Interview with Slipknot at the Astoria 2 before LA1 gig December 13th, 1999
The sickness that is Slipknot has reached out its malingering tentacles and grasped Britain, nine men from the I hate myself and want to die generation wired and paranoid in a PCP style visual nightmare, a monstrous antagonistic, chronic psychopathic, macho entity bringing the destructive energy of a particularly malevolent poltergeist and we love them, the kids have lapped it up and are rolling around, hating everything around them a little more, there's two thousand of them queuing out there, hours before the doors, stamping, swearing, boiler suit clad to hide their alienation and masked in horrible replicas of their heroes ritual identities, super glued hybrids of gas masks, rapists masks, bondage masks, anything nasty, more nihilistic than punk hoped to ever be. Slipknot are fuelled by white trash small town rage, preceding their later appearance is the soundtrack from cult film Gummo's most torrid exchange with the rabbit boy being shot by the sneering cowboy child, lost in their own hatred, poverty and bigotry that's the kind of background Slipknot are clearly emphasising bred them too. Their massive backdrop proclaiming their own slogan "People = Shit "

Sid seems quite shy and disarmingly nice but you have to remember that this is the man who graced Howard Stern's breakfast radio show and refusing to speak, sat in the corner and masturbated throughout his questioning and at 22 he's also the baby.

I've got loads of family here, my mother is English, so my grandmother and cousins all still live here. I went to see them, it was weird I'd not been here for ten years, when I was like 13 I'd spend the summer here and I went and knocked on the door of these two guys I used to hang out with when we were all kids, they remembered me.

Yeah it's odd how famous we are here I just got chased up the street I've been signing autographs all day and seeing all those kids in the boiler suits and masks, we try and not get photographed without our masks on ever and I'm like- aggrh- holding my pass over my face out there while signing shit. My voice is bad today because yesterday we were being filmed by MTV and they wanted to tape our sound check and I was just like no, they should not be doing this, this is not gonna be real its not gonna be like the intensity of the show, why should we get all dressed up and pretend to be live, I was shouting at my manager so much I hurt my voice, they're filming us tonight instead though.

He's a damn intense young man and clearly the band is everything to him, later on we're sat on the balcony pre-doors and along he comes tailed by a roadie -
 I'm gonna jump it, (shaking rail) that'll probably hold me
What if you break your legs, we venture, unfazed
Whatever, I take that risk every night

Joey is number one from the sickness known as Slipknot (diminutive drummer and founding member notable because he speaks so fast for an American)
Goddamit Des Moines is like 65 below zero, everyone here is like it's cold, I'm like its fine! Me and Shawn the clown do most of the interviews, its been mad since we landed, the plane touched down and there's like a Roadrunner person going - you're behind schedule already!

It's like Beatlemania in masks out there, are you suprised?
We're very shocked and honoured, all those kids out there, we're just gonna try and go out and not suck. We thought it was gonna be a lot more grass roots than this, a lot more touring, we figured if we sell 30K records in the US that'd be an accomplishment shit the thing's been out only five and a half months and its sold 335,000 it's a record, this show sold out in 3 hours, the people out there wearing masks rule, we're still just fans of music so we're really humble about the fact it could go away any day so we're just trying to be dealing with it with the best attitude possible. We're very aware of the fact without those kids where are we, not anywhere we're so thankful for all of them

