Behind The Masks: The Complete History Of Slipknot

1995: Shawn Crahan, Paul Gray, Kun Nong, Donnie Steele and Anders Colsefini, 5 well-known musicians from Des Moines, Iowa, decided to start a new band. But this band was not going to be a common band; it must be the band, the one that will **** everything up! Anders Colsefini was, at the very beginning of Slipknot, the singer, Shawn Crahan was the drummer, Paul Gray was playing the bass, Kun Nong was playing the guitar and Donnie Steele was also playing the guitar. Wanting it to be perfect, they tried to recruit the best musicians from Des Moines to complete the band.

One of the musicians, Shawn, decided to try something new, something original with the band: masks. “We decided to wear masks so that people will only concentrate themselves on our music, not on what we look like”, he said. Also, instead of just playing with one drum set, the band decided to add two percussion sets to make their music as aggressive as possible. Kun Nong, who played the guitar, left the group in February. Shawn, bored, decided to try percussion so that he could be at the front of the stage, and left his place to Paul’s friend, Joey Jordison. At first hesitant, Joey finally joined the band in May. The band then recruited Josh Brainard as a second guitarist. He had already played with them and immediately accepted the job.

They performed together a few times under the names “Meld”, “The Pale Ones”, “PyGSYSTEM”… They finally chose the perfect name for their project, taking the name of one of their songs, “Slipknot” (later remixed to give birth to the incredible song “(Sic)”). In December, the band arrived in the studios of SR Audio, where they worked for the six next months. The final result of all their efforts is their EP, “Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.”

Slipknot then decided to try to perform their first CD live and entered a competition named “Battle Of Bands,” where all the top bands from Des Moines played. At this time, the band from Des Moines was a band named “Stone Sour,” fronted by the young and exciting Corey Taylor. Slipknot just completely ATE them and immediately won first prize in the “Battle of Bands”.

1996: Donnie Steele decided to leave the band because he didn’t appreciate Slipknot’s trash metal-oriented music. A friend of Joey’s, Craig Jones, took his place. In April, Craig, a real computer freak, chose to work on the samples while Mick Thompson, a guitar instructor, played the guitar. The band became more and more popular every day, so Shawn and Joey spent most of their nights talking about their projects in the garage where Joey works. They decided to hire a manager, so they recruit a young journalist, Sophia Jones, who supported them from the beginning. When people asked her why she decided to be the manager of a crazy band, she answered: “Because if you ask me, Slipknot will be playing at Ozzfest, will sell over a million albums and be on the cover front cover of Rolling Stone!!”. “Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.” was immediately an enormous success in Des Moines.

1997: While Slipknot performed at Dodfest, another festival, a young DJ named Sid Wilson, alias DJ Starscream, saw them and loved their music. Unfortunately, the quality of the sound that day was so bad that Joey decided to leave the band after he messed up with Shawn because of what just happened during the show with that ourful sound. However, he rejoined the band just a month later. Then Slipknot and Stone Sour met again at the Runaway, Shawn’s club. Slipknot are just hypnotized by Corey’s voice and asked him to join the band because he plays with a band of losers. He accepted. Soon after, Corey wrote the framework of a song that will later become “Me Inside”.

The band then re-entered the SR Audio studios to record a new version of “Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat”. Corey’s arrival in the band, however, caused some problems. Anders, not accepting the fact that he has been “left behind”, announced to his fans and to the rest of the band that he was leaving them at the end of a concert. Absolutely shocked, the rest of the band had to find a new percussionist and finally recruited Greg “Cuddles” Welts, a guy who will never hesitate to do the stupidest things when he’s on stage. Sid also joined the band after an incredible coincidence: he was in the moshpit of one of their concerts when Shawn went down in the pit to fight with the other ones. There he met Sid who recognized him, and subsequently sent him to the hospital! Shawn immediately accepted him in the band when the little DJ asked him if he could join the Slipknot adventure, thinking that he was crazy enough for that.

