T here is a moment of buffering. Or perhaps, given that we’re waiting to connect, via Zoom, with Corey Taylor, that should be a moment of suffering, just because it sounds more… Slipknot.
The screen unfreezes to reveal the singer in what appears to be a prison cell – horrible off-white curtains and walls, and a crappy wooden desk – but is in fact a hotel room. Wearing black jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt, twiddling a ball point pen, he lets a smile cross his face. “I had to come to Poland to see someone from my city!” he says, on tour with Slipknot and aware that I’m talking to him from Las Vegas, the place he’s called home for the last 13 years. Not that he’s been missing much, apart from a fortnight of biblical rain, thunderstorms and flash floods that turned the Vegas strip into a river.
“Yeah, we need it!” he nods.
Climate change has seen water levels in Lake Mead, the reservoir that feeds the city, fall by a staggering 26 feet in the last year, revealing everything from sunken boats to human remains. Several bodies have been found, one stuffed into a barrel and dating back to the 70s or 80s.
“They found a fucking fifth one!” exclaims Corey. “That’s just crazy, man! That’s some mob shit! And that’s our drinking water!”
Corey is animated today, grinning, goofing around and bringing all the charm you’d expect from metal’s self-proclaimed ‘Great Big Mouth’. Slipknot have been on the road for almost six months now, taking their Knotfest Roadshow back and forth between the US and Canada before starting this European run. Anyone who’s seen the nine-headed beast will attest that they’re on form, delighting thousands of Maggots every night.
But when we last spoke to Slipknot, in 2019, ahead of their sixthcircumstances weren’t so rosy. Corey was recovering from double knee surgery, percussionist Chris Fehn was out of the band, and Clown had tragically lost his daughter, Gabrielle. The tone of their conversation was defiant, but tense. “One day we will just be gone,” Jim Root told us.
