Corey Taylor on Keeping Slipknot Together: “It’s the Love of Music”

In the latest interview with Slipknot not conducted by MetalSucks but which MetalSucks will shamelessly pilfer traffic from anyway, Music Week has spoken with Corey Taylor and Clown about the band’s upcoming album We Are Not Your Kind and the longevity of their career.

On the latter, it really is quite remarkable the band has been able to keep crushing it for 20 years — getting bigger and bigger as time goes on, too — and Taylor had some thoughts on why the band’s been able to stay together all that time despite some rough patches:

“I think it’s just the belief in what we do. It’s the love of the music, if that went away, we would, too. It’s just the excitement of writing new music, of creating new art, new content, and the excitement of getting that in front of an audience…

“The minute you feel like you’ve achieved it, that’s usually when people start to phone it in. The minute you feel like, ‘Ah, I don’t need to try that hard anymore’ that’s the death of a dream. That’s when a lot of bands just start to basically repackage the shit they’ve done before, you know? You can see it in their eyes, man, you can hear it in their voice and hear it in their approach. Something’s gone. It’s almost like the spirit’s left the body. Whereas we still feel that dedication, that urge to go above and beyond.”

Ain’t that the truth, and it’s a topic we’ve written about at length on this site in the past. For all the shit we give Clown for his nonsensical ramblings, it can never be said that the guy isn’t a true artist. And the same for Taylor, who continually pushes himself with not one but two massively successful bands — and a solo career — rarely stopping for a break (it can’t be about the money: Clown seems to survive just fine on his Slipknot income).

Read the rest of the chat with Music Week here.