1998: Sophia Jones, the manager, used her contacts to introduce the band to Ross Robinson, who’s absolutely not interested in hearing them, but who, after all, traveled to Iowa to hear them practice. During the session, everyone was over-stressed and everything went wrong. Joey even made a mistake and accidentally threw one of his drumsticks in Ross’ face! But, the impossible happens: Ross Robinson absolutely appreciates what he’s hearing and decides to give them a chance. He went to one of their concerts at the Runaway and was totally hypnotized by the show. He immediately asked the band to record a CD for him! But 6 months later, Slipknot still haven’t got any news from him, so Joey gives him a phone call and 48 hours later, the ‘Knots are in the Roadrunner studios to record their first album! In June, Cuddles is fired for some obscure reasons that will not be exposed. He was replaced by Chris Fehn, the percussionist that became famous with his long-nose masks. During the recording, the band meet a lot of other artists like Kiss, Robert Flynn from Machine Head and Casey Chaos from Amen. Josh left just before the end of the recording, leaving his place to James Root, a guitarist that was desperately trying to make it out with his previous band, Atomic Opera. Here is the final line up of the band:

#8 / Vocals - Corey Taylor
#7 / Guitar 1 - Mick Thompson
#6 / Percussions - Shawn Crahan
#5 / Samples - Craig Jones
#4 / Guitar 2 - James Root
#3 / Percussions - Chris Fehn
#2 / Bass - Paul Gray
#1 / Drums - Joey Jordison
#0 / DJ - Sid Wilson

1999: Sophia Jones again used her relations to make them perform on the Ozzfest. The show was a complete success. The 29th of May, after some shy debuts, “Slipknot” immediately reached the top of the World charts with more then 2 million copies sold within a year. Their first video, “Welcome to our neighbourhood” also reached the top and beat other DVD’s, even from Madonna and Shania Twain. The album tour was also a complete success, the band made the craziest things ever seen live, like a drum kit on fire, 3-meters-high stage divings from Sid, and a huge pentagram painted on the wall in the back of the scene.

2000: Slipknot participated during this year to a lot of other festivals like the “Rock Am Ring” and the “Dynamo Open Air”, where they received a huge public coming especially for them. At the end of the year, the Knots entered the studio again to produce their 2nd album, again helped by Ross Robinson.

2001: Crazier then ever, the 9 masked metal stars played again in the Ozzfest, and released their 2nd album: “Iowa”. It is certainly one of the heaviest cds you will ever hear from them. With “Iowa”, the band really showed what they were capable of and immediately started touring again, this time for the “Pledge of Allegiance” tour, with Mudvayne, Rammstein and SOAD.

2002: A huge concert (15.000 fans) has entirely been filmed and put into their 2nd DVD, “Disasterpieces”. Slipknot also wrote a new version of “My Plague”, which has been selected for the “Resident Evil” movie as the official theme. Corey also appeared in the “Spiderman” soundtrack with his other band, Stone Sour, while Joey started another band called “Murderdolls”. Stone Sour had a huge success in the USA while the Dolls exploded everything in Europe.

2003: The year started with a lot of problems: Corey, too occupied with Stone Sour forgot a little bit the knots just like Joey who was busy touring with the Murderdolls. No one will hear anything from Slipknot until September, when Shawn will also tried to start his own solo project: “To My Surprise”, which remained absolutely unknown for a very long time. When the band re-enters the Roadrunner studios at the end of the year, some members of the band became angry with Joey because he wrote 7 of the songs on his own: he oriented the band to a darker style while Corey would like to try something more rock-like. The band finally announced that the new album would probably be out in spring 2004.

2004: During 6 long months, the band recorded the new album with Rick Rubin (SOAD, Slayer). A few times, Rick asked them to re-write some of the new songs, which was not a good sign at all. But the 24th of May, just a day before the new album, Slipknot gave a secret concert at London. European fans were the first to hear the new songs of the new album: “Vol.3: The Subliminal Verses”. “Duality” is the first of single of the album, and the least we can say is that the 2004 version of Slipknot is a lot different than what we heard of them before: the band left apart all the rage from “Iowa” and made this album more rock-like, but still influenced by the trash and extreme metal scene. The group headed for Europe, where they took part to a lot of festivals, the Ozzfest again with Hatebreed, the “Fury Fest” and the “Unholy Alliance Tour”. The 2nd single, “Vermillion pt.1” went out with a strange video showing the band…with new masks representing their real faces!! “Vermillion pt.2” also went out, but the video has quickly been censured because of its insanity. After a huge show in Paris and a tour in India, the band returned to the USA just for the winter holidays.

