Back in March, Corey Taylor was vocal about his disdain for the term "nu-metal" being used to describe his band Slipknot, telling musical colleagues Ho99o9 on Twitter, "Beware of labels, my friends. People still call us 'nu metal'. Just ignore that shit and do what you do. You're as punk and grimey as they GET!!!" In a new interview with The Fader, the always outspoken singer doubled down on this notion.
"People have always tried to push us into the nu-metal thing," Taylor explained. "They've also tried to include us in with the American wave of heavy metal because of how aggressive we were. I mean, we've had some blatant hip-hop, not even the fucking nu-metal side, but blatant hip-hop."
Asked about his rapping on the Slipknot single "Spit It Out," Taylor acknowledged the hip-hop element there, but also pointed to a less frequently cited influence on the song's sound. "People don't realize is that's a hardcore song," he said. "That's me channeling H.R. [of Bad Brains] and everything that I grew up listening to, and just spitting as hard as I could."
The interview took place at a recent stop on the Knotfest Roadshow where a crowd of 16,000 showed up to watch Slipknot perform. This wasn't lost on Taylor. "We're still almost regarded with disdain by the metal pantheon," the frontman noted. "Which is fine. I don't give a fuck. I'm here for them," he said, pointing to the stadium.
Taylor also spoke about the 'Knot's new album, We Are Not Your Kind, describing it — and the rest of the band's catalog — in literally colorful terms. "This album, man, is a stark gunmetal," he explained. "Whereas Iowa is the deepest black you could ever even think of. The first album is red, obviously. But then you have Vol. 3, which is, like, a blue. All Hope Is Gone is, like, a dirty green. And then .5 is more of a subdued gray."
