The Making of Iowa by Slipknot

At the end of recording the album, there was like, I was going to fly to England with my grandpa with sick.

I'm not going to fly there anyways, but we had like two or three days off, you know.

But we ended up passing away. So I went into the studio. I'm just like, turn it on. Turn the mic on.

And just let it go. That's the shit that was screaming in the beginning of the album, you know.

I guess I kind of set the pace for that one. Everything after that just got crazy.

Iowa is an example of how we succeeded and failed on so many fucking levels. It's the darkest fucking album I've ever heard.

It's gross. It's thick. It's brutal. It's heavy as shit. It's the only album I've ever heard where you can wear it like a skin.

You can wear it like fucking clothes. You put them on like fucking hunting boots. It's disgustingly fucking heavy and dark.

And everything that we were feeling and everything that we were doing went into that album.

Every chemical, every fucking drop of every insane thing that we were feeling and hurting about went into that album.

It's to this day the darkest period of my fucking life. And if I hadn't been able to go there, it would not sound nearly as real or as visceral as it was supposed to.

Robology.

Oh, that's very robotic almost.

It reminds me of in the 80s. What was that? They had a robot. You might be too young for this.

No, no. Buck Rogers.

Twiggy.

I loved that.

Buck Rogers was dead good, wasn't it?

Yeah, it really was.

I liked that. I liked Blake Severn. I liked all of that sci-fi.

And then we were talking about this because you were alive this week a little bit.

So for those that didn't listen to last week's show, Chris was not really with it. And I sent him some of the best memes ever invented and Chris didn't respond, which made me quite sad.

But this week we were talking about like in the 80s, people thought we would be in flying cars.

Yes.

And we're actually debating whether the planet is round.

And as a scientist, as a mathematician and somebody who I like facts.

Yeah.

And I think that...

Yeah, it's not working, is it?

I think debate is really good. I think human progress is good. I think human ingenuity is good.

I saw a video of a man taking a spirit level on a plane to prove that the earth was flat.

And that made me quite sad. If you believe the earth is flat, that's all power. I'm a big fan of being able to think what you want.

Yeah.

But I'd like flying cars as well.

Can you put your thinking into flying cars, please?

We're not going to get flying cars while we're arguing about whether the planet's flat or not.

This week, we're still Riffology.

We're still Riffology.

We haven't changed our name yet.

Yeah, we're still good.

It's gone down really well. It's increased everything. Everything's gone up.

Everything's gone up.

Yes, it has.

People have found us and liked it. It's been good. And it takes me a long time.

It's not that I don't deal with change very well, because I'm not terrible with change, but something like this where we've, you know what I mean?

It was a big deal. It was a big mission, because we built this over quite a long time, really, over a few years.

It's been about a couple of names. It's gone through a couple of different flavours.

We were at the dog house, weren't we? And then we were at the Monster Shop.

I keep seeing posts from Riffology and thinking, oh, that's dead good.

That looks good.

And I'll comment on it.

It's weird, isn't it? But that's like, it's us.

I'm sure we'll settle into it. It's like settling into like a new pair of shoes.

Yeah. Yeah, it just takes a little bit. A couple of weeks.

Yeah. Kicking the leather about a bit.

It's going well. It's going well.

Blog's looking ace.

Do you like the blog?

Blog's looking ace.

I'm really pleased with that.

You've done some plugins.

Google are happy with the blogs.

Riffology.co

Riffology.co. I'm trying to get Riffology.com.

Yeah.

And somebody's, it's going to expire in the summer.

Is it?

And I thought, well, I'll register that. That'll be good.

Yeah, yeah, that'll be good.

And so I emailed GoDaddy, who want £100.

£100?

£100 to, what do they call it? To back order.

Right, OK.

I'm not doing that. I'll set myself a calendar reminder and I'll just bash the button on the day.

Anyway, we are doing...

Oh my gosh.

I will buy Slipknot.

What a beast.

It's interesting, this one, because it's 2001.

Yeah.

I still think of 2001 as being quite recent.

Yes, it's over 20 years ago, Neil.

24 years old. It's bonkers, isn't it?

Yeah, it's nearly a quarter of a century.

And I still think of it as being, that's new.

Yeah, yeah.

1985 is like...

Like yesterday.

Yeah, that was, you know, that was stuff I listened to at school, which is about 10 years ago.

And 2001 is what the new kids listen to.

And I'm going to begin with another confession, because I completely bypassed this album when it came out.

Did you?

I don't know whether I wasn't ready for it, whether it was just too harsh.

It was just too, you know, it was just too much for me.

