The big question since Paul Gray died last month has been, “Will Slipknot go on without him?” On the one hand a member passing away is obviously a huge emotional trauma for a band to have to cope with, and Gray was, at least as I’ve always heard it, a key songwriter for the group; on the other hand, bands persevere in the face of tragedy all the time, and there’s already another potential bass player in the band (and I suspect they could make do without a second percussionist/third drummer/whatever) if they didn’t want to bring someone new into the fold.

But – no shocks here – Jim Root, guitarist and guy who gets to sleep with Cristina Scabbia, says the band hasn’t even discussed it yet. From an interview posted on the official Sonisphere site:

Click to read more…

It’s easy to be jaded after attending a billion or so live shows, but climbing the hill up to San Manuel Amphitheatre, the site of Cypress Hill’s MetalSucks co-sponsored SmokeOut festival, I was transformed into a gawking greenhorn. (I would soon be treated like one, as well.) Behind my rib cage,  calm battled with rising euphoria, and not only because I stood with a hefty joint in my shoe at the gates of a tri-county puff-athon on the nicest late-October Saturday ever; mostly, I was just tweaking to look in on a magnificent but savagely wounded band at this early stage of recovery. Yes, the SmokeOut would feature the Deftones, who have played around ten shows since an auto accident left their bassist, Chi Cheng, in a coma. And despite the puzzling news that to-be sixth album Eros had been shelved, the band already had been showing positive signs and seemed poised to reintroduce themselves via a violent new song (“Rocket Skates”) and a spritely, newly-slimmed singer (the gossip had Chino Moreno at anywhere between twenty and eighty pounds lighter). Exciting!

Two hours later, right before the Deftones took the stage, night had fallen, the denizens of the cheap seats waded ankle-deep in litter, and I was pissed off as shit.

Click to read more…

This morning longtime MetalSucks Maniac Sammy sent us a link to the below YouTube clip of Korn’s Jonathan Davis covering Lil’ Wayne’s “Got Money,” noting that “Unfortunately, [Slipknot guitarist] Jim Root is part of this atrocity.” I’m not that surprised that Root was willing to work with Davis, given the ‘Knots ties to the world of nu-metal, although you’d think the dude would be better utilized; pretty much anyone could have played this guitar part.

Anyways, I agree with Sammy that the song blows. Then again, I don’t have a lot of love for Lil’ Wayne or Jonathan Davis, so a Davis cover was pretty much bound to be the aural equivalent of someone vomiting on you while someone else is already raping you.

I’m sure Korn fans think this is the shit and will applaud Davis for stepping outside of his comfort zone (but not really), but the thing about Korn fans is, they like Korn. So their opinions on this matter are gonna be kinda iffy at best.

I’m sure that Davis has a solo album or something where this cover will eventually appear, but I don’t know any of the details and I don’t care enough to do the research. If you actually like this shit, I’m sure there’s a MySpace page or something where you can get additional info.

-AR

Let the haters hate: Slipknot are a good band, and, more than that, they’re a good band that has show substantial growth from album to album – and their most recent release, All Hope is Gone, is no exception. Sonically, the record is something of a codification of everything the band has ever done, which means the Stone Sourisms (clean vocals, reasonably radio-friendly alt-rock anthems, moody power ballads, etc.) of Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses are here once again. Whether or not that’s a good thing, ultimately, will depend solely on the tastes of the listener.

Click to read more…

Slipknot’s new album, All Hope is Gone, hasn’t even been released yet, and already guitarist Jim Root is expressing dissatisfaction with producer Dave Fortman. During a recent interview, when asked if working with Fortman was a better experience than working with Rick Rubin, Root responded thusly:

Click to read more…

Hey, did you know that there’s a Slipknot cover band called “Tonkpils” (which is just “Slipknot” spelled backwards)? It’s weird, but true. Go figure.

ANYWAY, Slipknot unveiled their new masks at 12:01 am last night (actually, that’s bullshit – it was more like 1 a.m. EST). Now, a pattern has emerged over the years with regards to these dudes and their masks: some of them do major variations on a theme from mask to mask, and some just pretty much stick to the same thing every time. The differences between incarnations of Jim Root and Mick Thompson’s masks, for example, are negligible, while Corey Taylor and Shawn “Clown” Crahan obviously like to get jiggy wit it.

Click to read more…