2005: The year started just like 2004 ended: on the road! Slipknot travelled all around the world for the Vol.3 Subliminal Verses tour. Announcing that the recording of the next album will be at the end of 2006, the band released “9.0: Live”, their first live double-album. It is a huge success in the whole world: 350000 copies have been sold just in the USA!! Stone Sour are now recording their 2nd album and Murderdolls just split up, so they are trying to decide what is going to happen to them next. Slipknot is at this moment certainly the most amazing band ever seen on a stage and the band with the most fans all around the world: The “Maggots” who will always support them until the end.

Note: I would like to thank Dirk Gently, who kindly accepted to help me to re-write this article, and gave me a lot of good advise and comments. I would also like to thank SilentDeftone for his help and patience!!

-Lord Vodka.

POSTED: 06/10/2006 - 04:49 am

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Comments

[Spawn6937]

Interesting article, like their new stuff more than their old, feels like it has more finesse and that they realised they don't have to be overly loud to get that dark and powerful sound.

[kevhead]

Even though i dont like the band that much, that was a good read. Well done.

[sherwin]

not bad...don't like their music much but have got a copy of the masterpieces and these masked maruaders can certainly unleash hell..

[soad_malakian]

interesting and extremely entertaining.....but i would likke when did they come to india cuz i am from india..i like slipknot.....but i never knew of the gig....plz answer my queries.

[Absent Mind]

Well I must say I still do love slipknot, and have done since a kid (kinda scary :P)

Though I do not belive this to be the ultimate complete history, but it did just teach me murderdolls have split up which is a big shame, they were brilliant.

[Exershio]

Pretty interesting article. I never knew that the murderdolls split up, and that sucks. >_>

[Leonheart]

Yea, I like Murderdolls more than Slipknot, that sucks they split up. But Slipknot kicksass too. Anyway something to add is that during their early gigs they dressed up like little bo peep and weird outfits like that, and their masks were inspired by Kiss.

[yawn]

Pretty informative article. I learned a LOT. =)

[sixstringthing]

Good history, but you had alot of personal opinions instead of facts..Stonesour sucks? what box do you live in..

[horazonblade]

Good article, a little hard to follow.. and I looked up Vermillion pt.2's music video... I think it was removed cause it was retarded lol. I am trying to find if there is a different version, if anyone finds it, send me the link or post it.

[SOADFanSince'98]

It is a little stupid that he said they wore the masks so people would focus less on what they look like. That seems to be the only thing some people want to know about them.

Checked/Deleted.

Don't be spamming or flaming other users or this column or I will give you an official warning.

[obey_yourmaster]

Wow, good article. Really interesting, I learned a lot.

[bobross]

kind of short and uninspired, became undetailed about the iowa recordings and some of the more interesting occurences around that time, all in all it was decent though.

[jamstation]

It's a good article. People don't realise that there is no way the ENTIRE history of any band can be captured in a single-page article. Overall, I'd say it was an interesting read.

However, I noticed one major factual error: Slipknot have NEVER toured India. Trust me, they have an enormous Indian following, and no way would a tour of India have gone unnoticed.

I have the Vermilion Pt.2 video. It is a little twisted: the entire thing is basically the wind playing with the corpse of the girl from the Vermilion Pt.1 video, in a grassy field with an enormous tree in the background. It's not crazy enough to censor, IMO.

[mfkr]

Yeah something like that.

Lol.

[horazonblade]

Yea, thats the video I saw, just a girl blowing in the wind, definitly not censor worthy, but kinda weird.

[Vos]

There were some spelling errors in this in this but other than that it was a good read. You did a pretty good job of capturing the main points of their history and like someone else said it's impossible to write all of it down.

I saw the Vermilion Pt. 2 video and it was kinda wierd watching it but nothing worthy of censoring. I don't understand why they would censor that but let some of those videos with girls running around pretty much naked and shit like that.

Slipknot is one of my favorite bands too.

[maggot4life]

NICE article....slipknot is the best band EVER!!
yeah vermilion pt.2 video was just.....weird!

[maggot4life]

and wtf? they can go to india but theyll NEVER come here....the government here is just scared of them i think.....

[gary666]

Yeh SLipknot = the best band EVER!!!
Although this was a gr8 article, i've heard this stuff many times before and there was a hell ov a lot you missed out... But otherwise, well done!

[guner270]

dude! this is an awsome article! and not just because this is my favorite band lol. u really know your stuff dont you?