Was that your girl band era where you were into a variety of girl bands?

I was, yeah, I loved girl bands.

This point in my career, I was working flat out.

I would have been doing like 70 hour weeks.

I wouldn't have had a clue.

I was on call, I was always being paged.

So I had a walk around with a pager and I would get paged at three in the morning and stuff.

I didn't listen to a lot.

I don't remember listening to a lot of music.

I remember driving to work and seeing girls in slipknot hoodies

and just thinking that they're like way too, you know, they're very young girls.

And so slipknot, that's not a band I, you know, I like Anthrax and I like Metallico and I don't, that's not for me.

And it wasn't until a later record came out.

So they released All Hope Is Gone in 2008.

That was the one that absolutely like hooked me and dragged me into the band.

So it was, it was when they did, it was, so the stuff on there was All Hope Is Gone, Psychosocial, Dead Memories, Soulful Snuff.

And yeah, there was just something about that record for me that just absolutely hit me.

And then I remember going back and thinking, oh, all right, maybe not terrible then.

You know, and then you kind of go back and discover that you were that other album.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was trying to think what they were, like, I saw, I listened to an interview this week from Axl Rose, and he was asked the question, and he said the question was something like, what are you, what are you so angry about?

What are you doing about?

And he basically kind of went on to say, well, yeah, we're kind of, we're not really angry, we're just having a good time. And then the interviewer said something like, oh, okay, well, there's loads of other bands that are having a good time, but, you know, like Iron Maiden, for example.

And then he was like, well, we're not like them. And then, so she kind of asked the question, what is it about it? And he was just like, well, I don't know what they do. I don't associate with that at all.

Like, well, Iron Maiden or Iron Maiden, and we're Guns N' Roses, and I don't know what they are, but we're not that, that's a completely different thing. And then he went on to kind of say that, you know, that we're trying to define our own identity, that's what we're doing.

That's where, you know, they all wear, like, you know, nice boots, and they present themselves well, and, you know, we're just getting drunk and having a good time.

Yeah.

And that was the differentiator.

Yeah.

And I was thinking for this, for Slipknot, like, what were they railing against? And I don't think, like, you get the feeling that this is almost an autobiographical band.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, this is their story. Yeah, they're telling their story, yeah.

They're not like, you know, we're really angry at our moms or dads, or we're not really angry at the government, or, do you know what I mean? There's none of that. And there's not like Stoosh last week, where it's kind of political, and there's a reason behind it.

This is just... This is kind of art, it's self-expression, but it's self-expression as individuals that somehow seems to work as a collective. Like, they were all very, very in their own worlds at this time.

The band were, well, think about it. They'd done that first album, and the expectations of them were just incredible, you know?

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, you've got, right, let's have another Wait and Bleed, you know?

Yeah.

Let's have another one of those sort of songs.

Give us another single.

We're just all very chemically imbalanced. I mean, to put it lightly, we were all fucked up, you know?

We were kids who were suddenly famous, and we became every cliché that we hated, you know? Like, it was a bum out, you know?

We fought every cliché leading up to getting signed and going out and playing shows, and then all of a sudden, we had everything.

We had a double platinum album. We were one of the biggest metal bands in the world. We were headlining because nobody wanted us to open for them.

And we were making a hugely, hugely anticipated album, so we just started getting fucked up.

Yeah.

Because we were from Iowa, and we were crazy people, you know?

So in a way, it was a pitfall that we fell into, and then slowly but surely, we kind of tried to pull ourselves out of it.

And sometimes it's hard, you know, especially when you're hitting the shit as hard as we were, you know?

I mean, because we were working hard. We were playing hard. We were just crazy hard.

This is not a just hidden time.

Find me wrapped in glass and slowly soak it up.

All my friends are pictures made to make you cry.

I've seen this and wonder what I've done to calcify, ignore you.

As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away. I ignore you.

As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away.

I can't stand to see you fill in my worldwide face.

I don't even dread it. You had to be a liar just to infiltrate me. I'm still dreading.

I ignore you. As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away. I ignore you.

As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away.

Take this away. Take this away.

I can feel it on my mouth. I can taste you on my fingers.

I can hear you like the Holy Ghost and kill you if you can't defend yourself.

As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away.

I ignore you. As I close my eyes, I feel it all slipping away.

I've come towards you. We all got love behind.

We let it all slip away.

We let it all slip away.

We let it all slip away.

We let it all slip away.

When we got into that second record, all the frustration of what people were talking about, this sophomore record, you know, and the curse of the sophomore record,

and hearing people tell us what we needed to do more of, you know, write more weight and bleeds, or some more melodic things, or that we should do this with our stage show.

