The time is winding down on my chat with Shawn Crahan, AKA “Clown”, the founder and artistic director of Iowan metal juggernaut Slipknot.
For nearly half an hour we’ve chatted Knotfest, Rick Rubin stories, and how great French metallers Gojira are. At the turn of 2023, things were looking decidedly bleak for “the nine”.
Firstly, sampler and classic line-up member Craig Jones (the one with the spikes in his head) was quietly ousted from the band in June. Then, a few years ago, the band took to their social media to announce that drummer Jay Weinberg was being moved on from the band after a decade behind the kit – a move that Jay later clarified had “blindsided” him.
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Having replaced legendary drummer Joey Jordison in 2013, Jay’s departure, for many, signalled the end of the band. Reddit forums were awash with speculation, with many decrying the “corporate” nature of the decision.
And then came the announcement in December – four weeks after Jay’s departure – of a 25th-anniversary arena tour around Europe.
Knotfest Australia
Video footage of the band playing club shows in their old black jumpsuits. Vintage masks galore. Suddenly it seems possible – if not inevitable – that after a year mired in controversy, 2024 was the start of a new era of Slipknot at its most hostile. 2025 sees them descending on Australia to lead Knotfest, new drummer Eloy Casagrande in tow.
Clown’s retort to questions about the tour certainly sounds like someone with the fire re-ignited.
“We’re off a label! We’re free – it’s like Kung-Fu,” he says.
“You go back to zero and chase your own tail. It’s infinity. We go out the way we go in. There’s still five O.G.’s in the band – so I don’t wanna hear from the world about “blah blah blah” – you’ve got Corey, Mick and Jim – a Clown and A Sid – get out of my face!
“Then you have these wonderful friends in the band – plus new masks, and they’re people who love what we do. Of course, we’re thinking about playing the first album – it’s just where, who, why, when? That’s the fun!
“It’s all about the fuckin’ songs, the fuckin’ fans – I’m done with all the bullshit, and I just want to do what we want like we always have.”
It’s a startling admission from the Slipknot mastermind that, over the past few years, things potentially weren’t dandy behind the scenes.
Then comes another admission in the guise of a passing comment – that things were potentially always meant to break this way.
“We don’t do anything unless we already have the answer,” he says.
“We didn’t have a drummer but the shows were immediately put up – people were asking me about it, but we don’t do ANYTHING unless we know.”
“We completed 25 years, seven albums – that’s our life, that’s our legacy, and now we’re starting Phase 3 if you will,” he says.
Last year didn’t just mark the 25th anniversary of the band’s seminal debut – it also marks two decades since the release of Vol 3: (The Subliminal Verses).
Spawning hits “Vermillion”, “Duality”, and “Before I Forget” – the latter of which collected a Grammy in 2006 for “Best Metal Performance”, the album saw Slipknot transcend the metal sub-genre and cross over into mainstream consciousness – keg cans, blast beats and all.
It created a “culture” around the band that in many ways has been genre-defying; Slipknot is one of the most instantly recognisable bands – nay brands – in the music world today.
Their merchandise empire rivals that of KISS.
They’ve also become the quintessential heavy metal band your parents are scared of – and so much of this visibility can be traced back to the record recorded most at The Mansion, with Rick Rubin in 2003.
Clown notes that – unlike some of his bandmates – he loved working alongside Rubin (frontman Corey Taylor famously had the opposite experience).
“I have memories of watching (late bassist) Paul Grey sitting on his bed with (Jim Root, guitar) writing “Vermillion” … I would be downstairs making dinner, and I’d walk up and see that, while next door one of the members is taking a crap!
“It was during that record that I found out that my wife was pregnant – she came out to see me and she told me she was pregnant with our son Simon (drummer of metal act Vended) – there was so much happening at the time in my life.”
While the band’s self-titled debut and sophomore Iowa were characterised by passage of Nu-Metal and Death Metal, Vol 3 saw the band open up their sound palette considerably.
The brutality was still there – just listen to the full-metal attack of “Three. Nil.” – but so was a desire to push the sonic boundaries.
“Before I Forget” and “Duality” contain some of the biggest pop-metal hooks of the century, while the likes of “Virus of Life” and “Vermillion” saw the band casting out into more experimental waters.
“Circle is the song for me,” Clown says, referencing the hauntingly melodic ballad about Corey Taylor’s father.
“Musically we had explored something that hadn’t come out. That whole album is an exploration of ourselves and grabbing other abilities of ourselves.
“Circle was written in a dressing room during the Iowa cycle … Jim wrote that song and Corey wrote the lyrics about dozens of things … Jim would always say ‘I don’t know if this is a Slipknot song’ – but I just broke him down and said ‘bro, get that fuckin’ song in here’.
“It was Jim’s choice, he could have chosen not to – but it was a beautiful thing for us for Jim to go ‘yes, I’m going to ordain this into Slipknot, and we’re going to make it work’ – and we did!
“We were pushing ourselves, and that’s what Rick is really good at doing … it’s my favourite (Slipknot) record.”
The milestones of not one but two seminal albums open up exciting possibilities for Slipknot’s legendary live shows.
Fortunately, Aussie fans are lucky enough to see the masked riffers at their namesake music festival next year.
After a hugely successful inaugural tour in 2023 – headlined by the band themselves – Knotfest returned in 2024, with a stacked bill headlined by Pantera, Disturbed, and Lamb of God.
Slipknot being on the bill again in 2025 is notable for the pull power of the festival – but for Clown, the numbers through the gate – while a necessary evil – are still secondary in importance.
“I never look at it like a business … I’m not into that scene, I’m here to save the human condition. You need art to go to work, to get through that relationship, to get from A to B,” he says.
“For me, I never look at it as going good or bad – I don’t care about ticket sales – I just know that there’s a lot of people coming through that door that need help just like me.”
The festival also presents a huge opportunity for up-and-coming bands to break into new markets, as well as for local bands to get up in front of far bigger audiences.
This year will see relative newcomers Sunami grace the stage, with gothy, dancey rockers HEALTH meeting a new crowd of metalheads. Local heroes In Hearts Wake will tear it up with international hardcore heroes Hatebreed, and share the stage with Sydney’s Polaris and Japan’s BABYMETAL.
Whether it’s helping break new bands in, or expose international acts to new territories – Gojira opened a side stage of the first Knotfest in Iowa back in 2012 – Clown sees the festival as a chance to champion important art.
“I remember Randy (Blythe, Lamb of God frontman), we did a Knotfest a few years ago, Randy had just been released from his ordeal (he was imprisoned on a manslaughter charge in the Czech Republic) and his first show back was Knotfest.
“I love we got to share that with him, but it could have been anywhere. I’m just happy that we can share those shows with a friend – it doesn’t matter if we had anything to do with it or not.
“Metallica did the same for us, Ozzfest did the same for us, Download helped us – all these things. It’s all part of it.”
Knotfest touches down in late February next year, and while he’s making no promises, Clown said he will hopefully be around the festival to hang out with punters.
“I want to be there to hang out with people and share in it with them,” he says.
“Even if I chat to someone for just five minutes, a lot of good can come from that.”
Knotfest Australia is coming. It’ll land on February 28th in Melbourne, March 2nd in Sydney and March 8th in Sydney. Keep reading at Knotfest for tickets, lineup, info and more.
