Introduction

The first edition of this book was published in 2001, when Slipknot were new to the public eye and received endless criticism for their outlandish overalls and masks, their sonic allegiance to the nu-metal movement – which was waning fast at the time – and their emotional frankness in interviews. Since then the world has turned a few times and the band have transcended all that, rising out of their niche and becoming one of the biggest metal acts in the world. This updated edition adds an account of those intervening years, although the focus is still where it should be – on their early days, which most people still don’t know about.

I was a different writer back then and tended to get a bit overexcited about things. My editor Chris Charlesworth removed much of the most self-indulgent prose, thank God, and I’ve now toned it down a bit more, but no doubt you’ll find some of the text that follows a bit giddy.

Joel McIver, 2011

Acknowledgements

For their help with the original 2001 edition: Kyle Munson, music critic with the Des Moines Register (all material reproduced from the Register is done so with the publisher’s permission); the late Mike Lawyer, the owner of SR Audio; producer Sean McMahon; sometime Slipknot members Anders Colsefni and Josh Brainard; Michelle Kerr at Roadrunner; Kas Mercer at Mercenary PR; Edward Axon at John Brown Publishing for his permission to reproduce material from Viz; Adrian Pertout.

Also: Emma, Alice, Tom, Robin and Kate, Dad, John and Jen, Naomi Alderman, David Barraclough, Scott Bartlett, Jacqui Black, Chas Chandler, Chris Charlesworth, Ben Cooper, Helen Donlon, John Doran, Jason Draper, Mark Eglinton, David Ellefson, Matthew Hamilton, Charlie Harris, Matt Higham, Bill Irwin, Talita Jenman, Patrizia Mazzuocolo, Alex Milas, Eugenio Monti, Bob Nalbandian, Martin Popoff, Jonathan Selzer, Kirsten Sprinks, Thomson Wall, Nick Wells and the families Bhardwaj, Bowles, Cadette, Edwards, Ellis, Freed, Harrington, Hogben, Knight, Lamont, Legerton, Mathieson-Spires, Maynard, Mendonça, Miles, Parr, Sendall and Woollard plus the many visitors to www.joelmciver.co.uk and www.facebook.com/joelmciver.

Chapter 1

Before 1995

Nothing really happens in Des Moines, Iowa. It’s a conservative place and everything is pretty much straight and above board. Life-changing events – in the musical field, at any rate – don’t come along very often, but when they do they make a hell of an impact. An infamous example was the banning of CW McCall’s 1976 ‘Convoy’ single by a Des Moines radio station. The reason? Because the song supposedly incited truck drivers to break speed limits. As an illumination of the cultural stance of the city’s establishment, this will do nicely. But worse was to come.

In late 1982, Des Moines was scheduled for a visit by one of the godfathers of heavy metal, Ozzy Osbourne, sometime singer with the British metal behemoths Black Sabbath and a hell-raiser of mythical fame. The show was notable for an incident that occurred towards the end of the set. It was common for fans to throw various items on stage during Ozzy’s shows in response to the general anarchy of his act. Often Ozzy found himself dodging raw meat but on this occasion, an unidentified member of the audience threw a live bat onto the stage. The species and overall condition of the unfortunate mammal is not recorded; however, it was clearly traumatised enough to lie still and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the singer assumed that it was made of rubber.

To the shock of the crowd, Ozzy picked it up and bit off its head. Although he realised his error instants later and spat out the offending mouthful, he was rushed immediately to the nearest hospital, where he had his stomach pumped and endured a series of precautionary anti-rabies injections. These are legendarily agonising, as the needle has to pass through the abdominal muscles in order to penetrate the stomach. Ozzy ruefully said in later interviews that he’d learned his lesson – no doubt a relief to pipistrelles everywhere – and continued his tour after a short recovery period. The incident only heightened his profile as a genuine metal nutter, and his profile has continued to rise ever since.

The effect of this show on the metal fans of Des Moines was electrifying. Among those who weren’t at the show, but wished he could have been when he came across radio and newspaper reports of the bat’s untimely demise, was a 12-year-old schoolkid by the name of Shawn Crahan. Born in September 1969 to real estate developers, Crahan was obsessed with exploring the city’s storm drains – dark, undisturbed tunnels big enough for an adult to walk through – and playing the drums. His earliest musical heroes were Kiss: the very first album he had ever bought was Dynasty, and it was Peter Criss who first inspired him to become a drummer. When asked in 1999 by the Seattlesquare webzine what the future members of Slipknot were like as children, Shawn said, “I’d say we were all hyperactive, and depressed, and just always in trouble – you know, just doing our thing. I think we were all nutty little kids, and I think maybe some of us were really quiet and just looking out from the inside.”