There's so much musical variety in your sound and nine members, is there any type of music you all like or is each of your taste different?
The majority is common ground but within that everyone's very open minded I mean we've got a DJ who listens strictly to jungle, like drum n bass, hard shit and that's what he does but he started out in punk rock and metal bands so it was really a natural choice for him but most of us aren't fans of DJ's in bands. Sid is something else, that guy is nuts, he's fucking off his shit and the best thing is the music with him, we didn't even try it, we were just jamming and it happened. We're very influenced by old crust punk and like Discharge and grind core, a lot of fast beats , like a song called Get This which is on the digipack and is punk as fuck. The next record you'll hear hardly any hip-hop or rap influence at all, it's so played out, so many bands do it and they do it badly, a lot of heavy bands use it and misdirect it, I don't think they use it in the right context. Most of our beats are made and brought in by our DJ but I like to mimic it and I play in that style a lot all the fills in Eyeless are jungle influenced Sid turned me on to all that all the heavy drum n bass stuff is just fuckin' bad ass.
The next record is going to have that influence too and a lot more death metal styles, black metal, the next record is gonna be a lot heavier and a lot more experimental and everyone's like- you can't do it and I'm like- what are you talking about, it's easy for us, we're so over compulsive with music its like a gradual step, how do you take a band that looks like us and sounds like us and water it down, that cries of like a sell out thing, there's no way we'd do it

Are you going to record the new album at the renowned Indigo Ranch studio again?
No we want like a different sound this time like a bigger sound and the guitars to be crisper and punchier, the same kind of organic approach but different

How do the kids know what you look like, I'm sure Kiss got off easier than this in the early days
The hard-core kids'll find out, they just do

How long will it be before someone gets all your pictures, is that going to really upset you, would you get rid of the masks?
It won't take long because of the internet, back then someone could get a picture of like Kiss's faces in different parts of the world but no-one would see it, but now with that kind of media it's almost impossible, we do our best, we don't do any pictures without the stuff, we do pictures with fans but we hold our laminates over our faces. We'd still carry on with the masks, always, they're us

Have you thought of upgrading them, maybe changing them next album?
Oh yeah, same type of character just a different look delving in deeper

You've been touring Stateside with Coal Chamber
We did the Ozfest in the States, then a four month long Coal Chamber tour and Machine Head was on there for a little, Amen was the first band on and Dope were the openers for a while but Amen and Dope weren't really seeing eye to eye, stupid childish shit, Machine Head would've never left the tour but they were told if they stayed they would have to take the second slot because we were taking theirs and I thought that was fucked, I prefer to open not headline honestly but you gotta do what you gotta do. We were selling the majority of tickets to the show and we were like we'll stay second and then you've got four different managers, fuckin lawyers, label people and a lot of the time it has nothing to do with the bands decision anymore. It's like they just tell you where to go and like Machinehead decide to drop out. You see over here they wanted us to come and open for them and our managers are like- are you guys stupid and we're like- why and they're like- you guys can do it by yourselves and we're like- you're full of shit there's no possible way, I mean we don't blow anything up, shoot lasers, have any weird ass shit, just straight songs, we pile in, use up as much energy as possible and get the fuck out, that's our secret

D'you get nervous stuck stationary at the back live when the rest of your band are going mental and chucking themselves and very solid objects around?
Fuck man yeah, they bang on these steel kegs with huge steel pipes I've had the pipe break shoot over my head and split my head right open, I carried on playing, I got a scar here from here to here (whole calf knee to ankle) that's been there for like two or three months, I split my whole leg open from my drum rack, I pulled my whole rack on top of myself, cymbal clamp went into my leg but I still had to play. Violence is inherent live, we do a ritualistic flip for a punch in the face before we go on a lot of the time. Like Sid or Shawn or me and Corey, its like someone flips it and you call it in the air and if you win you get to deck the other guy in the face but if you lose you gotta take a punch. We're all gonna do at least one each before we go on stage tonight, this is before we even set foot on stage this is in the dressing room no-one ever sees this part .
I could get decked really hard before this show, we'll see. We flipped for a punch for MTV Europe yesterday, Sid and Shaun and the funny thing is that Shaun always wins in the US, Sid's from here and Shaun's like- oh god it's his time, he's gonna win and I flipped it, Shaun called it heads -it was tails, Sid's like-yeah finally and he fuckin ripped Shawn, smacked him so hard he can't even hear out of his left ear right now and Shaun screams- FUCK, live right on MTV!!