrical preoccupation with darkness and nihilism, and an affectionately insulting name for their fans ("Maggots"), and Slipknot's blueprint for nu-metal success was set.

Their live shows are a much-discussed hit with metal fans, and the band performs with such energy that Crahan gashed his head open on his own drum kit twice one summer, requiring stitches both times. The tracks "Wait and Bleed" and "Spit It Out" got the band some airplay, but most of the buzz came from touring and word of mouth. Finally, in the spring of 2000, Slipknot was certified platinum; the first such album in Roadrunner Records' history.

So much for part 1... Check back soon for part 2
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