By the time he was 15, Shawn had honed his drumming skills enough to form a band at Des Moines’ Hoover High School, which he named Heads On The Wall. The line-up included an Asian teenager named Kun Nong – an excellent guitarist by all accounts – and a bass player named Doug, who also handled vocals. Proficient by high-school standards, the band exceeded most teenage groups’ ambitions by playing at venues all over Iowa. Musically, their funk-metal and thrash-metal influences were clear; their sets included eighties hits by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (whose early albums possessed a grittier edge than their later, more polished work) and went as far as covering songs by alternative acts such as Primus and Jane’s Addiction. Ultimately, however, they were limited by the fact that Kun Nong’s sympathies were far more inclined towards funk and soul – and after all, Heads On The Wall were still at school. As Crahan realised that the future for his band was limited, he began to look around for something more serious.

Another successful local band was the death metal act Vexx, who later went under the name of Inveigh Catharsis. The drummer was the thick-set Anders Colsefni, an intimidating figure with a Mohican haircut. Colsefni had developed an uncompromising percussion technique, which became a high point of Vexx shows. The bassist was Paul Gray, a superb player who had mastered the guitar before moving onto bass: originally from Los Angeles, Gray had recently wound up in Des Moines and – perhaps wanting to recapture the positive, do-it-all vibe of California – had thrown himself into the band with gusto. On guitar was Josh Brainard, another accomplished musician who was initially from New Mexico but had moved several times before his teens, finally ending up in Des Moines after a move from the nearby town of Waterloo.

Vocals were initially handled by Josh, whose skills as a multi-tasking frontman were temporarily put on hold in 1990 when Anders started to sing: Colsefni had a powerful baritone voice – rather like that of Soulfly’s Max Cavalera or Testament’s Chuck Billy – which suited the music perfectly. Vexx spent some years playing low-key gigs with a measure of success: however, on looking back, Colsefni now describes it “pointlessly technical”, claiming that they would play for the sake of complexity alone. They never recorded.

Josh Brainard later hooked up with a guitarist called Joey Jordison, who had put together a band called Modifidious in 1992 with another six-stringer called Craig Jones. The three swapped bass and guitar duties, and Brainard also handled vocals. The music they played was straight-ahead thrash metal: not as demanding as the heavier material of Vexx, but light years ahead of the funk-rock of Heads On The Wall. Modifidious had the dubious distinction of being labelled Monkey Fungus Dick and other ‘humorous’ nicknames by visiting musicians; however, Jordison (who had invented the name – it was meaningless nonsense) saw the funny side. The high point in Modifidious’ career was a Des Moines support slot with Type O Negative in 1995.

The most extreme of the early-nineties Des Moines bands related to the Slipknot story was the superbly named Anal Blast. The band was formed partly as a publicity stunt and partly as a serious grindcore outfit by Jordison, Vexx’s Paul Gray, a guitarist named Donnie Steele and the late concert promoter Don Decker, who was involved in setting up metal shows and festivals throughout the Midwest. The band’s lyrical themes revolved around matters pornographic and faecal, as reflected in their live act. Jordison, Steele and Gray would play while Decker indulged in such onstage antics as reaching into his trousers, pulling a tampon from his rectum and throwing it into the crowd. Occasionally, if this failed to elicit the desired reaction, Decker would step offstage, return with a toilet bowl and defecate into it.

Despite these antics, they appear to have been more than just a joke act. An album, Vaginal Vempire, was recorded; Jordison has claimed that he and Gray wrote much or all of the material on it. Its cover is a pornographic spoof of the Vempire: Or Dark Fairytales In Phallustein album by the British metal band Cradle Of Filth. Gray and Jordison remained in Anal Blast for some time. As amusing as it undoubtedly was, however, Paul was unhappy with his career in Des Moines and left Iowa in late 1994, returning to California where he hoped to join a band with staying power.

As talented – or not – as these bands all were, the Des Moines music scene in the mid-nineties was in thrall to one act only: an alternative rock outfit named Stone Sour, named after a popular American cocktail. Stone Sour regularly gigged in the city’s handful of venues, and could raise a loyal following even out of town. Their singer was a young man named Corey Taylor, who worked in a porn shop.

Taylor was and remains a fascinating, tortured character, revealing his inner demons through the lyrics he wrote and the exertions of his stage act. In his teens he had both sides of his neck tattooed; one with the Chinese kanji symbol for Death and the other with the character for Father (his dad had abandoned his mother before Corey’s birth). Taylor once claimed that between the ages of four and 11, he had lived in 25 different states. No wonder he was looking for something, and found it in music: originally trained as a drummer, he decided to move to vocals after hearing the Nirvana song ‘Bleach’, in which Kurt Cobain indicated his dissatisfaction with the world in no uncertain terms.

Despite the local success of Stone Sour – Corey later described their music as “half originals, half cheesy Top 40 crap” – he evidently regarded the band as a stepping stone towards Slipknot, and indeed this can be said of all the early bands mentioned here: Jordison has referred to Slipknot as a “supergroup” in various interviews. This is not to say that these other acts were incompetent or unprofessional; for example, a prominent local outfit at the time was Atomic Opera, which Anders Colsefni has described as “the band that set the standard for all Iowan metal bands at the time”. The Atomic Opera guitarist was James Root, a gifted player with impressive onstage presence.

