Slipknot’s Corey Taylor Shares His Thoughts on #BlackLivesMatter

In the wake of the shootings in Baton Rouge, Minnesota and Dallas, my social network feeds — like yours, I’m sure — have been a maelstrom of opinion, with tempers flaring from all sides and very little meaningful discourse taking place. While Internet yelling rarely does any good, it’s at least refreshing to see conversation taking place on very important issues that too often in our country’s history have been brushed under the rug.

What I haven’t seen, however, is very many people in the metal community taking a stand. So I was incredibly happy to see — and proud of — Corey Taylor, perhaps one of the most prominent single figures in the entire metal world, post a Facebook video for The You Rock Foundation in which the Slipknot frontman shares his views of the recent shootings and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

To me, it’s very simple: we all matter. There is a time and a place to talk about things like that. However, we are seeing that our black friends, our black family, are being… there’s a lot of violence going against them. So what we need to do is band together with them and say, “Yes, black lives do matter.” Because all matter. And to fight for those black lives does not mean that you are saying anything against anybody else. You can back up #BlackLivesMatter and say that cops’ lives matter. It’s all the same thing. And you can have all those different ideas in the same thought. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because we do all matter.

It’s clear from the above that Corey supports #BlackLivesMatter and realizes the ridiculousness and offensiveness of #AllLivesMatter. Here’s the thing, though: it feels like he’s holding back a bit, afraid to upset what is surely a large swath of Slipknot fans who do not agree with that sentiment. While I appreciate the positivity of his tone, and the effort to keep the video relevant by couching it in “Music brings us all together, man!” rhetoric, I would’ve loved to see Taylor go full bore and tell us, fully and completely, how he feels about the recent events. It’s famous figures like Taylor who have the power to sway opinion, and to see him tread lightly here is a bit of a letdown.

Watch the video in full below.