Slipknot’s Jim Root Says the Band is “Really Lucky” Eloy Casagrande Joined
The world may still be in the honeymoon phase with Slipknot‘s new drummer Eloy Casagrande, but it’s really seeming like the dudes in the band are completely over the moon that they’ve got him behind the kit.
During an interview with Tone-Talk (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), guitarist Jim Root looked back on the band’s first two shows with Casagrande and basically said things couldn’t have gone any better.
“We didn’t even try anybody else. Eloy’s name came up. He contacted us, actually, about wanting to be a part of it and started sending a bunch of videos in. I think him and our bass player [Alessandro ‘Vman’ Venturella] might’ve had a little bit of a relationship before. I think they knew each other. They had mutual friends. And Vman’s really in tune with a lot of really great, proggy, heavy musicians that are passionate about their instruments. And it just seemed like a no-brainer. And he’s really respectful of the legacy of [Slipknot’s original drummer, the late] Joey [Jordison], and Joey was a huge influence on him. And he’s so humble. The dude has so much humility. And you could tell he just lives and breathes his craft, to the point where I see his passion and it ignites my passion for my instrument. And Brazilians, South Americans in general, are so passionate about what they do.
:Our manager told me, he was out to dinner with four or five promoters from South America, and they were all really stoked. They’re all, like, ‘It’s so good you’ve got a Brazilian drummer in Slipknot now. We kind of feel like we’ve won the World Cup.’ It’s a cool feeling. And God, he just fits in so well. I don’t know, man. I mean, there’s a lot of things I can say about it. I’m just glad it happened when it did. And we’re lucky to have him — we are really lucky to have that dude.”
The world was introduced to Casagrande as Slipknot’s new drummer during a special, intimate show in Pioneertown, California at a small v enue called Pappy + Harriet’s. Videos from the show look fucking wild, if you haven’t seen them already.
Looking back on that show, as well as their second show with the former Sepultura drummer at Sick New World in Las Vegas, Root said things couldn’t have gone better. Especially since the first show was done to benefit a good, local cause.
“We just did two new shows to sort of introduce our new drummer to the world. We did a secret show at Pappy + Harriet’s in Pioneertown in the desert, kind of over by Indio, Palm Springs area. And man, that was awesome. I love the desert, and that whole vibe is just cool. And the people there were just so nice, so cool, so accepting. And they had to have a city council meeting for us to do the show there, ’cause they were kind of, like. ‘Oooh, Slipknot. This is a small kind of chill, hippie community. Do we want this chaos happening here?’ type of thing. But it all turned out really cool and everybody was really accepting and everybody was really respectful.
“And we raised a bunch of money to donate for no-kill shelters and [generated] a bunch of money to pump back into the economy there in Pioneertown. And stuff like that to me is epic. That’s way better than… I don’t know. Some of the shit that you can end up doing in this industry for, let’s just say, not the greatest causes, but when you can do stuff like that, it just hits harder. And it was something special. And it gave us a chance to do something that we hadn’t done in years, if not decades — play for 300 people. That was much fun. I can’t even describe it. So we did that to kind of, like, ‘Boom, here he is. Yes, you were all right. It’s Eloy Casagrande. He’s our new dude.’ And then — what? — two days later, we did a Sick New World in Vegas. So, we got those under the belt and out of the way, and now it’s time to move forward and onward and upward and do a lot more jamming and rehearsing. I need to get myself into writing mode so that we can write music worthy of Eloy’s drumming, ’cause that dude is a world-class drummer.”
You can check out the rest of the interview in the video down below.