The last of the bands which led to Slipknot was another death metal outfit called Body Pit which Anders Colsefni described as: “very heavy death metal. Very intricate – too intricate. Eight-minute long songs, with 25 different riffs in each song. Nuts. Heavy, but nuts.” Before departing for Los Angeles, Paul Gray contributed heavily to Body Pit’s songs: the band also featured Colsefni on drums and guitarist Mick Thomson, an intimidating figure who gave guitar lessons at the winsomely named Ye Olde Guitar Shop on 70th Street, and Donnie Steele.

The musicians began to coalesce at the end of 1994. Steele was looking for a serious band, and had got to know Crahan and Colsefni through the spaghetti-junction-like local metal scene. The first move towards the formation of Slipknot took place in early 1995, when Colsefni, Crahan, Steele and Heads On The Wall’s Kun Nong met at Colsefni’s house with the vague aim of jamming together. Although they had grown up playing in different bands, Crahan and Colsefni had been friends since the early nineties, when they had attended metal gigs together: the pair first discussed a music project after Shawn called Anders and recruited him for a photo shoot. “They wanted a scary-looking person,” recalls Colsefni today. “The shoot was for a paper company, who were using some kind of ‘intolerance’ theme for their advertising. I had a mohawk haircut and they thought I looked right for the photo. I got to put my arms round an intolerant-looking girl. It was fun.”

The two men (Colsefni: “Me and Shawn looked just alike – both with mohawks that we tied back in ponytails, both kinda mean-looking”) had also developed a mutual interest in the role-playing game, Rage: The Apocalypse, a bloodier extension of the RPGs that had flooded the market since the success of Dungeons & Dragons in the eighties. Issued by the White Wolf company, Rage’s central theme was the conflict of a werewolf race, the Garou, with the Wyrm, an evil tribe. Other characters, including vampires, play prominent roles. According to the singer: “The attraction was being able to play a different person, to be able to do something different. This was the founding of Slipknot – that was it, right there.” It’s not hard to see how Colsefni, who held down a gruelling job in construction, and Crahan, who paid the bills as an office worker, could find a more attractive reality on the Rage cards.

After working on some welding at Shawn’s garage in the winter of 1994 to 1995, the two began talking about putting a new band together. This wasn’t the first time that Crahan and Colsefni had tried to form a band; they had attempted to recruit musicians before, but the project had fallen apart before it began after the drummer became temporarily involved in his father’s real estate business and had lacked the time for a full rehearsal schedule. This time, however, the situation was different: both men were tired of being in limited, unprofessional bands and agreed to make a no-holds-barred attempt to form a serious group.

Colsefni called Paul Gray in California and after some persuasion the bassist agreed to return. The singer told him that a real band was taking shape and that this time – finally – there was a genuine possibility of making an impact. Fortunately, Gray had hardly settled in Los Angeles and was able to return without too much inconvenience. With the bass player installed, the musicians began to meet two or three times a week at Colsefni’s house, where they played in his basement. This became their regular meeting place for the next two years.

The next decision was to invite Jordison to join in the early summer. Anal Blast were sporadically active, and Modifidious was also a part-time project, so Jordison was happy to accept. In fact, the only band that could claim very much of his time at this point was a glam-rock project called The Rejects, which Jordison had wanted to develop as much as possible. However, Colsefni and Crahan didn’t want their new band to be a mere side-project for Jordison and persuaded him to put his plans on hold. Colsefni became the group’s voice, while Crahan took over a second set of percussion. Joey didn’t regret his decision: in fact he later said, “When I first came into the band I was like, I have to be either in this band or I have to destroy it because it’s so good.”

The music was relatively unsophisticated at this stage: Kun Nong quit after a few sessions (“He was a phenomenal, crazy guitar player – but not a metal guitar player,” says Colsefni) and Steele’s guitar playing had become the main focus. He was a fan of soul and jazz as well as metal, a fact that made itself clear in one of the early songs, ‘Confessions’, which was more or less a pop workout – except for Colsefni’s vocals, which were melodic but guttural. However, the band agreed that, while progress was definitely being made, another guitarist was needed to fill out the sound. Jordison immediately suggested the Modifidious guitarist Josh Brainard, who remembers, “Joey told them I could play, I could sing and I had stage presence. So they called me up and asked me to go watch them rehearse.”

Brainard duly attended a band practice and was impressed by the ability and commitment of the musicians. As he watched, Shawn asked him if he would like to bring a guitar to the next session. He was only too pleased to oblige and meshed rapidly with the other players: “Donnie already had the riffs done,” he remembers. “I just learned them and played my own contributions over the top.” He’s being over-modest – his role in the early Slipknot songwriting was significant – but what’s certain is that he was accepted into the band with little hesitation. A further link with the band had been forged many years before in any case, because Colsefni says that Brainard was the very first musician he had ever played with: the pair had known each other when they were a mere 14 years old. Furthermore, Brainard knew Crahan from way back: they had met at gigs by yet another local band, Shockhead.

