Last year, Mudvayne's second of four reunion shows — their first in over 10 years — was canceled after frontman Chad Gray and multiple other members of their crew contracted COVID-19. Two weeks after kicking off the run at Ohio's Inkcarceration fest, the band ended up dropping off their set at Louder Than Life festival upon testing positive. However, Gray has now revealed that he was actually experiencing COVID symptoms while performing at Inkcarceration on September 11th.
"I think on a level — it's so hard to say I think I had 'COVID Lite', but I think I had COVID Lite," Gray said in a newly-released interview with Danny Wimmer Presents. "But, dude, it fucking wiped me out."
"I had it on stage," he continued. "The good thing is I didn't know I had it at [Inkcarceration]. [So] I wasn't stressing about it, but I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on with my body. That day, [I was] super short of breath. My voice didn't seem to wanna work when I warmed up. My throat was fucking super dry all day. I had some sinus shit going on that I didn't know."
Despite the symptoms, he still managed to play a full 14-song set that night, but his healing process was far from over. "And that's one thing, too, about COVID — it's, like, one day you might have sinus thing going on; the next day it's in your chest; the next day it's in your throat; the next day you're really lethargic and tired; and then it's back in your chest. You can't fucking wrap your head around it. The only thing you can do is feed your body good things."
Eventually, Gray was able to beat it off and return to the stage for Mudvayne's appearance at Aftershock Festival on October 9th, and he credits his recovery to roughly 30 different vitamins that his wife purchased from the grocery store.
"[My wife] went to [the supermarket chain] Sprouts, and apparently they have a fucking cornucopia of fucking feel-better stuff, shit for your immunity. So she went and cleaned them out of that shit. I was probably taking 30 pills a day — vitamins, all the vitamins, but probably 30 something or other in pill form."
