Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe Talk the Current State and Future of Metal

If there were a society of People Whose Thoughts Matter to the Metal Community, Corey Taylor would clearly be its president, for his reflections are surely wisest above all others. But according to our weekly MetalSucks Click$ Report, Randy Blythe would likely be next in the line of succession. When the Lamb of God frontman speaks, people listen — and understandably so.

So you will likely be interested in reading Metal Hammer’s new dual interview with the two vocalists, which focuses on both the current state of metal as well as the genre’s future.

Here are some choice pull quotes from the chat…

Corey on the current state of metal:

“I think it feels healthier than it was a few years ago. It used to seem like everything was sullen and a little too mapped out. A little too rigid, too stiff.”

Randy on some of his favorite young bands:

“[T]he good thing about bands like Code Orange, Power Trip and others, is that they all came up the way that we did. I mean, I think the oldest person in Code Orange is like 24, and they’ve been playing together since they were 14. They came up playing halls, basements, doing shitty gigs. When we started, there wasn’t this overwhelming amount of festivals or big tours that there are now. A lot of the kids in the scene today don’t know that this huge metal scene – which it is now – didn’t exist when we were coming up.”

Randy on modern recording technology:

“I think the democratisation of the recording process has been a great thing for people being able to demo at home, for bands being able to record at home. You used to have to save all your shitty money, go to the shitty local studio, record a two-inch tape and get a demo, and it cost a lot. You can do that at home now, and that’s great because I think everybody should have the ability and the accessibility to record music, because I think it’s good for you. However, right now, because of the nature of that technology, what Corey’s talking about with this cut and pasting stuff, kids could get a riff down once by accident, time-shift it, move notes around, and suddenly they have a song. I think at that point, the soul of the music suffers.”

Corey’s advice to young musicians:

“I do a lot of speaking gigs at schools and music programmes, and they always ask what my advice is. My advice is always the same: get in front of an audience. Learn to play, learn to make mistakes. Don’t be afraid of mistakes; mistakes are the best ways to find those cool ideas. And the young bands that we’re talking about, you can tell that that’s what they’ve done, they’ve played together, they’ve gelled together.”

Good stuff. You can read the entire interview here.