Brainard joined the band in September 1995. Within a month the musicians had assembled a set’s worth of songs, and the question was inevitable: when would they play their first gig? All were seasoned veterans of the Des Moines live scene, which meant two things. Firstly, they were professional enough to know exactly how much practice they would need before they were ready to play. Secondly, they were all well aware of a simple disheartening fact: at this time, the range of live venues in Des Moines was unimpressive. In fact, it was pathetic. Apart from a large concert hall called the Supertoad, which hosted gigs by international bands and was far too big for the Crahan/Colsefni outfit, there was a mere handful of clubs which were prepared to showcase new original bands. This lack of a suitable venue, as well as the fact that the line-up was still relatively new, meant that no great efforts were made to secure a live date. Ultimately, however, the decision was made for them when a friend asked them to perform at a benefit concert in aid of a local charity. The location was to be a club called the Crowbar, a venue which Brainard remembers as “a multi-level place with a hip-hop place in the middle, a country place upstairs and the metal and rock at the bottom”.

After some deliberation, the band agreed to perform, recognising that an appearance would have to be made at some point and that the experience would be useful for the band. However, they still needed a name, and after some fruitless discussion, Brainard suggested the name Meld. As one of the band’s declared aims had been to mix any genres of music they liked, the name was received with approval, although Brainard was later humiliated to discover that a ‘meld’ is also a move in a card game: “It was like calling ourselves Blackjack or Poker – totally tacky,” he says now.

On December 4, 1995, the band made their live debut. “We weren’t technically ready to play,” says Colsefni. “But it was a good gig. We didn’t have costumes or anything, but we freaked the hell out of everybody.” He later added that a Slipknot performance is “a primal feeling. I’m transformed into an animal, and that’s the reason we wear what we do on stage.” The set was short and brutal, including the songs ‘Slipknot’, ‘Tattered And Torn’, ‘Rights And Rage’, ‘Some Feel’, ‘Only One’ and a soon-to-be-dropped thrash-metal effort called ‘Part Of Me’, which featured a rapped vocal from Brainard. ‘Confessions’, a difficult song to perform live, wasn’t attempted. The band managed to disguise their inexperience through sheer exuberance, and it’s generally thought to have been a good concert. Brainard remembers a child in a wheelchair sitting in the audience in front of him, but not which charity benefited from the proceeds, or whether the gig was particularly polished: “We’d been playing together for a month or two, there was a whole different bunch of stuff we’d been trying to do and we hadn’t really got it nailed – so it was kind of disjointed.”

It was the last chance a live audience ever had to see the band fully unmasked. Although it was an uncertain performance, with the new songs played in their rawest form, if you were there, you witnessed a milestone in modern music.

Chapter 2

1995–1996

As 1995 ended, the six-piece band continued to rehearse at Anders Colsefni’s house. Although the gig at the Crowbar had been a success, they were experienced enough to know that intense practice was the only way forward. The issue of a band name had also become more pressing: Brainard had unearthed the card sharp’s definition of the word ‘meld’ and, embarrassed, was keen to find a better alternative. Lacking inspiration, the band turned to their song titles for help; Colsefni’s lyrics were both evocative and aggressive, laced with references to entities from Rage.

Between them the musicians settled on the title of the opening song of their Crowbar set as the band’s new name, although they might not have done so had they known how many journalists would later plague them for its meaning. “We don’t actually think about what a ‘slipknot’ is,” said Jordison much later. Over the years, fans and press have come up with all kinds of possible interpretations of the word, given that it can imply choking, gagging or hanging, with all the murder and S&M connotations you might expect. The band have always insisted that the choice was arbitrary, although one or two hints have been dropped here and there. Funnily enough, it turned out some years later that a Grateful Dead covers band of the same name existed in the Deep South. Coincidentally, they also had two drummers.

When you have six motivated musicians in a band, things move rapidly, and at the end of the year Crahan, Jordison and Brainard visited a recording studio, SR Audio, in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, with a view to recording an album. The owner, a man experienced in the ways of the music business, was Mike Lawyer, who took the musicians around the building and arranged for one of his producers, Sean McMahon, to visit Slipknot at a practice session. Mike takes up the story: “Sean went to see them at a rehearsal. He came in the next day and his eyes were wide open – and he said, ‘Last night I saw the most original band I have ever seen in the Midwest’. And McMahon worked for 10 years in the Bay Area in San Francisco, he worked at Memphis, he worked at St Louis, he’s worked everywhere – and he said, there’s something here.” McMahon later described himself as “floored” by Slipknot. Colsefni, who made a point at the time of rehearsing in a wolfskin loincloth, had made an enormous impression on the producer. His werewolves-and-vampires lyrics were quite unlike anything McMahon had encountered before, and the mighty barrage of sound courtesy of the Jordison/Crahan/Colsefni percussion team was a new and intimidating experience.

