Slipknot, Stone Sour, and Corey Taylor

Heavy metal as a music genre has taken many forms over the past several decades, but none quite as interesting (to me, at least) as Slipknot. I have not bought any of their albums yet, but I actually like some of their music and some of its members too.

The leader and co-founder of Slipknot is Shawn Crahen, also called “Clown” because of his wearing a clownlike mask at most Slipknot shows. It was he who came up with the gimmick of wearing masks and the masks they wear are highly distinctive from each other. It was later learned that he ripped off the concept from a rival band, Mushroomhead, that also consisted of nine members and played metal. But while the other band may have done it first, it seems Slipknot did it better and became much more popular.

Here is an early performance of them on the Conan O’Brien show in 2001. In this case, they had to cope with a smaller stage than they were used to, so two of the members that normally did extra percussion instead did backing vocals only. It was still a badass stunt. A ten year old boy, Jay Weinberg, who met the band that very night would eventually join them as a new drummer.

Here they are performing in 2009.

The other two leading members of Slipknot are lead vocalist Corey Taylor and lead guitarist Jim Root. They both were also members of a completely different band called Stone Sour.

Impressive, eh? Root later left Stone Sour but kept playing in Slipknot. Corey Taylor also does solo shows, illustrating his amazing versatility.

Slipknot’s lineup has changed many times over the years, such as original bassist Paul Gray dying in 2010 of a drug overdose. But the treachery of another early and long time member, Chris Fehn, really stirred things up in 2019 when he filed a frivolous lawsuit against Taylor and Crahan demanding more money from the band. Instead they fired him and replaced him with an unnamed man dubbed “Tortilla Man”.

Here is a live performance of the band’s current lineup.