All that became hate towards people that hated us to begin with.

And really it was a jealousy because it was so beautiful. It was so perfect.

And they knew it. And I guess the logistics was in their saber.

You know, it just didn't seem like a nine-man band could actually sustain.

So when our first record got done, and we got into the studio for the second record, you know, Paul, Joey, and Jip got right in, right immediately after a rigorous tour cycle all around the world.

And I remember thinking we were never going to ever come home. The people around us were going to force us to more or less just take us for every dime that we are, you know, because it was working.

So we took it all in, separated ourselves from the world, everyone around us, and locked ourselves into a thought process that could never be a pain again because of the circumstances to be.

And the world was changing. At least in the United States going on, there was a tragedy that happened in 2001, and we just happened to be out on the road four months before things kind of changed forever around here.

And, you know, that's what it was, was all the frustration and the anger of obtaining one's dream. And I can't say it without the other. We did get a lot of what we always were.

I mean, I can't tell you what it's like to be exposed to a culture like, you know, the Japanese people and eat Korean barbecue, but people that barely can speak English but start learning it because they want to know they can share that tone in your voice on the album.

And so they dig deep within their soul to start learning English so they know what you're saying. We have powerful stuff. But coming out of it, now all of a sudden, you know, the people that really don't matter.

They start having an opinion, and they start assuring themselves to us like parasites. So the only way to do it was to cut ourselves off from ourselves, almost creating it impossible for anything to adhere to ourselves, even including our brothers or, you know, our other bandmates.

We separate ourselves from each other.

But we made sure that we always got together to do this thing.

And the thing was going to be called. So you talked about the analog sound, and there and there's done on analog stuff in sound city. Yeah, it's a fascinating sounded jagged. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating story that so sound city.

The history behind it used to make you remember Vox UK amps and stuff like that. It used to be the factory that made those, and then they turned into a recording studio then they had the neve 8028 bill there.

The story I didn't realize is that Rupert neve actually went and it wasn't like just to live wasn't like you know, like today if you order a console you drop a truck turns up dumps it and tells you to do what he was in there making it.

So he went in and and was working and tweaking and soldering stuff while it was like being built it's absolutely apparently it's one of four only for those those done those done it really early on in that that time of the neve console.

Super special drum sound. Yeah, sound city. Yeah, there's a great story about that.

You've got them one of the interviews. So they picked the so they picked I'll say a bit of it now but I'll play the actual interview. Yeah, good. So they picked the smallest room to put the drums in because they wanted the big room where the drums would normally go to put a bar.

Great story. So it's a tiny vocal booth really they put a whole drum kit in but that's why it's got that cloud that tight it does it sounds like like clattery almost it's got a super weird percussion sound but I think it adds I think like if you took those drums and stuck them on another record that was done like nevermind was done there.

If you took the drum sound here and stuck it on nevermind just would sound like but here just it adds to I think that the visceral lyrics the lyrics are just like extraordinary for this one I think we'll come on to that a little bit but then the guitar tone sounds.

It's it's it's just got this kind of sharp edge to it from from what they did there. We decided to go to sound city because sound city had one of the most famous drum rooms, you know in the world.

And you know it's Studio A and I remember walking in there with Joey and him going okay cool now show me the smallest room. So we go back and there's this this teeny little room that I think was just a glorified vocal booth if anything.

Mine is even been a room that you just put guitar amps in to isolate them, you know, and he put his drum set in there and his drum set pretty much pick up the room.

So here we are writing an expensive, you know, a plus room for a big room, but utilizing the small room and I remember the people there saying, I don't understand this, and because you know the bands come here to use this room.

And not only is they not using it but they put a bar in it. We put a bar in the big room called Spokers Loud. I mean this is where we went to remember those were the good days where you still would report to instate.

You know cut drum fills and tape them on the wall, though Joey would do three takes of drums for one song. And then you know they might want to use the, you know, the drum build from tape free, so they would have a cut up on the ceiling to use.

And I actually remember we would all show up late at different times and different vehicles with different people, and then we would bake those people that we showed up with leave, and we would all take our time to get ready.

If we're supposed to be there at noon, we probably wouldn't get started until two, and we would get together, and we would all play live together for Joey to do drum tracks.

And the minute we were done, and he was like, okay, I've given everything I have. I believe that I have what I need for this song and the minute she said that we were all gone.

Just everyone, whereas the first record.

We all were around we were all taking the experience we're all giving opinion.

We're all.

