At the end of a year during which he hasn’t always been entirely complimentary about his brothers in Slipknot, Corey Taylor says he can’t wait to tour again with the Iowan metal superstars.… even if they are a bunch of “growly pricks”.
In a typically unfiltered conversation with Kerrang!, Taylor admits that being forced to cancel 2020 touring plans following Slipknot’s January/February European arena tour has been “weird’, but that, in a year in which he also released his debut solo alum, CMFT, there’s “light at the end of the tunnel.”
“This is the longest I’ve been off the road for 20 years,” says Taylor, “and when [the spread of the Covid-19 virus] first started, I was like, ‘Okay, it’ll be six months at the most…’ But when it finally got into, ‘Okay, we’re getting into 2021 now and we’re not really sure what’s going on,’ it was daunting. The first month or two I was almost shifting down into normal life, because my brain is so hardwired to not get settled for months at a time.”
When promoting CMFT, Tyler wasn’t shy about calling out what he saw as flaws in the Slipknot machine. In an interview with Forbes, the singer said that it had been a “long, long, long time” since he was surrounded by people “geeked to make music.”
“The only thing that matters to me is making music that I want to fucking hear back,” he said at the time. “I can’t say that about a lot of the people that I’m in a band with.”
With that said, last month, Taylor suggested that Slipknot may release the follow-up to We Are Not Your Kind next year. And speaking to Kerrang!, he admits that he’s gagging to get back on the road with the band.
“I never thought in a million years I would miss the curmudgeons in Slipknot and being on the road with those growly pricks,” he laughs. “But… it seems like a million years ago that we played those [European] shows. I can’t even remember that tour, that’s how long ago it was! I long for that, and I can’t wait to get back on the road with Slipknot and finish off that tour cycle when the time comes. Obviously we don’t really know when that is, but with the decent news that the vaccines are looking promising, we have a very good chance to turn things around next year. Even though the winter is a little darker, maybe there’s some light at the end of the tunnel – we just need to get through this time and hopefully get back to normal next year.”
“And I’m no anti-vaxxer, trust me!,” the singer adds. “As soon as it’s ready I’m taking one, and I don’t care what anybody says: I don’t wear tin foil hats, and I certainly didn’t vote for Trump, so I’m going to get a vaccine for this damn thing.”
To mark his recent 47th birthday, Taylor released a new animated lyric video for the tongue-in-cheek Everybody Dies On My Birthday.
Speaking to Hammer earlier this year, Taylor explained the song’s significance stating, “We’re all born, and we all die. It’s those two things we all have in common; it’s everything in between that can be changed.”
