Corey Taylor Admits Stone Sour Was “Never Going to Have the Same Impact” as Slipknot

Prior to starting his solo efforts, Corey Taylor‘s career in the early 2000s had two distinct facets: on one hand, he was the firebrand frontman of Slipknot and on the other, he was the vocalist for a more radio friendly Stone Sour. But looking back at that time, he now admits that one was always going to outshine the other.

During a recent interview with Metal Hammer, the man behind one of the most requested Spongebob Squarepants covers admitted that there was never a chance Stone Sour could ever Slipknot.

“I knew we would never have the same impact. You have one chance at grabbing lightning, and Slipknot was that chance. When I was young, maybe I wanted to have more credit [for Slipknot] from an ego standpoint. It’s only in retrospect that you can look at it and go, ‘I was actually a very big part of it.’”

Taylor also admitted during the interview that his pursuit of Stone Sour as an alternative to Slipknot was a strictly selfish one, as he wanted to prove that he was also a good songwriter.

“I knew that at the time I didn’t write music as good as the guys in Slipknot, I wasn’t confident in my abilities, I contributed that much [makes tiny space between his thumb and index finger],” he tells Metal Hammer. “Reforming Stone Sour meant I got better as a songwriter and was able to contribute music to Slipknot. But it came from a purely selfish place of just wanting to feel like I could do it.”

There’s a lot more Taylor says in the Metal Hammer interview (shocker, I know), so be sure to check out the full thing in the magazine’s new issue.