Well she was giving you.

I was running down the hill and getting people dinner or, you know, we were bros, and we were still pros in Iowa but there was hate.

And it was like, everyone was wet.

At their own, you know, to bite like Fleetwood Mac did rumors there, which we covered on the show.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers did down the torpedoes Nirvana did Nevermind there in 91 rage against the machine did rage against the machine in 92 so there's some absolute red hot chili peppers one hot minute was done there in 95.

And I still think this is a really odd choice of choice to go and doesn't fit the ethos of those other things does it doesn't it's like these others were kind of don't know that they are quite paired back records, really, I suppose.

The other thing about the sound was the production was Ross Robinson.

He broke his back, he broke his back in a motocross accident and still still worked with them.

But I was reading like tons of like like clips and snips of the album recording like like stories from it being recorded.

And I hadn't realized how like combative Ross Robinson was.

Yeah, so he would he would like like really get in their faces and just kind of force them to do take after take after take.

He would also force them to record live.

Yeah, so this kind of had this kind of live feel at a time when the band hated each other.

Yeah, like, there's a lovely bit in that I think the clip you just played where they, they talked about on the first record.

They would they were like a gang and they were together and it was them and they they were absolutely railing against this kind of big corporate music business.

That was their thing against rich people again. Yeah, that's what they were angry about.

And then when they came into Iowa, they'd become the people they hated.

They'd suddenly got all of this money and all of these things they could do whatever they wanted. And that was leading them to hate themselves and each other.

You know, and they were all addicts. They were all addicted to something and didn't really like being in the same room as each other.

And then Ross Robinson is just like forcing them into the building to, you know, in the room to play with each other.

And I just kind of, I don't know, I think it's definitely something that's added to, you know, you're already angry.

You can hear the conflict in the sound. You can hear that they're fighting. They're in the studio fighting. They're angry at each other.

But don't you think so? So if we if we kind of mirror that to what happened with Rumours, so we covered Rumours three, four weeks ago, right?

Say very similar, but, you know, combative. They just avoided each other in the studio. They completely avoided each other.

They went off and wrote their own songs in their own rooms and then and then kind of came together to play the song.

And they and often they would track like independently. They weren't together as a band.

I get the feeling that without Ross Robinson, yeah, that would happen with this.

Yeah, this record would not have sounded. It probably wouldn't have a band. No, and I needed that.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because they, you know, in the interviews I talked about, you know, we want something more melodic.

You know, something more like it's something more like those big hits that they'd had the way and bleeds.

And I think that's probably what they'd have got if they hadn't have like Ross Robinson hadn't have like forced them all to be in there.

It would have been every day. Yeah, I'm getting more angry. Yeah, I don't know. I just I just I think that's fascinating.

I love the. I love the tonality of this record doesn't let you say nothing sounds like it.

It's got like that kind of corn. Yeah, it's almost like there's something early gent, really, really genty about it.

There is definitely something about that, I think.

And inevitably, I think that's, you know, from from Ross Robinson, I think that's kind of, you know, he's.

I think that's definitely his influence right on on on the sound there, but yeah, it's because he did.

Robinson did corn in ninety four. Yeah, but he's done some other weird stuff he did out the drive in.

In 2000, the last year in 2000, did the cure in 2004 and he did their first record as well in.

So he was actually quite he was probably quite used to working with bands that were dealing with substances and were a bit unhinged, a bit chemically in a bit.

Yeah, that seems like because, you know, certainly at the drive in, I think we're that way inclined.

And I don't think I think there's a bit there's a bit about this, which is like capturing chaos in a moment.

There's a huge thing about this, which is about that. Yeah, I think you're I think you've nailed it.

It's yeah, it's it's if you don't catch the chaos now, you won't catch it.

You'll have missed it. And maybe that's why you see it.

You know, I'm making this up a little bit seriously, but maybe he was so aggressive with him because he was like, if I don't capture this now, this isn't going down.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're I think you're right. I think it was.

I mean, you've talked about this before. It's it captures a moment in time and, you know, like going back to rerecord it.

I mean, like Taylor Swift goes back and rerecords her stuff.

But I think I don't care. Do you know what I mean? This this this this is something that you could you can't reproduce.

No, this and this I think is probably one of the reasons why I don't typically like like covers or well, it's not true.

There are some covers that I think are really great where the band like make that song their own.

Do you know what I mean? Like word up from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's theirs now.

Yeah, but they've already taken that ownership. Yeah, I do. I think but I think, yeah, I don't know.

I think this is that you're on shaky ground, I think, when, you know, when you when you get in there.

