During a recent appearance on “Bertcast,” Corey Taylor discussed what it was like in SLIPKNOT‘s early days when he and his bandmates had avoided being photographed without their masks.
He said: “The first couple of years was rad. But then the more success we got, obviously, it’s human nature, man — the ego starts to come out. As much as people think it was the reason I put STONE SOUR back together, it’s not. For me, that was about writing music again, ’cause I just wasn’t being able to write music in SLIPKNOT, ’cause I’m just not that good; I’m not as good as those guys are at intricate riffs and sh*t.
“I’ve gotten better, but at the time, I wasn’t getting to write music, [and] I just felt unfulfilled,” Corey continued. “So I put that back together. But the by-product of [performing unmasked with STONE SOUR] was now all of a sudden people know [what] I look like.”
Corey went on to say that he is still able to take part in most normal activities without being recognized or harassed.
“I get the benefits of fame without the TMZ sh*t,” he said. “I don’t get any of that sh*t. I get to play in front of thousands, millions of people. I get to do cool sh*t like this, and I can still chill at home. Nobody’s camping outside my f*cking house. All my kids are taken care of. My bills are paid. I have no f*cking worries. I love it. It’s the best.”
SLIPKNOT‘s “Unsainted” single was recently certified gold by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) on October 7 for accumulating 500,000 certified units.
One equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams, according to the RIAA.
“Unsainted” is taken from SLIPKNOT‘s latest album, We Are Not Your Kind, which was released on August 9, 2019 via Roadrunner Records. Album was once again recorded at a Los Angeles studio with producer Greg Fidelman, who engineered and mixed SLIPKNOT‘s 2004 album Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) and helmed 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter.
We Are Not Your Kind sold 118,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Furthermore, the album made an impact worldwide with No. 1 debuts in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Finland, as well as Top 5 debuts in Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain and New Zealand.
