Over the course of their two-decade career, Iowa heavy metallers Slipknot have stayed so laser-focused on their modus operandi – channeling messy anger into face-melting rock songs while dressed in jumpsuits and pungent-looking Halloween masks – that they’ve become essentially impervious to music’s changing tides. Their last three albums all topped the US Billboard charts, while the accompanying tour for next month’s seventh album, The End, So Far, finds the octet playing arenas everywhere from the Czech Republic to Brazil.
Mainstream success hasn’t quelled their ability to cause controversy, however. The End, So Far – rumoured to be their final album on long-term label Roadrunner – was heralded late last year by frenetic single The Chapeltown Rag. Written by frontman Corey Taylor – or #8, to give him his original Slipknot ident – the song references serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, its title taken from an area in Leeds where Sutcliffe murdered a 16-year-old girl. Taylor, who also fronts hard rock band Stone Sour sans mask, said the song was: “talking about the various manipulations that can happen when social media meets media itself.”
So there’s lots to talk to Taylor about, and that’s without mentioning the fact he’s also a New York Times bestselling author, sticks to a plant-based diet – what, no huffing dead crows anymore? – and once lent his vocal stylings to the Slipknot-esque baddie Fisher King in a 2015 episode of Doctor Who. Perhaps you’d like to know where the band buy their jumpsuits, or what on earth the inside of those masks smells like? How does one keep one’s skin looking fresh on tour? Or a question perhaps on why the other band members used to set Taylor’s legs on fire every night? Or perhaps you have a more music-minded question, such as why there was no swearing on 2004’s Vol 3: (The Subliminal Verses) album?
Post your questions for Taylor in the comments by 10am on 12 August.