What else did I want to talk about? Oh, yes. I wanted to talk about the masks.

OK, yeah, yeah. This is something I don't know about.

I know the the law of the band is is is such that they've got the characters and the mask seem to change over time and there's a bit of a theatre thing behind it.

And but I presume that there's maybe some meaning as well.

Well, I was I kind of knew a little bit about this, but they talk about every member redesigning the masks to capture the current emotional state.

Also, it's like a reflex. So it's kind of meant to to like mirror where you are and what you're feeling.

So the Iowa masks, I think, were pretty, pretty unhinged and pretty, pretty brutal.

So like like Corey had Corey's was like this kind of leathery mask thing, but it was kind of a little bit more weathered than the version from the original album clown.

So Sean had that kind of the clown mask was again was like just a little bit more messed up than than previously.

Joey Jordan had that kind of white, almost like Japanese thing.

That was the classic look, wasn't it? Yeah, exactly.

And then Mick Thompson had that that metal one. And it reminded me of the Judas Priest album cover where it looks really, it's got a really kind of similar look to that.

Well, there's stories of them like, like, you know, vomiting in these things and just but they never get washed.

They never get, you know, I mean, that's just and Corey Taylor talks about this, this like alter ego, you know, so you put the thing on your Corey, your Corey Taylor when you, you know, in your day to day life, when you put the slipknot mask on, you become slipknot.

And when we all put the slipknot masks on, that's when slipknot happens.

It's, you know, it's almost ritualistic in a way, isn't it?

Yeah. And they talk about the the initial concept behind it was the fact. And it's really similar to sleep token. This is where they, you know, the music, it was about the music, not about the band.

That's what that's in theory. That's what. And again, if you think about it, it could be anyone behind those masks.

So, yeah, it could be anyone behind those masks, really.

And but the bit I think is really telling here is that that was the ethos of the band for the debut. Yeah, they're poor, they don't know, you know, they've not got any money and they're kind of railing against this kind of big corporate music business.

Right. They're angry about that. And the bit that I think is really interesting is they all became famous.

Yeah. Right. So the band, they were the biggest metal band on the planet. Yeah. The individuals became, people knew who Corey Taylor were, they knew Joey Jordison, they knew who clown was, you know, they knew these people.

And so, and I think this classic in the interview where they talk about the fact that there's all of a sudden these big egos.

Yeah. And so they start to hate each other because that's what they hated. But they're all like it. Yeah. You know, and I live, I think.

I think it's a really interesting, I guess, look inside at how, you know, transparent they were. And in the interviews afterwards, they were super transparent about how much they hated each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everybody's so inventurated. Everybody's so completely sure of what we are. Everybody jailed for me, four miles away, from face to face. I haven't got a thing to say. I plead for this and I plead for you. Sure you look at my face like I'm somebody new.

Joy. Nobody wants anything I've got. Which is fine because you're made of everything I'm not. If you're five, five, five, then I'm six, six, six. If you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six.

If you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six.

If you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic if you're five, five, five, I'm six, six, six. What's it like to be a heretic?

If you're a heretic.

The extreme ego for sure. I mean, the ego was just completely, completely out of control because people start going for themselves. And it's just a natural thing that happened because everyone in the world wanted to know, who's idea was this? And you know, everybody went for themselves from time to time.

It didn't help it because you'd never stand right back, you know, you were going to be asked some like, so are you the mastermind behind all this? And it's very tempting to say yes. And of course, you know, I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that I did it.

You know, I know that I'm guilty for being too much ego.

And there was a lot of ego.

But I don't think the ego was that bad because we had just gone out and kicked the shit out of the world 18 months.

And, you know, we looked at each other as the best.

You know, I'd watch my drummer play and I'd just be like, you're the shit. And I think she would watch me be the clown and just go, there's no one else like you in the world to rock and roll. And I'd look at our guitar players, I'd be like, those are the best guitar players in the world and they're in the band that I am in. So I think our ego is good. But there definitely was a thought process that was not going to be deterred away from.

So if that first record was so, like, turn them into superstars, they came loaded and all that, was I were received in the same way? Like, did it shift as many records and all that sort of stuff?

It's really interesting. It didn't sell as many according to the numbers that I can see. It's really, album sales is, you would imagine album sales is really easy to find. And it just isn't, it's not as easy as you'd imagine to go and find, like, good data.

The thing about good data, the blog is incredible. The blog you've done for this on our website, so Riffology.co, I'm sure this will come up somewhere near the top. But the Iowa blog that you've pieced together for this is just outstanding. It really is, it gives you everything.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I worked really hard on it.