When asked what had struck McMahon, Lawyer explains: “It was just how different they were. First of all they were great musicians: they didn’t sound like anything anybody else was doing, especially not in Des Moines, Iowa. The closest thing they might have sounded like at that time might have been Sepultura. A little bit. And the way they merged all these styles – jazz, disco, whatever – really impressed him.”

The Sepultura reference is a response to the deep baritone of Colsefni (whose voice has often been compared to that of the Brazilian thrashers’ first singer, Max Cavalera) and the uncompromising riffing of Brainard and Steele. While Slipknot’s music rarely accelerated to thrash speed, their precision and power certainly bears comparison to Sepultura – and this, as speed metal fans will know, is a compliment indeed, especially when describing such a new band. As for Lawyer’s mention of the bizarre juxtaposition of styles that had so impressed Sean McMahon, this is directly attributable to the broad tastes of Steele, Jordison’s wide-ranging preferences (he has namechecked bands as diverse as Fleetwood Mac and the Cars) and the musical ability of the other players. Most significant of all, however, was Crahan’s insistence that Slipknot would be a band who would play in whatever style they wanted, without bowing to conventional restraints.

Colsefni – who remembers Sean McMahon as “very professional, very prim and proper” – explains the producer’s reaction as follows: “The diversity and the technicality of Slipknot astounded him, and the fact that we had so many layers in the music. He was pleased because we were a good band, and because it was going to be a challenge like he’d never had before. This was in 1995, remember – we had only played one gig, and we hadn’t even planned to play that. But we still impressed him.”

Despite the various musical genres in which the band dabbled, Slipknot were first and foremost a metal band – and one with serious power. McMahon’s years of work in the San Francisco Bay Area had been spent immersed in the heartland of thrash metal: the extreme metal scene of 1983 to 1987 had revolved around Californian pioneers such as Metallica, Exodus, Forbidden and a host of other speed-obsessed acts. The very first death metal band, Possessed, also came from the area. McMahon was no stranger to heavy music, which makes his astonishment at the Slipknot experience even more significant.

Des Moines was not known for the innovation or visual imagery of its musicians. As Lawyer points out, “In my lifetime – and I’m 39 years old – there have only been three groups from Iowa that have been signed to what would be considered major record deals. One was the Jan Park Band, a pop band back in the late seventies, the second was the Hawks, who were on CBS and lasted two albums, and the other is Slipknot.” He adds with justifiable pride, “One of the goals I set myself 10 years ago was to see if we could be a part of getting a band to break out of Iowa. And Slipknot has accomplished that goal.”

This is not to say that Des Moines is entirely without cultural value. Lawyer laughs and adds, “The picture that Slipknot paint in interviews makes it sound like the whole reason they are who they are is because Des Moines is so terrible. But, in all honesty, I wouldn’t choose to live here if it was so terrible. I’ve travelled all over the world, and it doesn’t have the activities that London or LA or any multi-million-person metropolis has – but the people are good, you know. It depends what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for an exciting, LA-style lifestyle, it’s not that. But it’s definitely not a hole in the bottom of a pit, like it’s portrayed nowadays.”

Lawyer also describes the band, especially Jordison and Crahan, as “absolute workaholics” – an important asset for any fledgling act, especially one with plans to record at a studio such as SR Audio, a professional organisation with important clients. The consequences of Sean McMahon’s meeting with Slipknot were twofold. Firstly, the band were booked into the studio in December to record a debut album. They funded this themselves and, as they were mostly supporting themselves with day jobs, the sessions took place at night. Secondly – and more significantly – McMahon went on to sign a production deal with Slipknot, in which he agreed that after producing the album, he would work with the band towards a record deal in return for a share in any future profits. What’s crucial is that McMahon – an experienced, versatile producer – recognised that Slipknot had enough talent and motivation to make a serious impact.

In due course McMahon welcomed Slipknot to SR Audio in December 1995, to lay down tracks for the first album, the bleakly titled Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. Colsefni later explained the title as a representation of the cycle of life: “You mate to reproduce, feed to survive, kill the opposition – and then the cycle repeats itself.” Finding out exactly what went on over the three-day session is difficult: Colsefni and Brainard recall the sessions as confused, chaotic and anarchic, but extremely productive. They must have been, since the contributions of six players over eight songs were recorded in a mere 72 hours. The mixdown was a different story, however: over three months were required to produce a final mix with which all the band members were happy.

Mike Lawyer recalls the very first session: “Here’s a story that’s never been told. The studio’s located in an industrial area, and so we share a building that has other offices around it, even though we’re heavily soundproofed. I drove into the parking lot the next morning after Slipknot had had their very first session there the night before – and they had decorated half of a whole parking lot with chalk outline drawings, like of dead bodies, like police outlines. Yet they had added things like huge penises and things to the outlines. All over the parking lot! I remember I said, ‘This is going to be interesting…’ The neighbours never complained. Luckily the chalk washed off when it rained a few days later.”

