Guitarist Mick Thomson shared a few neat tidbits regarding SLIPKNOT‘s approach to guitar playing, telling Amit Sharma:
“There probably aren’t a lot of metal bands that use bends as much as us.
“I have to stop myself, because I do a lot of ghost bends, like on the song ‘Eyeless‘ [off 1999’s ‘Slipknot‘] – when I recorded that, I thought it was cool having the bottom drop out by using the wang bar.
“I would do things with picking and harmonics, bends and squeals, but after a while I thought I sounded too much like Immolation – who I absolutely love.
“They are the gods of bends and harmonics in riffs, especially on the first three records, which were huge for me. I didn’t want to step on that turf too much. I had to pull the plug and come up with parts that sounded different.
“Part of my sound came from experimentation. Part of it was the picking – like how Randy Rhoads did a lot of that digging in on the ‘Tribute’ live album. I probably originally picked it up off that.
“I was always into the idea of making music sound even more evil by incorporating those techniques. Anything that adds texture, color or uniqueness to what you do is a tool, so make something interesting.”