I feel like it's your teacher giving you a...

No, it is though. You spoke about this before we started recording today and it's like, you listen back to some of the older stuff that we used to do and you realised that, although at the time we were like, oh yeah, this is a right laugh, we're damn good at this.

And we probably were alright, but actually we've got better and better and better and better as we've gone on. And I think it's just because we've put in the time and just keep doing it.

Just keep doing it, don't you?

And we're not like, oh, we must do it like this. It's just grown up, it's like organic, isn't it? And the same is happening with the blog.

Just get a bit better, don't you? Shall we do facts? Some facty facts. So this is their second album. So if I look at my discography list.

So the first album, Slipknot, was released on June 29th, 1999 on Roadrunner, who funded all the things. That's credited to selling 2 million album copies.

Which you think, oh, Slipknot are a massive band, why is it not sold like 50 million copies? They were vicious. It's a vicious sounding album to sell 2 million copies, I think.

Iowa was released again on Roadrunner, August 28th, 2001, sold 1.17 million in the US, which is still quite a lot, but it's interesting that it sold fewer copies.

Volume 3 was May 25th, 2004, sold 1.5 million. All Hope is Gone is probably my favourite, I think. Again, 1.1 million in 2008.

Yeah, the numbers aren't they? 1-2 million, yeah.

Yeah, it is. But the thing is also...

But the music habits were changing at this point. So when we've spoken about music before, we're talking about 30 million, 50 million for those legendary records. Everything had changed by then.

Couldn't stream it, right? So here, you're dealing with Post Napster, Spotify existed, MP3s were the big deal.

Yeah, the world had changed by now. Isn't that interesting?

It is. It's like steadily, steadily dropping. So yeah, I think that's interesting stuff.

So Iowa, named after where they grew up. Genre always gets tagged as New Metal or Groove Metal. I just don't think it is. I don't know what those two things have got to do with Slipknot.

Runtime, 66 minutes 17. Big long album. Because the last track is 15 minutes, we're actually playing, aren't we?

Yeah, like a quarter of it is the track, Iowa, which is 15 minutes. Number of tracks, 14. It was done on Roadrunner record label. They did a load of really cool stuff.

Recording studio, Sound City in California, which is super cool. Producer was Ross Robinson, which again is super cool and he is pretty excellent.

They were under massive pressure for this record off the back of Wait and Bleed and Spit It Out, off their debut, and they needed to kind of come up with that.

They were all really, really strung out as well. They all talk about pretty much every drug and chemical that they could get their hands on.

And they were all trying to kind of self-medicate for something or other. The band members, I'm going to take a breath and go through this.

The nine. They call them the nine, don't they? So Corey Taylor, Mick Thompson, Sean Crayon, Craig Jones, Jim Root, Chris Fain, Paul Gray, Joey Jordison and Sid Wilson.

The nine. All very normal names.

That's so true. Aren't they normal names? They are, yeah. They're just so normal names. And then they put the mask on and then they're Slipknot. Oh, Sid Wilson. You know what I mean?

I thought you were going to go north. Oh, Sid Wilson.

Again, I think that the other interesting thing here, I saw them live at Leeds and it was the first year that Guns N' Roses had played. Guns N' Roses were headlining and Slipknot were supporting.

I can't remember what it was like. I want to say like 2004, something like that. And it was really interesting because Slipknot were on and the crowd were there for Guns N' Roses predominantly.

Wow. So they just wouldn't have got it at all.

And they were, I could hear people talking about just how crap they were, how terrible the band were. And the reality is there's some of the finest musicians on the planet just playing this music that is, you know, vicious sounding.

But yeah, it's a phenomenal...

Why are they just shouting? Why can't they sing like that? Can you imagine?

Yeah, I can't hear what they're saying. It reminds me of, oh God, who's the guy on YouTube that does the analysis stuff? Oh God, my brain's just, you know, the man's got white hair and he sits in his studio and he plays...

Oh, Rick Beato.

Yeah. Oh, I can't hear what they're saying. I love Noah and he says that when they scoop the mids out, I can't hear what note they're playing.

Go on, tune your guitars, lads.

So yeah, that's really interesting. Clowns, so Sean Crayon and Chris Fane doing percussion.

Yeah.

Both different, different types and famous for the kind of plank and the drums.

Pads.

Yeah.

Oh no, they had the big cot bins, didn't they?

Yeah, that's the kind of big metal thing. I think it's just phenomenal. Album artwork done by Sean Crayon and so done by Clown and a company called T42 Design.

Oh, wow.

