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METAL EDGE: How has Corey dealt with being the guy who "works crowd control" on your recent shows? Mick Thomson: He does what he does. Any band that's on the road starts to get nutty after a while. We're all kind of nutty anyway. ME: Were the songs on Iowa written for crowd reaction and participation? MT: Well, it's not like they were written in a nice little bouncy, four/four time so that the whole crowd can jump up and down at the time! Also, that's what kind of sucks about playing these songs live without people having heard them before-They're al lot more involved, and we're not writing really formulated stuff, three riffs, here's an intro, then a big chorus! That happens all the time with other bands-"Let's write three parts, play it into Protocols and never even have play the whole fucking song, play a section, copy and paste..." We're not that way. On our new record, there is lots of catchy stuff, it's just that some of the "nicer" songs we're just not playing live. We appreciate the brutality, but we also appreciate the beauty. Corey really gets to sing on this new record. The guy's got a voice, and we let him use it, though it's in a heavy context. ME: Where are you seperating yourselfs from "nu-metal"? MT: The funny thing is how we get that term thrown at us because we play more metal type shit. We get our name breathed in the same sentence as all these other bands that are on the radio and MTV and whatever, but I don't see any fuckin' similarities between us and them. At all. We're all technically playing music, I guess! Years before we ever had a record deal, I would always say, "We're Slipknot." We sound like us, good or bad. I used to tell my guitar students that. They'd tell me that they were starting up bands, and they'd say, "We're gona sound like Sepultura and..." And I'd tell them, "You're already cutting your throat. Don't sound like andybody. Sound like yourself. ME: Mick, I have to be honest, you don't exactly strike me as the kind of fellow who's patient enough to be a guitar teacher. MT: Well, I had to be! No, I'm not very tolerant of stupidity at all! [Laughing] But it was actually kind of cool for me, because it made me mellow-out. I mean, I've been playing now for over 18 years, and I was dealing with kids as young as eight and 13. A lot of the kids didn't know who I was, but I wasn't exactly boasting about it. I looked at it like, "You want to play guitar? It's been my obsession my whole life, it's all I've done and all I ever really cared about." I have a problem with most guitar players that are coming up today, the attitude isn't, "I want to be the best at my instrument." Now, it's, "Hey! I have an amp, and I'm growing a cool goatie, and I have piercings! I don't know what I'm doing, but goddamn it, I have a record deal!" ME: Do you have high expectations for Iowa? MT: I don't know. I think it will weed out the weak. If you are a fair-weather fan, and you're not really into us but your friends are, or your think you're supposed to like, forget it. Most of our fans are loyal, rabid, kill-for-us fans, but I'm sure that there are those out there who think of us as the flavor of the week. I would say that those are the gross minority, but they do exist. I think that those people won't like this record. You won't be able to pretend to like this album and play it in your car. It's just too fucking much. |