Brainard remembers this incident with great glee. “We were just letting off some steam: we’d been working for six or eight hours and we just wanted to do something else. We had a lot of good times in there.” The recording sessions would sometimes last until two or three in the morning, and many of the musicians would go directly to SR Audio from their day jobs – so it’s understandable that hysteria would develop. The band later gained a reputation based on this kind of insanity, and it’s interesting to see its roots in such small acts of pent-up frustration.

Colsefni remembers that McMahon would sometimes be so affected by the band’s incessant drive that he would lie flat on his back on the studio floor, trying to regain his composure. Slipknot would come into the studio and decorate it bizarrely in order to inspire themselves – Jordison in particular had a habit of leaving scrawled drawings of spiky-haired, sharp-toothed stick figures around the studio, each signed with an incomprehensible signature. “Jordison’s a multi-talented little prick,” says Colsefni affectionately. “When we were recording Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat he would scribble little dookie kid’s pictures and make ’em look like little monsters and just leave them lying around and he’d sign it Corn Wallace.” Why that name in particular? “No reason, but we all laughed our asses off. So we played with the name. I used it to sign biographical writings I did for the band, so people would think we had some poor guy chained up in our practice place – my basement – writing stuff for us.”

It seems there were a few bizarre moments to treasure, including the recording of the final track on the album – the 10-minute ‘Killers Are Quiet’ – in a single take. One of the samples on this song is the sound of Colsefni tearing electrical tape off Crahan’s face. The experience was so intense (particularly for Crahan – he punched Colsefni on the arm) that Colsefni immediately decided to wear the same kind of tape on his face onstage. He also recalls an argument with Jordison, who once became so incensed that he ran out of the studio, screaming “I quit!” Travelling to the studio was also difficult: at one point the band had to negotiate three feet of snow to get there – this all took place in December, in the middle of the Midwestern winter.

Lawyer has an explanation for Slipknot’s special brand of insanity: “Because Slipknot are so anti-drink and anti-drugs – or at least because those things aren’t what spurs their creativity – they really just thrived on their aggression.” This makes sense. Many people – even those not in hyperactive metal bands – choose to make the world more bearable with a drink and a smoke, or take refuge in some form of pharmaceutical relaxation. Not Slipknot. Their public stance is not anti-drink and drugs, but they made it clear that they choose not to partake: this ties in with the rise in popularity of the ‘straight edge’ lifestyle among young Americans since the mid-nineties, particularly hardcore punk and metal fans. Followers of this credo avoid all drugs including alcohol and caffeine, are vegetarian or vegan and take pride in maintaining their physical health. Unsurprisingly, they’re often the most committed headbangers at gigs, with the most concentrated energy and aggression. Whether or not you feel happy about the rise of this movement (aren’t these kids storing up problems for themselves in later life?), it’s a growing lifestyle choice and while Slipknot are nowhere near straight edge in their personal lives, they don’t dabble in stimulants to any significant degree.

But, like everyone else, they get annoyed with the world, and with no recourse to chemically enhanced tranquillity, the songs they write and the shows they perform are the outlets for this anger. Their need to react to the sterility of Des Moines gave added impetus to the vitriol and power of many Slipknot songs – and on this, their first demo, that anger would have been at its rawest. Little wonder that Sean McMahon found the sessions a little overpowering at times. And this ever-present vitriol meant that while the recording was productive and cathartic, it wasn’t all fun and games. After all, creating an album is a repetitive, considered experience, where the goal is to identify the best combination of many different takes. Spontaneity is often repressed in the process. When asked if he has fond memories of the MFKR sessions, Colsefni laughs and replies: “No, not really. I just remember the stress of always watching the clock – the time and the money is ticking away, you’re trying to make everything perfect, and everything you think is going good actually isn’t, so you’ve got to go back and redo stuff. When you hear yourself on tape without everybody else playing, you can hear all your errors.”

Money was a perennial problem. Use of a professional studio and its staff doesn’t come cheap, especially when there is no record company funding the recording, manufacturing, distribution and marketing costs that albums incur. Colsefni estimates the total cost of recording and manufacturing 1,000 copies on CD as around $16,000, which Crahan paid with credit cards, while the others paid him back whenever they could. What’s more, the band had hoped to complete the album within a budget of only three to four thousand dollars: the collective drive to complete the album must have led Slipknot to the decision to finish what they had started, despite the spiralling costs.

Brainard also looks back on the MFKR sessions with one or two reservations. “To tell you the truth, sometimes I thought the studio was too sterile. That place was very clean, and I think the project would have turned out different if it had been recorded at a typical metal studio – you know, shit everywhere and the place 20 years old.”

