Corey Taylor has been busy ripping up towns all over the UK with his new BFF's in Avenged Sevenfold, but we managed to drag him to one side during his time in Manchester to chat about the new Stone Sour record, angering the Church and Rickrolling Chicago.
Corey! How are you?
Yo! I'm doing great thank you for asking! How are ya?
I'm superb, I'm looking out of the window and it's raining… how is it down the road in Manchester?
Not too bad, I'm really looking forward to the show tonight because the first one we did here was great!
I'm glad you said that Corey because I was there…. AND I got myself a new man too!
There you go! Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold and a boyfriend? Well, you're welcome!
Apart from being a matchmaker then, how are you enjoying your co-headlining tour with Avenged Sevenfold?
It's been great, we couldn’t have asked for a better package to be a part of; the crowd's been great, the overwhelming reaction each night has been fantastic. It's really been a pleasure.
Well you were brilliant anyway, and the fans there last week were just bursting with love for you from the moment you walked on stage….
Yeah, I know, I don’t know what it is I'm doing but I must be doing something right!
How important is it for you when you 'feel the love'?
Well, there's part of me that, no matter what the crowd is feeling, I'm going to go above and beyond and make sure they have the absolute best time, and then there's the other part of me that's just old and wants to give it to them,. The way I approach every gig is that it's my first and my last, you want to make sure they walk away saying; "Wow, that was the best damn show I've ever seen!" and that's the way I approach everything,
My friend Pip headed to the Leeds show last night and he told me their circle pit was the best on the tour, and they got involved in something called the 'Wall Of Dance' that wasn't at my Manchester show, what's that all about?
The Wall Of Dance! Yes, why thank you Pip... We're going to do it again tonight and its going to be AWESOME! It was really good… it's something id been threatening to do for a while and we brought it out at last! Its basically a wall of death but there's no 'death' to it, there's no dancing, so instead of running towards each other, they kind of sashay. It's an interesting sociological experiment.
See I could have handled that Corey… I cant handle a wall of death. When everyone went out for a smoke after A7X, my friend dragged me to the front and I was actually terrified.
Oh no! did you have a dress and high heels on?
No, luckily I had shorts and a top, but the weird thing was, noone bashed into me! There were huge guys all around me bouncing around and covering me in sweat, but not one of them moshed on me, I found it amazing that they were so considerate whilst going mental for you guys.
Everyone is very cool in the audience, that's what's great. I mean, every so often you get that abhorrent asshole who doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself, but for the most part - and maybe through my encouragement over the years - but people just properly look after each other. These gigs are a celebration, not about desperation.
Exactly! There was none of that pent up anger, hatred and rage that you often feel seeping out at metal gigs….
No, no, no. it's a celebration of life. At the end of the day, this is meant to be enjoyment and filled with positivity and if too many people start taking it too seriously then it just turns into a funeral. Everyone is there to be alive and that's what it's all about.
So, the tour is obviously in support of the new album, Audio Secrecy which is out now, I've got to say, when I heard it, it wasn't at all what I'd expected Corey…
That was what we were going for! We accomplished something then! It's funny because when people hear ti for the first time, it is kind of jarring because it's such a different type of album and that’s what we were pushing for,. We wanted to make a statement and something above and beyond what we've done before.
The good thing is that it's a sticky album. You listen to it once and you want to listen to it a second time, and then you listen to it for a week and you can be like "Oh my gosh, I haven't put the album down for a week!" and that should turn into a month… its great. Its an addictive album and that’s something I definitely wanted.
I think you might have even done enough to be in my Top Five albums of 2010.
I had better be! Top five with a bullet! We couldn't be happier with the reception it got.
People have this perception of you as your role as the Slipknot frontman and roaring your little lungs out, that to hear you sing the way you have on this album is captivating. In fact Corey I think you could win American Idol.
Haha! Brilliant! Let me get this straight, you think I could win American Idol?
Yep. I think you should enter next year.
This maybe be one of the parts where we agree to disagree, you're just being mean!
Haha! Sorry, I don’t want to be mean, I'll redeem myself by saying you looked BRILLIANT, on Halloween. I'd go so far as to say you pull of sexy underwear better than me!
Well I don't know about that, but it was fun! Halloween to me is a chance to have fun, a few years ago I went as Hunter S Thompson from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. Its very hard to sing with a cigarette holder in your mouth, you end up going [Corey does a bit of bad singing] but I just love to whoop it up, especially on Halloween. The great thing is, if you go 180 to what people expect from you then it's even better, plus my wife did my make-up so I looked properly gorgeous.
Now, I've also heard that you've got a book coming out focusing on your views on the Seven Deadly Sins. What made you decide to do that?
Yes! It kind of came out of a spit-bowling session I was having with my literary agent. We were going back and fourth thinking of something to write about because originally I was planning to just write about philosophy and it's such a broad subject that I would have probably ended up with an 800 page book. So we decided to scale it down a bit and write about just one subject and he mentioned the Seven Deadly Sins and I immediately went advocate on it and was like; "Y'know, I'll write about how they're not sins at all."
They are all human characteristics that we all share, they can lead to sins, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are sins in themselves, and the biggest dichotomy for me; it was being able to make that case. So what I've done is balanced that argument with stories from the past and being on tour with all this insanity and basically at the end saying; "You know, I've been through all this. All these so-called sins and I'm a pretty decent person for it."
To me they are not sins, they are ways to make mistakes that you learn from, and that can't be bad at the end of the day, it just cant be bad.
I'm excited to read it!
Yeah, I'm really stoked for it, I'm really proud that I wrote it myself and I didn’t really have help except on the editing side of things and it's coming together really nicely and should be out in the first week in March…
But aren't the Seven Deadly Sins written by God or someone though? Are you worried about getting the Church angry? You know what they get like if you piss them off…
Ah, I don’t give a shit. The Church can get mad all they want, it just means more book sales basically and I stopped listening to the Church a long time ago… how can I trust sex advice from people who don’t even have a zipper on their pants?
Brilliant! Now, finally, I heard something about you Rickrolling Chicago when you took over the Q101.1 Radio Station… what happened?
Rickrolling was a Youtube thing, that I think started on the radio. There's basically a big set up by the DJ and then you just play Rick Astley 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. So I was doing a guest DJ on Q101 in Chicago and I've been playing this random stuff all day and I came back on and I was like; "You know what? We might get in trouble for this buy im going to play the heaviest song that’s ever been allowed on radio. Im sorry to anyone who might get offended by this, but it's my right as an American to be able to play this on the radio…." There's this really long, ignorant build up to it, and then I just went here it is… and Rick Astley came on!
The thing was, it just shut down the network completely! People were sending in emails, texts and calling up whilst I was on the air because they were just so into it! They had to re-start the network and everything, it was awesome! I loved it! I Rickrolled Chicago! It was great. In fact I think I hold the record for most people Rickrolled at once! It was good times… they haven't asked me back by the way, that okay though, ill just go to the rival station!
We're sure you will Corey, we look forward to it!
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison
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