“Far and away the most musically intense, creatively inspired and downright astonishing thing that the 18-legged chaos machine have produced to date, Vol.3… is, quite simply, a masterpiece,” gushed Kerrang!’s 5K-rated album review. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) was a triumph. Whatever the tribulations of the album’s conception and birth, Vol. “And that’s definitely come from making it in that house. “Only recently have I noticed the ethereal feel to the album,” Corey said on the eve of Vol. There was an area in the basement that Paul Gray found himself physically unable to enter, and Joey Jordison’s door would swing open at 9am every morning, no matter how he tried to jam it closed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and System Of A Down have both reported ghostly goings-on, and Slipknot had their own brushes with the uncanny while there. Lots of artists have both recorded at and stayed in The Mansion, Rick Rubin’s 10-bedroom house and recording studio located in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles. Oh, and they were also living in a haunted house for the duration. Jim was suffering from anxiety and Corey was drinking heavily. There were other issues during the recording, too. In the same piece, Jim Root said that Rick Rubin had a presence even when he wasn’t there, and Clown labelled him a “guru”. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. “We were being charged horrendous amounts of money. In an interview with Revolver, Corey bemoaned the fact that Rick was rarely at the sessions. The band’s reactions to the bearded guru were mixed. Ross had taken a chance on the band and really helped them to capture that early chaos and threat, but they went for another big name in Rick Rubin, whose credits included Slayer, System Of A Down and a host of rock, metal and hip-hop acts. The band were recording for the first time without uber-producer Ross Robinson (unless you count the limited-run 1996 release Mate. They really had to pull themselves back from the brink, but even the process of making the album was far from plain sailing. Slipknot would come back from greater adversity after Paul Gray’s tragic death in 2010 of course, but Vol. I still live with a lot of fucking guilt about this, that whatever I did to try and heal myself might have had a bad effect on my brother.” “You have to look at the situation… Paul thought he was losing his band. “You have to realise that Jim and I were out on the road, Joey was off with Murderdolls, Shawn was out in LA working on To My Surprise,” he continued. We all closed ranks around Paul.”Īsked whether the bassist had a problem, the singer conceded that he had, and took part of the blame onto his own shoulders. “We’d all been pretty heavy drinkers, and a few people in the band dabbled with, let’s just say pharmaceuticals, but that was an alarm bell. “It was a total fucking shock,” Corey recalled. Commendably, though, they rallied around their bassist instead. In their early days, Clown had loudly proclaimed that anyone caught doing drugs would be kicked out of the band. The bassist was involved in a minor crash with another vehicle, but when police were called to the scene, they found him in possession of marijuana, cocaine and drug paraphernalia. Here was this brotherhood that was so strong, and it was insane to think that an outside source can come in and push us apart.”Īnother bombshell that rocked the band was Paul Gray’s arrest in June 2003. By the end of the Iowa tour we couldn’t even look at each other, let alone talk to each other,” he said. “During the entire Iowa cycle there was so much crap going. Frontman Corey Taylor later admitted that forces within the ’Knot’s camp had played their part in driving wedges between the members. This is killing us,” Shawn Crahan, aka Clown, told Kerrang! back in 2001, as Iowa-fever engulfed the band. The accompanying tour cemented their reputation as one of the most dangerous, chaotic live acts around, but it also took its toll on the band. Billboard 200 – a stunning achievement for such a brutal and vitriolic piece of work. Second album Iowa had topped the charts in the UK and hit Number 3 in the U.S.

For a long while it looked like this album might never get made.įurious self-belief, a seemingly unquenchable pool of energy and an unstoppable sense of momentum had driven the nine members of Slipknot from the streets of Des Moines to the very peak of the ’00s metal scene.

Vol3 the subliminal verses