SLIPKNOT

Welding The Band

Slipknot was formed by Shawn Crahan and good friend Anders Colsefini. One winter, while helping Shawn with some welding jobs, they got into talking and decided to form a band. Shawn called Paul Gray at LA and asked him if he's interested to give it a try. They soon started gathering other band members to come jam with them. Joey Jordison from Paul's former band Anal Blast, Donnie Steele from Body Pit and Josh Brainard from Modifidious. The band soon started to play around the whole town and released a self-titled album entitled Mate Feed Kill Repeat which was produced by Sean McMahon. The album was limited to 1000 copies and went out fast. The band even garnered the local radio stations' Battle Of The Bands title in 1996 not long after the albums release. Donnie Steele left the band and was then replaced by Craig Jones. Craig left the Guitars part later and decided to focus more on Keyboards and Sampling for the band. Mick Thomson, from the band Body Pit was recruited to take the Guitars part instead.

Lightening The Load

The band is almost ready to get signed to an actual record label but before doing so, they decided to restructure the band. Shawn was able to get Corey from the local band, Stone Sour because Corey had visions for the band including "total world domination". A few days after Corey was recruited, they decided to play shows with both Corey and Anders handling vocal duties. With Corey joining Slipknot, Anders knew that he will fall on the back-up vocals and percussions, so he left the band later and formed a newer band called Painface.

Soon, things started to change for the better. The Lil' Bo Peep dresses were replaced by boiler suits in different colors with barcodes and numbers for each member. Corey had set his sights on one goal: "infect everyone that needs to be infected". More members started to join Slipknot after Corey's arrival: Sid Wilson as the bands' DJ and Cuddles (Greg Welts) on Custom Percussions. Cuddles left not long after he joined and was replaced by Brandon, who also worked with Shawn on his old sideproject "One Cup Fat". Brandon also left and was then replaced by Chris Fehn who remained as the band's permanent 3rd drummer.

The Big Break

1997, mega producer Ross Robinson, famous for his previous work on Korn's self-titled and Sepultura's "Roots", was looking for some bands to sign on his new imprint, I Am Records through Roadrunner Records. After getting a lot of offers from other record companies (Epic, Mercury, 550), Slipknot signed with I AM Records eventually and started recording Slipknot on Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, CA October of 1998. After the album was recorded, Josh decided to leave the band for no apparent reason. Everything was in good terms. Josh then passed the torch to Deadfront's James Root to record "Purity" for the album.

The album was released later June 29, 1999. The band started to spread the sicness by booking a spot on Ozzfest 99. The band was unknown back then, but they made their presence felt by showing up clad in masks, boiler suits and put up a kick-ass show.

The band is widely known for the masks, numbers and bar codes they use to refer to each other. The band denied accusations of the masks as gimmicks. For them, it is the best way to portray their music and not by wearing branded clothing and where they came from. The album soon reached Gold status after a few months and Platinum 2 months later. Slipknot gained the reputation of the only band to ever go Platinum in such a short span with few MTV and radio support. The band is currently touring Europe and US and are in the process of recording their next album.