[vanceboy]

nice coverage, very fast though...kinda got lost with who was leaving and who was staying and what not. but pretty good overall.

[-spiderman-]

I don't really like slipknot but it was an interesting article

Semite Power

[Kurt_Morrelo]

I think this was a little biased, but still a good read.
Nice job, dude.

[kelso12345]

even tho i like slipknot wearing masks is not that original, other bands have done it in the sense of conceiling their identity and if they wanted people not to focus on what they look like they would have aced the masks, people focus on them more becasue of the masks, because of this people that have not heard their music might think of them as a gimic.

[cptazad]

I thought they were a gimic, man was I wrong. I actually believe them when they say the masks represent what they feel about their music, and not an attraction sort of thing. It's either you like their music or you don't, the masks are superfluous.

[rosesbleedblack]

I thought Vermilion(1) was their first video. Maybe thats only because its the first one I saw, I dont know. I have seen the Vermilion Pt. 2 on TV though, I think Fuse.

[DavepallekA]

Great article dude. Slipknot owns....it's time for a new album!

[Emily...]

omg, i love slipknot. at first i was so scared of them and their masks they would give me nightmares. vermillion pt 2 made me cry i love that song to pieces, they use so much emotion, its beautiful, they could loose the masks though!

Checked.

[sixstringthing]

Thats a good read but thats not at all how us that were from des moines at the time remember it.. You should do some reading first and then write a bio.

[flesh fries]

pretty interesting, however..

stonesour>slipknot

[Obie]

theyre not the "the most amazing band ever seen on a stage and the band with the most fans all around the world" thats for damn sure. but slipknot is cool.

sometimes i just have an urge for some brain melting nu metal and for some reason only slipknot satisfies that urge

[Cliff_Hetfield]

?We decided to wear masks so that people will only concentrate themselves on our music, not on what we look like?

Well that seemed to back fire, didn't it?

[anal frost]

good article

[The Demiurge]

he missed out the bit were the drummer got lifted vertical and played a mint drum solo on t dvd

[rockon004]

?We decided to wear masks so that people will only concentrate themselves on our music, not on what we look like?,

[rockon004]

Sorry i messed up that last post ^ I meant to add That had the complete opposite effect, in my opinion.

[FS Guitar]

slipknot's awesome, but this article seems very poorly written.

[noobmucker]

jamstation wrote:

It's a good article. People don't realise that there is no way the ENTIRE history of any band can be captured in a single-page article. Overall, I'd say it was an interesting read.

However, I noticed one major factual error: Slipknot have NEVER toured India. Trust me, they have an enormous Indian following, and no way would a tour of India have gone unnoticed.

I have the Vermilion Pt.2 video. It is a little twisted: the entire thing is basically the wind playing with the corpse of the girl from the Vermilion Pt.1 video, in a grassy field with an enormous tree in the background. It's not crazy enough to censor, IMO.

Slipknot has a good following in India but they will probably not be allowed to play cause of them weird hindu traditions....

Slipknot doesnt suck....They are very creative and innovative and miles better than absolute trash like My chemical romance or whatever.

[lalalalinoleum_]

slipknot=life

good article

[Shed the Tears]

Slipknot..theyre grood, but i really hate the whole mask thing, it actually makes me focus more on their looks than their music, which isnt half bad...i think they should lose it...the whole ugly mask thing brings a very white trash crowd of people and i say that without the intention of hurting people, its just ugly and trashy but whatev...who am I?

[dr . disturbed]

Slipknot rules. Best Band. Stone Sour aint that bad either.

[hate_hate_hate]

this gave me lots of info of slipknot and it is the only thing i wanna read over and over again and it was a good read too.....SLIPKNOT ROCK TOO!!!

[guitarhero_14]

hey thanx for the article im trying to become a magget so this really helped me

[mafoogles]

just to let u all know the murderdolls did not break up, they are on a hiatus. they may even come out with an album in 2008

[dertjoe]

shawns club was the safari night club now hairy marys

[yagsiytme]

Donnie Steele decided to leave the band because he didn’t appreciate Slipknot’s trash metal-oriented music.

err... then can someone explain this to me???
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user. viewprofile&friendid=239617928

[howie21]

its a pretty solid column. it fits a lot of details into a piece of writing so small.nice work!!