It's got the kind of the goat's head and stuff on there.

That's the thing I do get about Slipknot is that it's all very in-house.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like that is that, you know, they're not outsourcing a lot of this stuff. This is them as creatives doing their thing.

Yeah, I think so. I think that you get the feeling that it's them. It's very much a, it's autobiographical, isn't it? It's kind of, it's not, you know, as much as you've got Robinson there, you know, forcing them to do it.

It's the band, it's their stuff. Do you know what I mean? So I thought that was pretty cool. Recorded in analogue in 2001. It wasn't common.

No, I was going to say I was recording in 2001. It wasn't, it wasn't analogue. It was Pro Tools.

Yeah. Some of the, some of the people talk about this being normal. I read some of the interviews where people talk about this being normal and it was not, it was pretty rare to do this.

Influenced, I think, or the band's influence, Dillinger. So Dillinger did Calculating Infinity. That was analogue and they referenced this record of, you know.

Yeah.

Something to represent. Yeah, very similar kind of ethos, I think, of wanting that, you know, that, again, not done to click, not, you know what I mean? It was like an organic record as it was recorded, which I think is really interesting.

Ross Robinson worked with Corn Sepultura and Limp Bizkit, interestingly. I didn't know that he worked with Limp Bizkit, although it was interesting.

He was obviously the man of the moment, wasn't he? He was the, you know, like certain scenes or certain eras.

Yeah. He's your man. He's the one. He's the one from there.

There was some, I think we've kind of come across some of these superstar producers, haven't we, in our history of doing this. Other albums released in the same year, Toxicity by System of a Down, Lateralist by Tool, Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park.

Those first couple were on our poll, weren't they?

They were, yeah. And we put it on our socials. I think like 25 or 30 people voted and chose Iowa as being the album to do. So thank you very much if you voted. They got Grammy nominations for Left Behind and My Plague.

It's a strange thing to have, isn't it? Grammy for this kind of thing. You associate Grammy with like pop. Yeah, you can imagine the suits. Nice, easy. Oh, what key is this in? Yeah, I like that.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have put Mariah Carey forward. Have they? Yeah.

That really famous Rock and Roll style. Don't have anything against Mariah Carey, but it bothers me that Iron Maiden are not in there and Mariah Carey ours is. I don't like that at all. I just, I find it stupid.

And so are they. They should be, I don't know. Be ashamed. Perhaps Elon Musk could deal with it.

Dealing with everything else. I quite like the fact that Elon Musk is so busy in the US because he stopped. He's not going to invade us anymore. So that's nice. Although he still needs to fix the windscreen wipers on the Tesla.

We self-host our podcast, so we get to see all the stats and the data. This is in the facts section, so I'm allowed to go a little bit off-piste. But you get to see the things that people listen to the show on. And so a lot of people listen on Alexa, a lot of people listen on, most are like three-quarters of the people that listen to the show listen on their phone.

And like 10% listen in their Tesla. So, well done you. If you're listening to this and you're in your Tesla, I hope it's not raining. That's all I'm going to say.

Because mine doesn't cope with the rain very well. Right, where did I get to here? I'm not going to go into the lyrics, but the lyrics are vicious on this record. Like utterly, utterly vicious.

They're not all like that. So there's like left behind on there, which is kind of a little bit more reflective, I think.

Oh, I love you, my darling. Like the moon and stars, those kind of lyrics.

So it talks about loss and abandonment and the fear of being forgotten. And I think that's really interesting because the rest of the record is not. The rest of the record is just rage. It's just absolute rage.

Corey's going to take us out on that actually. Skin tickets a little bit like that as well. This kind of isolation and stuff like that. It's a really dark record. It's absolutely extraordinary, I think.

The track Eyewear itself, 15 minutes, where Corey essentially was cutting himself with glass. It's got a lot of method acting, isn't it? And we're going to hear the story in a moment about that.

Super duper. Singles, People Equals Shit, Left Behind and My Plague were the singles. Left Behind was the one. I think that's quite a dark thing.

Influences. I was reading and reading about influences and the two that kept popping up were Slayer and Ministry. And I think actually, when I visualise that, that is very slick. It's got that kind of speed and aggression of Slayer.

And then the jaggedness and almost industrial sound of Ministry.

Yeah, the tone of Ministry. And Pantera, I think the guitar playing, Pantera-esquey. Pantera's got a very mechanical sound to it, hasn't it? Even though it's quite bluesy.

Yeah, the style. The quality of the sound. The tone of it, yeah.