Despite this, the musicians are agreed that the nine-track demo album – described as an EP by some reviewers at the time – turned out to be a worthwhile recording. The opening track, ‘Slipknot’, developed into the well-known ‘[Sic]’ on the second album with rewritten lyrics and a brighter sound. This version is much slower and more threatening: a slow-burning, sample-laden exercise in tension building, with feedback, choked roars and a wailing lead guitar line which leads into a military-style riff. There are some harmony guitars unheard in Slipknot’s later work, while Gray’s bass offers more treble than in later years, leading to a tinnier, almost funk sound. Finally, the atmospheric intro returns to fade the song out in a mass of crackling static and what sounds like industrial percussion. Lyrically, ‘Slipknot’ is pure Rage: Colsefni raves about the game’s Pentex, Black Hand and Bonegnawers tribes (“Those wyrm-tainted bastard leeches!”) with a throaty bellow worthy of the best death metal vocalists, and refers to the game’s moves of “shifting into Crinos” and “stepping sideways to hide within the Umbra”.

‘Gently’ is a more subtle, cerebral song, which starts with appropriately subtle plucked guitars, not unlike Metallica’s 1991 ballad, ‘Nothing Else Matters’. It soon becomes a much heavier beast, with a mid-tempo set of riffs that pay homage to the gloom-soaked atmospherics of industrial/gothic bands such as Type O Negative and Nine Inch Nails: there are even touches of Celtic Frost in the melody and Jordison’s sporadic forays into thrash tempos late into the song. What Colsefni is on about this time is less clear, although he sets a reflective mood with the line “Gently my mind escapes into the relaxing mode of pleasure/A pleasure that will take my mind off the reality of life” before yelling the repeated word “Shift!” – a reference again to the shape-changing in Rage.

‘Do Nothing/Bitch Slap’ is the most complex song on the album, a sometimes incongruous mixture of death metal and jazz. The most surprising section is an extended disco workout which cuts in after two minutes: Gray provides a pure funk bass line – a slap-and-pop carbon copy of the work of Faith No More’s Bill Gould – and the band produce some perfect Prince-style falsetto harmonies. The atonal jazz guitar lines – probably from Donnie Steele, a self-confessed jazz fan – are a passable copy of the bebop maestro Django Reinhardt, all of which make the metal sections seem even heavier in comparison. As for the lyrics, it would appear that Colsefni is indulging in a vitriolic diatribe at some unidentified target: although the line “Chop down the big-wigs, shoot the televisions too / My mind boils in life as I’ve decided I’m through” is pretty gloomy. References to suicide will became a common theme in Slipknot’s work, leading ultimately to the full-on death anxiety of their early single ‘Wait And Bleed’. Colsefni later described the song as “a letter from a father to a son from whom he’s been separated for about 17 years”.

‘Only One’ was also reworked at a later point for the next album: like the later version, this mixture of rap-metal and screamed bile is a persuasive, precise song. “Pain – made to order!” growls Colsefni, before embarking on a nimble-tongued rap. Accompanied at first only by a rolling bass line, but later by some superb chicken-grease funk guitar, the choicest lyrics include near-gibberish such as “Sittin’, slappin’, scattin’ on my back, tryin’ to relax / Thinkin’ about the facts of the crack runnin’ through the pack” and a realistic vomiting sound. This song isn’t as weird as ‘Do Nothing’, but the threat in the chorus (“Only one of us walks away!” repeated to murderous effect) remains one of the most intimidating lines Slipknot have ever written.

For those whose first experience of the band was based on their second album, the early version of ‘Tattered And Torn’ may be a disappointment. It’s a shorter, simpler and less sophisticated incarnation of Slipknot’s well-known set highlight, retaining the ear-piercing lead guitar melody throughout, the burbling bass part and the multi-layered, anguished vocals – which shriek of “a decomposing well” and “roaches in my head” – but it’s not as cohesive or as memorable as the reworked version and, as such, isn’t one of the better songs on this strange album.

‘Confessions’ is a more fully developed extension of the jazz and funk elements hinted at in ‘Do Nothing’. There’s no metal here: the song is nothing less than funk-pop, with hints at the proficiency of fusion: the lead guitar, Gray’s astonishingly deft bass playing, the mellow jazz chords and even congas combine to give the song a pop feel: in short, it’s a completely different side to Slipknot. A sample line is “Trying to make amends for the Impergium / As Weaver and the Wyld and a bitch called the Wyrm” – any guesses as to the source? What’s most surprising is the apparent ease with which they slip into supper-club jazz mode: the overall feel is not unlike a polished wedding covers band, or even the New Romantics of the early eighties. The only fly in the ointment is Colsefni’s vocal: he gives a melodic, soulful performance, but it just doesn’t feel right and furthermore, he doesn’t sound happy to be doing it.

