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Watch rare footage of Slipknot recording ‘Iowa’
What Slipknot did for music cannot be questioned. When the band broke through in the late 1990s, they swept music like an angry typhoon. Fusing the nu-metal zeitgeist of the day, citing early records by Korn and Limp Bizkit as influences, they created an altogether darker product, that packed a more decisive punch.
Their on-stage performances weren’t as extreme as those of the early Norwegian black metal scene, their music the heaviest, nor even were they the first band to don alter-egos and masks, but it was the way they did it that set the world on fire.
Formed in the murkiest depths of the post-industrial wasteland that is Des Moines, Iowa, the town’s bleak social fabric and the personal lives of each band member informed the oppressive nature of their sound and aesthetic. This, added to the fact they were Gen Xers, of which cynicism was a prerequisite, meant that Slipknot was a force for the misunderstood, the angry, the confused, and all those who refused to conform.
The idea for wearing the boiler suits and masks originally came from the clown mask that percussionist Shawn Crahan would bring to rehearsals in the band’s formative stages in the early ’90s. This concept was developed and by 1997 each band member had their own number and unique mask. In 1999 Crahan explained: “Being from Des Moines, the shithole of the US, everybody treats us like nobody so we decided to be nobody and put on a mask.”
However, frontman Corey Taylor offered a more profound account of the concept in 2002 when he told NYRock: “It’s our way of becoming more intimate with the music. It’s a way for us to become unconscious of who we are and what we do outside of music. It’s a way for us to kind of crawl inside it and be able to use it.”
It was the masks, the extreme performances, and the way they blended a myriad of genres such as groove metal, industrial, hardcore punk, and electronic into one visceral sucker punch that marked Slipknot out from the crowd. These factors became crucial to the success of the refreshingly uncongenial band that have continued to dazzle us for over 20 years.
Whilst their self-titled debut dropped in 1999 and lit the fuse, it was their sophomore effort, 2001’s Iowa, that was the explosion. It built on the foundations of their debut and created what is undoubtedly their darkest effort to date. The recording of the album is known as one of their worst moments, as the stress of touring, addictions, interpersonal problems, and a strained relationship with the band’s management all created the punishing cocktail that became Iowa.
“Recording Iowa was fucking hell,” recalled Shawn Crahan in the years that followed. “I wanted to kill myself. There was drugs, bitches, rock ‘n’ roll, all that shit. People expected so much of us then. ‘People = Shit’ was our way of saying, ‘Fuck off and leave us alone.'”
“There was nothing happy about Iowa,” Taylor echoed. “All of a sudden we were these metal stars and we weren’t really planning for it… We’d all got caught up in the lifestyle and the problems that come with that. A darkness set in at the beginning of Iowa that none of us quite recognised.”
Interestingly, though, the band’s late drumming mastermind, Joey Jordison, offered a different account of the period, positing that Iowa was the album that the band had always been moving towards. He said, “Iowa, even more than the first record, was the album we really wanted to make.”
Well, luckily for us, footage has surfaced of the band recording Iowa with the esteemed producer Ross Robinson. Across the three-minute clip, we see members of the band all doing their thing, from Sid Wilson mixing on his turntables to Joey Jordison delivering some breakneck beats and Corey Taylor laying down some guttural vocals. It’s an eye-opening peek into the period when Slipknot were struggling with success, but when their career was only just getting started.
Watch the clip below.