Oh, the track My Plague was used on the Resident Evil soundtrack from 2002. Couldn't find much more. Normally these big albums, you can find lots of click cases where they're used, and I did not.

The reviews, so the critics- I can't imagine people liking this. They fawned over it. They absolutely loved it. Oh wow, I didn't expect that. Laudis had a nearly flawless work featuring 14 tracks characterised by intense aggression and emotional depth. Karang, a significant point in the new metal genre. It's not new metal.

And Stereogun, one of the greatest metal albums, embodying raw rage and musical complexity, which is phenomenal. Obviously after Iowa, there was line-up changes, the tragic loss of Paul Gray, the bassist Paul Gray. Joey Jordison left in 2013, but still active, still out there. We saw them, and they were bloody brilliant. So yeah, absolutely phenomenal.

They certainly didn't look like middle-aged men prancing about on the stage. No, they didn't. My back was aching. I was just standing up. Just standing there. They put on a show. They do. So yeah, lots of reissues of this. It was the 10th anniversary, there's been vinyls, there's been loads of stuff in there. Would you own this one on vinyl?

I don't know. This probably isn't an album I would... The vinyl records for me are ones I would... I was thinking this is not the style, but I've got Dillinger, some Dillinger records on vinyl.

But you said earlier that this is an album that you liked it, but you probably didn't connect with it in the same way that you perhaps should have done with these ones?

I will hope he's gone, I've got on vinyl, but I don't know. That's a good album, that is. I don't know about this one. This is one, if I did have, I'd probably try and get the original, because it wouldn't be an album that I would get to listen to. It would be an album that I would get as part of the collection and the importance of it.

And that is it for facts. I've gone through my list of facts. I enjoyed writing the blog for this one, it was quite cool. I like albums with a story, and our record company told us we had to go and make a record, so we went in the studio, we made a record, and everyone liked it.

Do you know what I mean? They're a bit boring. I really loved the evolution of Slipknot here, and how you can hear it in the sound. I love the history of the studio, I love the aspects of the band almost imploding.

I love the fact that Ross Robinson's involved. I love the fact that it was done in Sound City, and the history of the desk and the studio itself, and the history of everything else that's happened there.

Which there's a documentary of, isn't there? I've still not watched it yet.

Oh, it's lovely. There's a Dave Grohl documentary called Sound City. Really interesting. Dave Grohl's really eloquent. I know people hate Dave Grohl at the minute. Is he second in the most hated after Elon Musk? People either love or hate Elon Musk, don't they?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're not allowed to like Dave Grohl anymore, but he's really eloquent, really cool, and it'll give you a little bit of science history about the desk and a little bit of history about Rupert Neve and the studio.

And then it's really great. It kind of shows the studio from its heyday and recording rumours and there's video clips of that right to the part where they're wheeling the desk out on a forklift truck because the place is shutting down.

To put it in Dave Grohl's garage. Yeah, it's in Dave Grohl's studio. Was it called Studio 666?

But yeah, no, there's a lot. I think there's a lot to like about this album. And it is, I mean, it's the name of the show, right? It's iconic. It's an inimitable record of its time. You couldn't make this album without those nine guys being in that state, being in Sound City.

And I think there's just something absolutely phenomenal about it.

I, as I said before, am a little unbalanced, to put it like that. I contain myself, I put myself in several very strange situations, kind of like in Wicked Bleed. But Iowa was really the chance to take it even further.

Basically, Iowa is about spending time with a corpse.

Don't judge me.

Just doing beautiful fucked up things to it.

And it's not like I was setting out to write a song like that. That's what the music really just fucking, you know, pointed me the direction towards, you know, I have the time, take my cues from what the music is making me feel instinctually.

And that song, musically alone, is just so fucking creepy and heavy that it makes you just want to punch nuns and babies.

So instead of doing that, I just wrote a song about playing with dip things.

So that's basically it. And then, obviously, I was a little fucked up when I recorded it, stripped naked. I wish you could have seen Clown Space.

He was in the fucking control room. And there's like this little window in the fucking control room, and I just start taking it off.

I only sang the song twice, to be honest. And in doing that twice, I broke like every piece of glass that I could find and then started cutting myself up.

And you can hear me, actually, on the recording doing that. You can hear me with every cut, with every screen. It was almost like method at that point. I wanted to go so fucking deep into it that I was willing to go past the point of no return.

But I wanted to do it for myself, you know? And I got done, and I basically cleaned myself up, and Clown just comes in. And this is coming from Clown, okay? One of the most fucked up individuals I've ever met.

He looks me right in the fucking face, and he just goes, "Taylor, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

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