‘Some Feel’ sees Slipknot back on form. Based on a stop-start verse in an unusual time signature, it’s in a style that fans of the latter-day band will recognise. It’s another heartfelt vampires-ahoy epic from Colsefni, but that doesn’t mean it’s shallow: in fact, these are his most philosophical lyrics, with “Some feel I don’t exist / Never believing in what they see” making the song both plaintive and threatening. A slight oddity is the mix, which reduces Jordison’s rapid kick drums to a faint, mid-range ticking, while the guitars are also less prominent than usual. Perhaps the most unusual track for many is the closer, ‘Killers Are Quiet’, a lengthy, brooding song full of bizarre samples taken from a variety of sources. Colsefni avoids too many Rage references, although the song clearly revolves around the game’s central themes: “Stepping sideways between worlds I shift / Killers are quiet when they are born with the gift”. It’s a slow-building song, with the aim of creating an amorphous sound collage: however, it’s more of an improvised jam than a song with discrete sections, and as such is perhaps the final word on the band’s desire to mix musical styles.

Crahan later referred to Mate as a ‘demo’ and stated: “That whole album didn’t really have any structure”. He has a point: MFKR takes in so many styles that the listener is left with a mixture of impressions, and not really convinced that any are Slipknot’s true direction. Still, as first albums go, it’s a relatively accomplished effort. There was also a hidden track, ‘Dogfish Rising’, on which Jordison played guitar and drums and Brainard played bass. After a few minutes of silence following ‘Killers Are Quiet’, a melodic, hypnotic bass guitar chord sequence begins, accompanied by a deep background ambience like the noise of a distant aeroplane engine. This turns out to be the sub-bass timpani of Colsefni or Crahan, which adopts a tribal, rolling style. A more traditional metal riff starts up and the track goes on to be another slow, introspective composition in the vein of ‘Gently’. It’s a strange, disquieting song, and as it creeps to a close, you’re reminded of just what a weird set of psyches lie behind the album.

There are some noticeable variations in the sound across the record: some of the songs are more focused on the bottom end, with Gray’s bass lines and Jordison’s kick drum more prominent, while others feature more of Colsefni’s vocal or a meatier guitar sound. This is the result of the three different mixes which were made. Colsefni says, “The final mix and mastering weren’t completed until March or April [1996] – the CD makers were going to mix it and master it at the same time, but they kept screwing up the mastering because we had a couple of different mixes on the disk: Sean McMahon’s and some that Joey helped mix. So Mike Lawyer did an in-studio master, it sounded good.”

When asked if he thinks MFKR turned out to be a good album, Brainard – ever the professional – remarks: “Some of it, yes: we were overly picky about certain things, I think it would have turned out better if we’d just let some of it go. When you have different mixes on a record, it makes it sound kind of disjointed from song to song.” Colsefni, who thinks it is a good album, was relieved when Lawyer’s master was completed: “One of the mixes, I can’t remember which one, had way too much bass and kept farting out the speakers.”

After the months of mixing down and mastering was complete, all that remained was to select some artwork for the CD. The cover that was finally chosen was a dark green-tinted photograph of a metal sculpture designed by Crahan, an unwieldy, sharp-edged beast called Patiently Awaiting The Jigsaw Flesh. Crouching in the middle of the machine – since labelled ‘The Death Cage’ by fans – and surrounded by girders and blade-like surfaces, is Jordison wearing a white mask. What does this artwork reveal about its creators? It’s known that Crahan has an artistic background – he’s an admirer of the work of the French painter Cézanne – and coupled with his training as a welder, the work is obviously his. “Every time we move it,” he later said, “someone gets brutally cut.” The inside tray of the CD’s jewel case contains a picture of two other men, one of them Greg Welts, a friend of the band and an itinerant tattooist who had provided Colsefni with some body art, and David “Davo” Wilkins, another friend who worked at a piercing salon in Des Moines called the Axiom and who later booked bands to play at a local venue, the Safari Club on University Avenue.

It’s almost too simple to ally the features of Patiently Awaiting The Jigsaw Flesh with the intentions and appearance of Slipknot themselves. But however you interpret this choice of a rather frightening, unsettling image, one thing is clear: in Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat, Slipknot had produced a strange, unfamiliar animal. The next stage would be to set it free.

One day in January 1996, after the recording of the album was complete but the mixing was still in progress, the band turned up to practise at Colsefni’s house as usual. While they were setting up their instruments – a lengthy process for six musicians – Crahan reached into his pocket and pulled out a relic of his childhood which he had found a couple of days before. He’d been moving boxes around his basement prior to moving house, and had come across this item, which had been stored away a decade before. The band laughed in amusement – so Crahan hung it on the front of his drum kit as a bizarre decoration. It was a clown mask.

Chapter 3

1996

Masks reveal more than they conceal. That, more or less, is the essence of the answer any given member of Slipknot will give when asked why they chose to start wearing masks in early 1996. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this was visible at a session in January, after Crahan’s old clown mask had been hanging on his drum kit for a couple of sessions, and he decided – on a whim, it seems – to put it on.

The mask had some history. Crahan later told the Loud And Heavy